by Tom Claeys

Created on: March 06, 2009

While forehands and backhands are the predominant throws with a frisbee, many more types of throws exist. Some of them even have weird names or descriptors. Throws like hammers, scoobers, pushes, thumbers, blades are some throws you might not be familiar with. The disc can also be forced to act certain ways. It can bounce or float, be thrown inside out or inverted, and even carry lots of "Zs" or rotations. Discs can also be thrown for rolling purposes or even to skip. Certainly many of these throws are unconventional or even trick throws so we should start with the basics.

A backhand and a forehand are the two main types of throws. A backhand is thrown by cupping your fingers under the rim of the disc with the thumb on top or the side. The throwing motion is closest to a backhand tennis shot. It should be coiled back across your body and with thrust and rotation smoothly let go in that tennis style keeping the disc rather parallel to the ground. It should be a fluid motion and may take some practice. The farther the disc is to be thrown, the more the outside edge of the disc should be tilted toward the ground. This is due to the gyroscopic forces that tend to "turn a disc over" with increased velocity and distance. The same would be true with the forehand. The forehand is typically gripped with two fingers under and thumb on top. The grip is different than the backhand in that the two fingers are aligned with the under lip of the disc and not wrapped perpendicular like a backhand. The way to throw the forehand is to try and "flick" the disc leaving your palms up at the end of the throw. This may seem unnatural at first, but be advised that the secret to throwing the forehand is in the flick of the wrist, not in the throwing arm motion like the backhand. The forehand usually takes much more patience and practice but once mastered it becomes second nature and allows for curving the disc by simple angle deviations.

Other throws sometimes are quite useful, but some are just for fun. A hammer or a bowl is a throw with the forehand grip that is released above your head at a slight angle. It is most similar to a football throw although obviously the grip is different. This disc gets high in the sky and curves back into whoever is catching it. If you throw it wrong it may look like a leaf falling from a tree in autumn. A blade is another throw like the hammer, except the idea is to get the disc high in the sky at a perfectly perpendicular angle with the ground. It is

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