Forehand Grip Palm Position

[BreezyRider]

I have been playing about 6 months and have a fairly good backhand. I am now trying to learn forehand throw. I have seen two different opinions as to palm orientation in forehand. One said the palm should be parallel to the disc with 2 finger grip and the other said it should be perpendicular. Which is correct?


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[Aim For The Chains]

No real "correct way" but some general ideas to keep in mind. How do your FH throws fly?

 

[discallday]

I have been playing about 6 months and have a fairly good backhand. I am now trying to learn forehand throw. I have seen two different opinions as to palm orientation in forehand. One said the palm should be parallel to the disc with 2 finger grip and the other said it should be perpendicular. Which is correct?

Somewhere about half-way in between. 100% either way would seem to sacrifice control and be rather uncomfortable. Just try not to change the angle between the disc and your palm too much through the throw, as this will increase disc wobble.

 

[ThrowBot]

First and most important: whatever is comfortable for you and flies well is good.

I personally prefer palm forward (perpendicular to disc), but I throw with a 1 finger FH grip so that might be more comfortable for me.

When you load and unload your wrist during the snap of the throw, that consists of extension and flexion of the wrist if your palm is forward.

If you're throwing palm up (parallel to the disc), the load-and-unload motion would be radial deviation followed by ulnar deviation. That seems pretty awkward to me, but again, to each their own.

Palm up vs. palm forward also has some significant impact on release angles. To me, palm up seems like it leaves more room to roll the wrist in toward your body during the release and follow through. When I say "rolling your wrist" I'm talking about the twisting motion that turns a door knob, which can cause OAT.

 

[BreezyRider]

First and most important: whatever is comfortable for you and flies well is good.



I personally prefer palm forward (perpendicular to disc), but I throw with a 1 finger FH grip so that might be more comfortable for me.



When you load and unload your wrist during the snap of the throw, that consists of extension and flexion of the wrist if your palm is forward.

If you're throwing palm up (parallel to the disc), the load-and-unload motion would be radial deviation followed by ulnar deviation. That seems pretty awkward to me, but again, to each their own.



Palm up vs. palm forward also has some significant impact on release angles. To me, palm up seems like it leaves more room to roll the wrist in toward your body during the release and follow through. When I say "rolling your wrist" I'm talking about the twisting motion that turns a door knob, which can cause OAT.

Thanks

 

[RocHucker]

I'd like to add that palm orientation also depends on grip. I've noticed two main grips among the top pros:

1. (Palm up/parallel to disc). Ricky Wysocki uses this grip. Make a gun with your hand, with pinky and ring finger curled in to fist and pointer and middle finger pointed straight out and under the disc. Side of the end of middle finger is main contact with the inner rim of the disc. This is very similar to a typical ultimate Frisbee flick, and the most common grip. It is CRUCIAL that you keep your palm facing up through the throw, or your disc will wobble and turn into the ground. I was able to do this for touch shots, but found it unnatural and even painful (in elbow) on distance shots, which i always put a lot of bad OAT on.

2. (Palm forward/perpendicular to disc). Paul Mcbeth uses this grip. Pinky and ring finger curled in as before. Middle finger is straight out, but pointer finger is hooked/scrunched up against the inner rim. The tip/pad of your pointer finger is the strongest contact with the inner rim of the disc, but you also have fairly solid contact with pad of your middle finger, which should be (very roughly) an inch further from your palm (out along the inner rim of the disc) than the tip of your pointer finger. This grip felt much less natural to me at first, but the actual throwing motion feels much more natural as the wrist can act similar to how it would when throwing a baseball sidearm. Because the wrist is able to follow through more naturally in this way, I'm able to throw further and cleaner (less OAT) with this grip. Showing this grip to a friend also helped fix his problem with turning forehands over too much.

Hope that was clear and helpful!

 

[armiller]

These things are always hard to describe or follow without pictures. But the key is that you find a grip where the flexion of your wrist imparts a force along the rim that is perpendicular to the disc's axis. To make matters more complicated, the rest of the arm, shoulder, and elbow are moving like crazy to sling the disc. I guess the key is just finding a grip that matches the way your arm is moving. If you're not doing that, it's called "off-axis-torque," which some people use to refer to wobble, and others use to describe yanking the disc at the end of the throw (my simplified description).

For me, I learned throwing ultimate lids. I actually think it's a really good strategy. It helps expose OAT, and if you can put good snap on an ultimate disc without wobble, then you're on the right track.

I'm not actually sure if I use a "palm up" or "palm forward" technique. It's funny, cuz I always thought it was perpendicular, but my form is more like Ricky's than Paul's. This makes me want to try my hand at an instructional video. We shall see...

One more note. Many players (including myself) find it helpful to consciously maintain their palm up, or toward the sky, when they throw forehand. I do believe this helps, but it's also not exactly as it seems. When looking at my own throws, as well as Ricky's and some other good forehand throwers, I always notice the hand turn over (palm down) for a split second before the palm turns back toward the sky on the follow through. So try that concept to see if it helps, but realize that to properly snap a forehand, you often have to turn your palm down briefly.

Wow that was clear as mud.

 

[hazed_0ut]

Ok, I'm confused. My forehand sucks and I try to not throw it when I don't have to, but it's obviously something I want to work on and make better. I've always heard "palm up" when reading/watching about forehand. I've never heard of "palm perpindicular". I've tried the two different grips referenced above (the Wysocki and McBeth) but never though of different palm orientation. Can someone maybe just snap a quick picture of the grip with palm perpindicular as a reference?

I should also mention, it is confusing when watching them and seeing their hand turn over (palm down) after they preach palm up? Right now for the most part, my forehands (RHFH) basically just flutter and fall to the ground. I can do a decent one if I'm not putting any power on it, for like a touch/get out of trouble shot, but if I want to get any distance, its awful.

 

[RocHucker]

"Can someone maybe just snap a quick picture of the grip with palm perpindicular as a reference?"

Hopefully my pictures attached correctly. The last one is me pantomiming the follow through with this grip that (with a correctly timed wrist snap... imagine throwing the outer edge of your disc at the target moreso than throwing your hand at the target) yields a clean, flat flight of the disc, even with 350ft of power applied (that's the most that i can typically muster with a forehand).

Please excuse the bathroom mirror selfie. It's all i could offer at the moment

 

[RocHucker]

For comparison, here are pictures of the "palm up" grip from the same angles. The difference between the palm orientation in the two grips looks more subtle than I'd anticipated. It's there, but not blatantly obvious until the follow through, where the Wysocki style ends in ulnar deviation (see Throwbot's handy graphic above) but the mcbeth style ends in flexion of the wrist. I choose to throw the mcbeth style because flexion feels MUCH more natural to me than forcing my joints to do ulnar deviation. If you move your arm and wrist around, you can feel how ulnar deviation hits a "hard stop" where it can't follow through any further without either breaking your elbow or letting the forearm roll over into flexion mode, where it can comfortably continue following through until you're hugging your opposite side with your throwing arm. That's why "palm up" throwers finish palm down on powerful throws... because the force of the follow through forces their joints to either turn over or get injured. However, when the palm up style is done correctly, the disc is gone before the wrist rolls over.

Hopefully this is helpful?

 

[hazed_0ut]

Thanks for taking the time to post those, I see the difference, although slight. Much appreciated!