This is an article about throwing. I don't have anything all that unique to say. But what I do have to say bears repeating, even if others have said it before.
If you want to be good at throwing the frisbee, throw the frisbee a lot. A lot.
It’s my strong belief that the vast majority of people are intrinsically capable of being truly excellent Ultimate players...
...this stuff is always on my mind. But the reason I’m posting about it now is because of something truly incredible I’ve just seen in the Reddit AMA that Ben Wiggins did a while back.
Ben is a seriously good thrower. I had the privilege of meeting him at Rise Up in Amsterdam recently, and I can confirm he’s just as good a coach as he is a player. He’ll tell you himself that he got what he has by working hard, that he had no genetic advantages; but I hadn’t really understood what he meant by hard work until I read this:
“In my best seasons, I missed 7 and 9 days of throwing in the 365 day span before Nationals.”
Think about that. Think about the weather, the hangovers, the birthdays, the holidays, the illness, the unforeseen catastrophes; all the reasons you might miss the chance to throw. Think about the other things he would have been doing – the gym, the sprints, the training sessions, and real life too. And think about the dedication that this takes.
If you seriously doubt that hard work would make you a better player, a good enough player to play on a top team, there’s one way to prove yourself right. Go throw, every day, for about 20 minutes, for a year, then come back and show me that you’re not one hell of a thrower.
So, twenty minutes every day for a year is one definition of "a lot". But to be honest, I think it's not that much. I've practiced throwing for about an hour a day, for the past two years. It's gotten me from being a nobody to being...slightly less of a nobody. Jokes aside, I've gotten WAY better—just not good enough yet that you're seeing me on Ultiworld streams.
How much the pros practice
Twenty minutes per day is not so much. Here's a comment from another Reddit AMA, by NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie. A fan asks:
What’s up Spencer, how much time do you spend per day just shooting.
And he replies:
In the offseason, probably like 2-3 hours.
Spencer Dinwiddie is a pretty good NBA player. I'd guess that most people who aren't already NBA fans wouldn't know him. And he practices shooting for two or three hours per day (in the offseason). Benji of Understanding Ultimate gives a reasonable suggestion of practicing twenty minutes per day to become a pretty good ultimate player. But to get to a pro level, you need to practice throwing an hour per day, at least.
Kobe Bryant would aim to make about 800 shots per day (see here, or here). And that was just to keep the skills he already had — he would supposedly make 2,000 shots per day when he was trying to improve his shooting. Even if he made a shot every 5 seconds nonstop, it would still take over an hour to get to 800 made.
People can do some pretty crazy things when they practice that much. Steph Curry has hit 105 three pointers in a row, on video:
Imagine throwing a frisbee through a two-foot wide ring from 25 feet away...100 times in a row. Or 93 times out of 100 in another Curry video.
This guy can shoot an arrow through a keyhole seven times in a row. I'm sure you can find similarly crazy videos for your sport of choice.
There's differences between ultimate frisbee and basketball. In basketball you need a certain amount of objective accuracy, so to speak: if you don't get the ball in the hoop you don't get points. In ultimate, accuracy is a bit less important because the receiver can adjust to your throw while the disc is in the air. There's diminishing returns to accuracy with a disc compared to shooting a basketball. There are also more ways to throw a frisbee than to shoot a three pointer.
But at the end of the day, being able to hit your spot as a frisbee thrower is a very powerful skill.
Be smart about it
There are some VERY important caveats to all of this. Build up your throwing endurance slowly, and don't throw through injuries when you should be resting.
More caveats: to get the most benefit, you need to practice the right way. You also need to develop a healthy mental outlook that allows you to practice this much without burning out. These are both topics I'll write more about in the future.
But I like to focus on one idea at a time. Today's idea is this: if you want to be as good at throwing a frisbee as NBA players are at shooting a basketball, then you need to throw a whole lot. Two hours per day for half the year and an hour per day for the other half will get you to approximately the level of Spencer Dinwiddie.
I'd guess that just about literally no one is throwing the frisbee that much. Maybe AJ Merriman is. Maybe Valeria Cardenas is, too. Maybe a Chinese kid who none of us have ever heard of is.
Since pretty much all of us have day jobs, I don't really expect anyone to go out and start throwing for an hour per day after reading this essay. But maybe one of you will. I'd never seen this article written by anyone else, so I wrote it myself. Throwing a whole lot is an option. Probably not for most of us. But for the few of us who are interested in taking that path, throwing for an hour per day or more is honestly what it takes.
Thanks for reading, time for me to throw a few more forehands. Until next time.
Edit (2024-02-28):
A while back I stumbled across an old Reddit thread: Long Term Impact of Throwing Everyday. I do think it’s possible to hurt yourself by throwing too much, especially throwing too many hucks. But if you’re smart about it and don’t push through pain—don’t huck a lot if you’re already sore from hucking yesterday, etc—throwing every day without injury is very much possible.
