Throwing In The Wind

WIND INTRODUCES COMPLEXITY to the flight of the disc. Your best bet in fighting wind is to make the flight path as simple as possible. You can do this by reducing flutter and shortening the flight path of the disc.

Flutter in the disc is often imparted by the throw itself. If you try to throw your absolute hardest, it is difficult to consistently control the movement of the soft, bendable disc at the same time. For throwing in the wind, you can reduce flutter by:

• Pulling the disc back with a relatively flatter angle to allow it to move through the swing of your arm in a simpler, flatter manner. You can practice this each day by stopping a few throws each day at the halfway point of the throw, examining your pullback, and adjusting to a disc path that requires less vertical motion. Another good way to think about this is keeping the disc in a single plane while throwing as a useful approximation to approach.

• Use your off hand to stabilize the disc while pivoting, pulling back, or throwing (longer on backhands, but still useful for many parts of pivoting motions with forehands and hammers). You can practice this especially against tight, physical, contact-rule-illegal marks in which relatively incidental contact can be rendered irrelevant with the off arm to help steady the disc and throwing arm. Note that any player will be more versatile if they can make throws both with and without the off hand on the disc.

• Keeping throws smooth such that the rear of the disc moves through the same space as the front of the disc already has moved through. This ‘shows’ less of the vulnerable large surface of the disc to the wind, allowing the disc to slip through the air rather than fight it. You can practice this by throwing to a partner who stands in front of a mirror or reflective window and looking to see if you can see the round of the disc as you throw. *¹

*¹ Please remind your partner to catch the disc such that you don’t shatter your visualization aid.

While it seems unlikely at first, you can often achieve longer throws through smooth motions as compared to forceful throws. Obviously, the goal is to be able to do both.

Throws that rise or fall from any release point are necessarily longer flight paths and thus likely to be impacted more by wind. This is also true with throws that curve. Each additional inch of flight path is another opportunity to wind to impact the throw. To avoid this, successful players throw the shortest possible throw that is useful in a situation.

Sometimes, there is a balance to be struck between wind-risk and defender-risk. A typical swing pass is better if thrown farther out into space to allow the offensive player a good read and space to position themselves to seal out a defender. However, a tighter swing pass might reduce the wind risk by 10% while increasing the opportunity for a defensive block by 5%. Obviously, that is still a good decision.

Many players are taught to throw from low release points in the wind. This advice is an oversimplification: low throws that are flat are useful because they are flat and avoid longer flight paths. They also avoid wind impacts from slightly higher shelves of wind (like those that come off of sideline tents or over sideline teammates). Lastly, when you tell a young player to throw low you are also giving them an actionable focus point which can increase overall focus and, thus, success.

Alex Snyder throws low to avoid a mark, but still keeps the disc flat into the wind. Photo: Christina Schmidt — UltiPhotos.com

But throwing low often makes throwers slower, forces them to pivot generally further and thus lose quickness against the mark, and — most importantly in the wind — often creates releases that rise. On shorter throws, they are difficult to catch. These rising throws are difficult to control in the wind, are slow and laborious, and become habit-forming for young players. Focus on flat, not low, unless you are specifically working on avoiding shelves of wind or trying to go under a mark for some reason. Most players throw flat with strength, power, and the ability to pivot with balance if necessary when throwing between the knees and the belly button. Any additional lowering of the release point should be for a good reason and not just by dogma or habit.

Higher release points can be extremely stable or unstable in the wind, depending on the quality of the throwing motion. Is the disc moving simply forward without flutter? It will probably fly well at eight inches or eight feet off of the ground. High-release backhands are easier than forehands in the wind because it is more practical to stabilize the rear of the disc, even above shoulder level. For both throws, the tradeoff in quickness and stability is pronounced. Anyone can throw a neck-height forehand in normal wind, but the motion needed to throw it more quickly than a marker can react tends to make it less stable. This is especially true because marking hands generally move upwards faster than they move downwards, a consequence of our species’ past need to protect the head and neck more diligently than the feet and legs. If you have time, high-release throws can work. In tight situations, successful players buy themselves some of this time in situations where they might use a high-release throw in the wind by holding the disc in two hands at about armpit height, making the transition upwards take less time and create less flutter-causing motion.

And as a side note that every player since 2002 should know: Having an effective short off-hand backhand is a useful way to avoid throwing short forehands. Like the lefty layup, this is an easily learnable and useful skill for any age.

If you try to throw your absolute hardest, it is difficult to consistently control the movement of the soft, bendable disc at the same time.

When throwing upwind, discs tend to rise. Low throws tend to react to the wind by becoming more catchable, while high throws have a greater likelihood of rising out of a catchable range (or to a height that requires a receiver to decrease their relative speed compared to their defender, inviting blocks). Smart marks push upwind throws higher, and smart downfield defenders are watching high-release motions for opportunities to poach or pounce onto lofted throws.

When throwing downwind, discs tend to fall. High throws tend to become more catchable, while low throws are either instant turnovers or ankle-sniping hazards to an offense. This is especially true of faster break throws, and smart defenders try to make downwind throwers pivot and throw hard and low. All throws downwind are pushed to high speed, which narrows the effective catching window. When throwing to players moving away (either far for hucks or close for upline handler cuts) throwers should be aiming for the gut/chest of the receiver and less into space. Touch — best defined as the ratio of spin to speed for a particular throw — is more difficult in these situations. Since downwind adds speed but only marginally impacts spin, downwind throws have less touch and are less catchable by all receivers. This is exacerbated with harder discs like the Innova Pulsar used in the MLU; the gain in upwind throw-ability may be matched by the lead weight of a downwind shot which is more easily droppable.

Most throws in the winds aren’t directly with or against the wind, but rather at a cross-angle to the path of the air. In this large number of cases with a variety of winds and throws, the goal is to show less of the disc to the moving air. For example, imagine yourself on the forehand sideline with the wind in your face, coming towards and across your body from the throwing arm to the pivot foot. In a normal situation, you’d throw a flat forehand because it is the easiest throw to catch and the simplest to throw. If you were tightly pressured by a marker, you might angle the disc to curve from out of bounds back onto the field; in this case, you’d be trading a slightly higher risk of a drop to avoid a significantly higher risk of a handblock. The same might be true on a huck, where the power generated by a big windup might be worth the slightly less control of the direction of a blading huck (and the increased difficulty for the receiver to pinpoint a catching location before the defender does).

The problem is that raising the outside edge of the disc exposes that disc to the wind. It might be altered by small movements while still in your possession. It might be altered by larger movements once you release the disc. The wind impact overall will push the outside edge of the disc up and over the center, causing the disc to flutter. Depending on power in wind, this might result in anything from a quick turf to a long, curving turnover on the far side of the field. The solution is then to slightly lower the outside edge of the disc back to flat, which might be different than what you normally do in that position. Younger players tend to be overly worried about being blocked by the mark as well as less well-honed in bringing the disc back to a relatively flat position. For those players, they’ll tend to struggle with this forehand unless they can flatten and smooth the throw, even to the point of releasing the disc with the outside edge lower to correct for later wind impact. You can make a similar adjustment with just about every throw in the wind.