Keep the disc forward as you bring your elbow back?
A hypothesis to add a little distance on flick hucks
I've watched a lot of slow motion throwing videos while researching my previous articles on forehand form. Watching slow motion pitching (baseball) videos, I noticed one aspect that could potentially help us throw longer flicks in ultimate frisbee. Here's a little hypothesis that you won't find in Rowan McDonnell's, Kurt Gibson's, or Ryan Lowe's videos on throwing longer flicks.
Hopefully you're already aware that getting your elbow back on your windup is an important source of power generation for long forehands. (If you're not familiar already, read my older post on the subject).
Getting that elbow back is the biggest factor, but there's another detail that I think can help us maximize power.
To put it as simply as I can: the disc doesn't need to go "back" until the elbow comes forward.
When we swing our elbow forward, the muscles and connective tissue in and around the elbow experience tension as the energy is transferred from the upper arm to the lower arm.
From a physics perspective, we should be able to generate slightly more tension if the forearm is swinging back as the elbow starts coming forward (compared to if the forearm is static). There will be greater relative motion between the two sides of the joint, which translates into more tension in the muscles. That greater tension will eventually be released and transformed into generating more force on the disc.
I first noticed this watching slo-mo pitching videos. For example, here's a slo-mo video of former MLB pitcher Drew Storen (I don't actually know who he is, but it's a really high quality video):
(Looks like it may be blocked from watching without clicking through to YouTube. Do that if you’d like but there’s also a GIF of the relevant moments below)
As his elbow starts moving forward, the hand and ball are still moving in the opposite direction.
I want to be careful with the terminology here. Given the larger movements of his body and his arm, the overall motion of the ball is somewhat forward. But relative to his upper arm, his forearm is very clearly moving backwards—or we could say "rotating up", in the direction of generating extra tension in the elbow area.
Here's a GIF that highlights the action:
What we see in ultimate
Looking through a few videos in the throwing form archive, forearm placement during the flick huck windup is inconsistent. Jimmy Mickle brings the disc up high as he draws his elbow back, so there's not much backwards forearm motion available when his elbow starts coming forward:
In this screenshot we can see how the forearm has already rotated up before his elbow starts coming forward:
Max Thorne has a similar style:
The king of keeping the disc forward, at least among the examples I found, was Johnny Bansfield. I thought to check his form because I remembered him being the author of the half-deranged, half-brilliant article Forehand Mechanics That Aren't Taught. He's also known for throwing 70-yard flick hucks with seemingly barely any windup:
He keeps his forearm pointed forwards while his elbow comes back. When his elbow is fully extended, his forearm is still pointing forward and slightly towards the ground (screenshot from his throwing form video):
We see some of the same effect as the MLB pitcher—the forearm "rotating up" only once the elbow comes forward. The video quality isn't as high as some of the other videos in the series, but here's the best GIF I could make that highlights the motion:
Others, like Claire Chastain, Valeria Cardenas, and Kurt Gibson are somewhere in between these of Mickle/Thorne and Bansfield.
Rowan McDonnell is another example who's somewhere in between—He does keep his forearm flat in the windup, but in his case that somehow doesn't translate into quite as much upward forearm rotation as Bansfield has:
(With all the screenshots in this article I've done my best to capture the moment where the thrower's elbow is as far back as it gets. But of course there is always some leeway to screenshot at a slightly different moment that might make each player's form look slightly different.)
Kurt Gibson seems to extend his arm to the side much more than Bansfield does. They both have their palms facing roughly downwards, but Bansfield's forearm is pointing more forwards, while Gibson's forearm is pointing to the side. (Bansfield's form makes more sense to me, though I don't have especially strong opinions on this detail.)
Although there's a lot of variety in forms, I think Bansfield may be on to something here. Certainly all of these players can throw far, but there are still benefits to trying to optimize our form. Baseball pitchers generate tremendous power, and Johnny Bansfield shows us how that might be adapted for throwing a frisbee.
Final thoughts
As always when talking about throwing mechanics, let me make a few disclaimers:
When changing your form, your throwing ability is likely to get worse before it gets better. It may take a few months of practice before a change really pays off.
Take it slow. The whole point is to throw longer by putting more tension into the area around your elbow, and your arm will need time to adapt by slowly getting stronger. (MLB pitchers are known for getting hurt a lot! I don't want the same to happen to frisbee players, but I think we can safely move a little bit closer towards generating the amount of power that they do.)
I don't have any official credentials in biomechanics. I do have a degree in mechanical engineering, but mostly I'm just a guy who thinks about frisbee a lot.
I'm a believer there isn't one perfect form. This concept may work for one person but not for another. Or perhaps two people who are both using this concept can use it in slightly different ways.
I'm not 100% certain this is an important part of good form—hence the question mark in the post title—but I thought it was interesting enough to be worth sharing. I've been experimenting with changing my form since I noticed what the baseball pitchers were doing a month or two ago. The early results are promising, although it'll probably take a couple years to say for sure.
For mental cues for this motion, I like using what I noted about Bansfield above: until the elbow starts coming forward, the forearm should make a line pointing at your target (again, you may need to slowly build up to this). If the forearm points at the sky instead, you won't have any room to open up further generating that extra tension through extra relative motion.
Update (2024-05-05):
When I first wrote this article, I looked for—but couldn’t find—a good clip of Jonathan Nethercutt’s flick huck form. He’s another player know for throwing really long flick hucks (see the clip starting at 0:25, for example).
But recently the YouTube algorithm suggested his Callahan video, which has a great shot of him winding up a huck, at 4:30 here. When his elbow reaches the furthest point back, his forearm is pointing forward, parallel to the ground:
Only once he starts to bring his elbow forward does the forearm rotate back—here’s a screenshot about halfway through the forward swing of his arm:
Appreciate the gifs, you’ve given me a lot to think about! (Still struggling to have a flick huck after 30 years). I’d at least like to help coach it