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Beyond throwing and catching, which are the most fundamental tools required, initial tooling in my mind has a couple paths. The outer rim and the center. With the center, you will want to learn to spin the disc keeping your finger, specifically the nail, under the center of the disc and in contact with it as best as you can. This is called a delay. With the outer rim you want to learn to keep the disc in the air as best you can. This might include brushing, rolling or kicking and can involve alot of running around. I will leave the outer rim skills to one more proficient than I.

When I first learned to delay a disc, I had trouble. I already knew how to spin a basketball, but had trouble figuring out how to spin a disc. A spinning basketball, because it has so much weight away from the center, has a stable center. When you spin it correctly, the finger "locks" in the center. In fact, I could spin a basketball on a pencil and hand it to just about anyone and they could hold it spinning. With a spinning disc, the center is not stable and the finger wants to drift off center on it's own. It takes very small, very quick corrections to maintain center. It can take some time and repetition to get there. Further complicating the development of this feel is the gyroscopic effect intrinsic to spinning objects. When you touch a spinning disc off center, the disc will "precess", or turn 90 degrees from where you touched it. Thus the small corrections discussed above need to be in the direction of the spin. It will seem you are always trying to catch up to the correction which wants to stay 90 degrees ahead of your finger! This results in the finger seeming to be doing really small circles near the center of the disc. As you get more proficient, these "circles" and the corrections get so small that it appears the finger is staying still in the center of the disc!

Higher level functions such as skids and turnovers will use this precessive property of discs in a complicated way to achieve the moves. Skids, or "against the spin" moves work against the prevailing precession while turnovers are done with the spin in one direction until the turnover and then with the spin in the other direction. What complicates it is the need to work at non-flat angles and switching your brain from one spin's thinking to the other.

Paul Kenny


HOME SUPER HEIN 2010 FRISBEE EVENT LEARN TO JAM POLLS DIFF JUDGING made easy VIDEOS STORE ABOUT US	Beyond throwing and catching, which are the most fundamental tools required, initial tooling in my mind has a couple paths. The outer rim and the center. With the center, you will want to learn to spin the disc keeping your finger, specifically the nail, under the center of the disc and in contact with it as best as you can. This is called a delay. With the outer rim you want to learn to keep the disc in the air as best you can. This might include brushing, rolling or kicking and can involve alot of running around. I will leave the outer rim skills to one more proficient than I. When I first learned to delay a disc, I had trouble. I already knew how to spin a basketball, but had trouble figuring out how to spin a disc. A spinning basketball, because it has so much weight away from the center, has a stable center. When you spin it correctly, the finger "locks" in the center. In fact, I could spin a basketball on a pencil and hand it to just about anyone and they could hold it spinning. With a spinning disc, the center is not stable and the finger wants to drift off center on it's own. It takes very small, very quick corrections to maintain center. It can take some time and repetition to get there. Further complicating the development of this feel is the gyroscopic effect intrinsic to spinning objects. When you touch a spinning disc off center, the disc will "precess", or turn 90 degrees from where you touched it. Thus the small corrections discussed above need to be in the direction of the spin. It will seem you are always trying to catch up to the correction which wants to stay 90 degrees ahead of your finger! This results in the finger seeming to be doing really small circles near the center of the disc. As you get more proficient, these "circles" and the corrections get so small that it appears the finger is staying still in the center of the disc! Higher level functions such as skids and turnovers will use this precessive property of discs in a complicated way to achieve the moves. Skids, or "against the spin" moves work against the prevailing precession while turnovers are done with the spin in one direction until the turnover and then with the spin in the other direction. What complicates it is the need to work at non-flat angles and switching your brain from one spin's thinking to the other. Paul Kenny