Inspired by a bit of news footage from last week, when gold-medal Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman threw out the first pitch at an MLB baseball game (fast-forward to 0:45). It was the stereotypical “throws like a girl” throw, which surprised me a bit. No doubt it requires years of practice and professional coaching to be able to fire a 100-MPH fastball, but my impression was that an athletic person who has had years of practice and familiarity with the kinematics of their own body (even though not in a throwing sport) would at least have the ability to at least get the ball to home plate.
So why do girls “throw like girls?” Is there some biomechanical reason that they tend to throw this way? Is it just a complete lack of familiarity with throwing things, and boys who have the same lack of familiarity tend to throw the same way? Is there some cultural norm that discourages girls from moving in ways that are best for throwing a ball?
Men and women are biomechanically different - there’s a simple trick that will show one variation. Whether or not pre-pubescent kids are any different, I don’t know. I think girls throw like girls because they often aren’t being taught to throw a ball (or anything) from the time they can stand up. So it’s a matter of training and conditioning. At least, until bodies begin to change with adulthood.
That simple trick: take any adult male and have him stand with heels, hips and shoulders flat against a wall. Put a $20 on the floor about a foot in front of him. Tell him he can have it if he can bend over and pick it up without his heels or hips coming away from the wall. (Your money is safe unless he’s a freak athlete, and even then.)
Don’t try it with a woman, though. The hip offset is different and she can easily bend over and take your money.
I think it’s just inexperience. Boys throw things a LOT, but I’ve noticed from playing catch with little kids that little kids throw like girls. So I’m guessing most girls just don’t throw properly and never learned how to throw properly. But when I’ve played catch with even poor female softball players, they’ve thrown pretty well.
Part of it is also arm flexibility. A proper throw requires an arm motion that is impossible if your muscles aren’t conditioned through stretching. I played catch with my nephew for the first time in years and my first throw nearly tore muscles. So I altered my motion to protect my now much less flexibile arm and the motion was not unlike what you’d expect a girl to throw like.
AFAICT, this. For balls, we tend to be more used to tossing them up, which requires a completely different grasp than throwing one. The few lessons my class had to get on “throwing sports” saw noticeable improvement despite having what may have been the laziest Phys Ed teacher ever (she didn’t give any explanations, we had to figure it out).
People ‘throw like a girl’ when they step forward with the same foot as they are throwing with. A more natural looking throw is when the thrower steps forward with the opposite foot.
Anyway, that throw did not look too bad. It was all arm but at least she had her left foot forward. She’s a world class athlete, with a little practice she would learn to use her whole body.
The real trick is to turn sideways to the direction you’re throwing. Facing the direction you’re throwing isn’t going to result in the best toss. (Note the woman in the OP’s link does this. As well as a weird arm motion.)
It is possible to teach someone this. Gender doesn’t matter.
E.g., when I took a PE class in handball, I was really bad at first. Then I realized I was facing the direction I wanted to hit the ball. Once I turned sideways, then it went a whole lot better. Left and right hand. Over, under and side arm.
It’s just lack of practice. You never hear people saying that tennis players “serve like a girl” and the motion of getting the racquet head to the ball is the same as throwing. But women with perfectly good serves sometimes still throw like a girl.
For most folks who want to know what “throwing like a girl” is like, the solution is simple - just throw a ball using your opposite hand. For me as a left-hander, that would be throwing a ball right-handed. I haven’t had a lot of practice doing it, it feels weird, … and I end up “throwing like a girl”.
When I was in elementary school in the 60s a teacher explained to us that girl’s shoulders were different and they couldn’t throw like boys. I didn’t buy it then, there were several girls who could throw rocks just like boys, better than some, and even one girl who played baseball with the boys on the school teams. It wasn’t common for girls then to play the sports boys did, and there were a lot of women in those days who ended up with rather weak upper bodies because using your arms wasn’t considered ladylike, but by no means did that apply to all women and girls. And there were plenty of boys who threw like girls also, pretty much what the phrase was all about.
Yep. Learning to switch hit you swing like a girl too. When we say “like a girl” in athletic terms what we really mean is, “like you have no experience doing the athletic feat you are attempting”. Most people look really horrible trying anything athletic for the first time. Give Brock Lesnar a tennis racket and put him up against Venus Williams and see who looks like the girl on that court. Or have Gary Kasparov fight Ronda Rousey.
Throwing a ball is an awkward motion for anyone of either sex without experience and practice. I know plenty of women who have said experience/practice who definitely do not throw “like a girl.” It’s very goofy to me that the particularly style of the awkward ball toss is attributed to a specific gender.
In spite of having PE class every single day when I was in school, nobody ever taught me how to throw. So I throw [del]like a girl[/del] like someone who doesn’t know how to throw.
It has nothing to do with learning how to throw, or being taught how to throw. Nobody ever taught me or any of my friends how to throw and none of us threw like girls.
However, I think most boys/men who attempt to throw with their left (i.e. non-dominant) hand throw “like girls”. So I incline to think it’s just practice/experience.
:rolleyes: Gimme a break. I never claimed or suggested that no girl anywhere at any time was ever capable of throwing a baseball with a useful degree of pep. The stereotype exists for a reason, i.e. the average girl/woman is less likely than the average boy/man to be capable of throwing a baseball forcefully. I am fully aware that there are some women who are good at throwing, and some men who are not, but I’m pretty sure they are in the minority.