why do girls throw like...girls?

[CookingWithGas]

I coached boys’ T-ball and you do have to teach them how to throw.

[Mijin]

@Sophistry_and_Illusion

Incidentally, I had an experience similar to carrps. I used to teach at the American University of Beirut. Once an Arab-American kid from New York brought a football to throw around on the lawn. He threw a beautiful spiral, but the Arab boys who had grown up playing soccer threw like girls. It was terrible to watch.

Is this fair though?
As a Brit I have zero experience of throwing an (American) football, and I’m sure as hell I wouldn’t be able to make it do the fancy barrel-roll…thing.
But in general I can throw projectiles powerfully and accurately.

I’m fine with accepting the label of “throws like a girl” but ISTM it loses all meaning if we’re saying the only way to avoid such a label is to be able to throw any object in the most efficient way.

[Mister_Rik]

@Sophistry_and_Illusion

We have this thread every few years. The short answer: boys generally spend their childhood throwing things; girls generally don’t. The Atlantic had a great article on this several years ago: Throwing Like a Girl. You don’t realize how fantastically complicated the act of throwing is–and therefore how much practice it takes to get good at it:

I found this slow-motion capture of a baseball pitching motion. Damn, that is a lot more complex than it looks at normal speed. And watching what his arm does after he releases the ball makes me wonder how pitchers’ arms don’t all just snap off at the elbow.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

@Mijin

Is this fair though?
As a Brit I have zero experience of throwing an (American) football, and I’m sure as hell I wouldn’t be able to make it do the fancy barrel-roll…thing.
But in general I can throw projectiles powerfully and accurately.

I’m fine with accepting the label of “throws like a girl” but ISTM it loses all meaning if we’re saying the only way to avoid such a label is to be able to throw any object in the most efficient way.

It wasn’t just that they couldn’t throw a spiral. (Hell, I’m an American, grew up playing a fair amount of playground football, and I never mastered a decent spiral throw.) It was that the whole mechanism of the throw was awkward and off. Like someone throwing with their non-dominant arm. It matters what you spent your youth doing.

[RickJay]

@Mister_Rik

I found this slow-motion capture of a baseball pitching motion. Damn, that is a lot more complex than it looks at normal speed. And watching what his arm does after he releases the ball makes me wonder how pitchers’ arms don’t all just snap off at the elbow.

Well, they sort of do. This is why pitchers get Tommy John Surgery so often.