Well, that’s a lot of it, but I don’t think it’s all of it. It’s also a learned skill, and it’s learned from people who already know how to throw.
Thought experiment: If you gave a person who had never seen anyone throw a ball a ball and told them to try to get the ball to a specific position while remaining where they are, they could practice and figure something out. But I think it’s unlikely they’d come up with the single-handed throw motion that most of us learned. They might throw it with both hands overhead, or one hand underarmed or side-armed. Hell, they might learn to kick it accurately.
Throwing is a learned skill, not just a practiced one.
This is clearly not true! Have you ever played with a little kid young enough to not know how to throw?
Even better, this is a testable claim.
Go somewhere where people are throwing a ball around, and wait for the ball to get overthrown near you. Pick it up and stare at it like it’s an alien object, then look at the people playing ball like you don’t know what to do. Pretend like you don’t understand them when they ask you to throw it back. What will they do?
They will start miming the throwing motion to you!
This is exactly what happens when people play with little kids and balls. You throw the ball to them, then they pick it up and look at it, and look at you, and you make the throwing motion, and eventually they figure it out and copy you.
First off, This is some 1950’s BS that puts down women more then “throws like a girl” does. Are they too busy practicing their makeup and learning to cook?
Second, I grew up on softball fields with a bunch of kids. All of out parents played, fast pitch, slow pitch, men’s leagues, women’s leagues, Jack and Jill. We threw softballs, baseballs, Superballs, and dirt clods every night in the summer. Some of the girls were extremely gifted athletes and went on to play college soccer and volleyball, and yet they still threw like girls. Something with the coordination of the of the body and the timing of the arm. The elbow drive and the location of the ball in relation to the shoulder.
It doesn’t help that in most cases women are asked to throw a larger object like a softball with a smaller hand. If you can’t palm a ball tight you have to keep your hand behind it and push it forward. If you have to keep you hand behind the ball you can’t drive your elbow and create the whipping motion.
Mine too. She was a catcher back when she played in high school, and probably caught a lot of base-stealers at 2nd, if her current arm is any indication.
This is a good point, softball is really biased against girls in creating a traditional throwing motion. It’s nearly impossible to ‘boy throw’ an object significantly larger than your hands.
As an example, as a soccer goalie I have to throw the ball to others or downfield often, but it’s not practical to use a ‘boy throw’ motion. Goalies have a weird cupping swinging motion that I’d describe as a ‘horizontal girl throw’
To me, the biggest difference is that when throwing a ball properly you use your entire arm. When throwing improperly (like a girl), the arm motion is essentially limited to the elbow on down.
mmm
I’ve heard that explanation before. Namely, than most women & girls “throw like girls” in part because they don’t grow up throwing things nearly as much, so their shoulders aren’t stretched and conditioned the way a boy’s usually is.
Rather like squatting; children can squat properly, with their heels on the ground. But adults in Western societies usually can’t do it anymore because their Achilles tendon has shortened due to them using chairs and the like. It seems logical that by the same principle, if you have two people, one of whom throws things a lot and the other who seldom throws anything, the second person is going the be physiologically less able to throw things. Their muscles, tendons and possibly even bones won’t have grown the same way.
And since females are much less likely to spend time throwing things in our culture, that would mean that on the whole they’ll be less physically able to. A culturally derived physical difference, not an intrinsic one. If that hypothesis is true then in a culture where women threw a lot and men didn’t, then it would be men who “threw like girls”. By the same token that explains why there are women who “throw like boys”; they did throw a lot, and so their arms and shoulders developed to accommodate it.
Ever notice how a man carries a book v. how a woman carries a book?
I posit a significant difference in the elbow joint - it is instinctive for a man to straight-arm the book, just as it is instinctive for the woman to cradle it.
My guess is that the throwing technique is based on how the elbow extends.
LOL - I recall Paul Harvey recommending using the book-carrying observation as a way to tell the difference between a young man and a young woman back when long hair on young men was still a new thing. (I heard him mentioning this in the 1980s, by which point long hair on men should have been de rigeur, but whatever.)
But I don’t think it has anything to do with throwing. Cradling the books is like cradling a baby. Which actually makes me wonder … do girls/women cradle their books in their left arms typically? A while back I read an article on Cracked.com that cited research that showed that most mothers cradled their babies in their left arms, regardless of whether they were naturally right-handed or left-handed.
I suspect that “throwing like a girl” entails keeping the throwing arm too close to your body. It’s about extending the arm, not about physiological differences.
ETA: I’mma do some research. I work with a couple of young women, aged 20 and 21, not too far out of high school. I’ll hand them a stack of books and watch what they do.
That’s a matter of body proportions I expect, not instinct. Compared to men women have wider hips and slenderer shoulders, so if they walked just like men they’d be constantly whapping their own hips with their hands. Something that would get irritating real quick I expect. Therefore, as women develop adult proportions they unconsciously learn to walk with their arms slightly curled, while men tend to walk with their arms hanging straight.
I’ve never heard the books example before but it seems logical that carrying a book would exaggerate the effect. If an empty hand gets in the way of the hip then a hand carrying a good-sized object is going to get in the way even more so.
Really? I must be secretly a bloke then (my boobs would disagree) - I just tried this and I can’t see how anyone does it unless (a) they have 20 inch feet, or (b) you’re allowed to simply fall at it. Bending slowly, my center of gravity goes over my toes almost immediately.
No. Women balance their books on their hips because they have hips. I have very narrow hips (in my 20s, I could buy pants in the boys’ dept.) and I tend to carry my books straight arm, like a man does.
I also don’t throw like a girl, because I was taught how to throw by my father. I remember lesson 1. When I was 8, he told me I needed to start throwing overhand, because underhand was good enough when I was 6 and when I was 7, but now I was 8, and I needed to throw overhand. The next lesson was now to waste energy putting arc on the ball, but to throw straight. As soon as you learn that, it changes the way you throw. People who don’t know how to throw think that a lot of arc on the ball will make it go farther. Once you know that your energy can either go into the arc, or into the distance, you throw straight, and the ball goes way, way farther. You also learn to use your deltoids, lats, traps, pecs, abs and obliques. Before someone shows you good throwing technique, you mostly just use biceps, triceps, and front deltoids. Also “girl throw” involves wrist movement, while a good throw usually holds the wrist steady, almost stiff. (I won’t speak for all pitchers, some of whom do weird stuff.)
Actually, I think it has to do with women tending to have longer backs in proportion to their legs. I have a freakishly long back and short legs. I am 5’5. I know people who are 5’9, and I’m taller sitting down. My feet don’t touch the floor when I sit in a regular chair, though. I’m almost 50, not especially skinny, and can easily touch my toes with my fingers. Actually, I can grab my feet, or put my palms flat on the floor and hold that position. I know plenty of women who are also 5’5, but proportioned differently, who can’t do that, and I know no men who can. I try to find pants with a 28" inseam, and I still have to roll the cuffs up. Capri pants look like regular pants on me.
Again, that’s conditioning. In high school one of my nerd male friends would carry his books cradled. Most of the rest of us figured out there was a guy’s way and a girl’s way.
I grew up a bookworm and never played sports. In elementary school, I’d be chosen after the top third of the girls were selected.
My nerd friend would be down with the bottom of the girls.
I’m inclined to believe this is the answer. I’ve also seen people shoot a basketball by hopping while trying to push the ball forward with their arms. Or tennis, where people don’t properly use their lower body, and just sort of lean forward and swing with the arms. Or in boxing, where a person does arm punches, instead of using their legs to properly generate power. Proper technique is definitely learned, and both men and women are capable of doing so, but I suppose it depends on exposure.