UrbanUpdate

We’ve all been there. “Come throw a Frisbee,” your friends will say. Shit, you’ll think. When was the last time I threw a Frisbee? Your buddies will rip off gleaming 20-yard spinners. And then the moment of truth: You have to throw it back. If you’re on the beach, it winds up in the ocean; in the country, it’s up a tree. Will you, the errant Frisbee-tosser, ever be able to get your disc game into shape?

You will. The perfect throw is attainable. For a briefing on Fris-slinging, we turned to Jonathan Nethercutt, whose resume boggles the mind: He’s fresh off a national Ultimate Frisbee championship at the University of North Carolina, a world championship with Team USA, and the Callahan Award (think the Heisman, but for frizz). Mostly, we wanted to talk to him because he can do things like this with a Frisbee. Here’s his advice.

BACKHANDFor a backhand grip, you just pick up the disc. All four of your fingers are underneath the rim of the disc, and you keep your thumb on top. You're showing the back of your hand to whoever you're throwing to. Throwing in Ultimate is like playing tennis, volleying back and forth (but the big difference is that no one throws two-handed backhands in Ultimate). You want to keep your throwing-side shoulder—if you're right handed, your right shoulder—pointed at where you're trying to throw. And you use that simple backhand motion from tennis: left to right, back to front.

Make sure you throw with a good amount of wrist snap. That’s the key to all your throws, and that's true no matter what you're throwing: If you're snapping your wrist well, you'll usually get a lot more accuracy or efficiency out of your throws. Your arm is more of a support—and it helps increase velocity. But you'll have a lot of velocity without a lot of accuracy if you don't snap your wrist.

FOREHAND (a.k.a. THE “FLICK”)I have trouble teaching the forehand a lot of times to middle schoolers, just because there's not a lot of comparable motions—the only one that comes close, again, is tennis, or maybe ping pong. It’s the same wrist action as throwing a baseball, but you don't throw a baseball from your hip.

For the grip, you take your index and middle finger and your thumb, and you make a sort of finger gun, your index and middle finger being the barrel. Stick your index and middle finger into the inside rim, with your thumb on top, and then your ring finger and pinkie finger on the outside of the rim, as a support. Your middle finger does most of the action along with your wrist—the disc really flies off your middle finger when you throw flicks.

Your goal is to keep your forearm, your wrist, and the disc all level and parallel with the ground. In general, if you can snap your wrist decently well, it should come out okay—it's pretty much all in the wrist. People have a natural tendency to over-rely on their arm, which can be your downfall when you're starting out with flicks—they sling their arm and only gingerly snap their wrist. Then the disc doesn't have enough spin to keep up with the speed of flight, and it tails off really quickly, or wobbles.

WHAT IF I’M SLICING?However you throw it, it's going to slice in the direction of its spin. So if you're throwing a flick with your right hand, it's normally going to slice to your left, and backhands will slice to your right. Slicing suggests that you're not putting enough wrist snap on it and using too much arm—it's because your arm is moving faster and generating more velocity than your wrist is generating spin. So relax your arm a bit and focus on snapping. The other quick fix is changing the release angle. Dropping the edge of the disc below flat tends to help a lot of people.

Sam Schube is the GQ Sports director. He began working at GQ in 2014 as an editorial assistant, and in the years since has assigned and edited features and profiles, written stories about subjects ranging from Johnny Knoxville to professional golf's existential crisis, and worked on all manner of magazine... Read moreGQ Sports DirectorXInstagramRelated Stories for GQGQ Sports