In the 1990’s I posted the technique I use on the Primitive Skills Bulletin Board on the internet and a fellow sling/slinging enthusiast (Andy Woodward) in the UK came back with the following... which in several ways does a much superior job of describing the throwing technique:

“Went playing with slings yesterday. I tried out what I thought was the method George was describing, and it seems accurate but not with a lot of power, and when I had a stone in the pocket instead of a squash ball I was more worried about slamming myself in the back of the head, that's exactly what I started to do...”
“So I had to play and came up with something rather spectacular.
Now this may be what George really meant all along (it is and was) so I'll try to describe it as precisely as I can.”.
“The throw is basically identical to a normal baseball type pitch of a stone, but with a special set up to allow this.”
”The following description is for right-handers. Stand in a position with your feet about a yard apart, diagonally with respect to the target and with the left foot forward as you would for chucking a rock at it by hand The whole technique is just like chucking a rock, but after a special set-up.” 
”Hold your throwing hand (the right) about a foot diagonally right of and above your right eyebrow. Hold the sling pocket out in front of you towards the target so the strings come tight.”
”Now the odd bit. Launch the pocket gently towards your *left*, a bit upwards and backwards, so it keeps the strings tight and they circle slowly over your head round your left side, round your back from left to right and then forward to your right side. As you feel the weight come round behind your, whip the throwing arm forward in a baseball like pitch. The rock goes screaming off at Warp 57 on a flat trajectory and in the correct direction!!! The crucial thing is launching the stone off in the counterintuitive direction causing the strings to cross round behind you as your forearm is over your head.  The stone rotates round from the "wrong" side round your back and round to the "right" side.”
”This is all in aid of keeping the strings tight until they come into perfect position for a normal, natural, baseball-style pitch.”
”I checked it with ten shots and got no misfires with these. Checking other methods got a few. Even the best of the other methods generated about the same power, but much less accuracy. It's so easy to learn, powerful and accurate that even a newbie could be a serious danger to anything he was aiming at within 100yds range. I could hunt with this method and not starve before I got accurate enough. I'd not like to say the same about any other method I've tried.”
”Once you get this working, its so blindingly obvious with 20/20 hindsight!. It also bears no relation at all to any of the throws I've seen described in Korfmann, Hollywood, or BBC news shots of Palestinians firing rocks at Israelis, or any other source I've ever seen.”
”I guess the way to learn it is to simply throw a rock a few times, "listening" to the feel of the movement. Then do the same gently with a heavy rock in the sling so as to make the feeling the weight moving round into firing position easy; then when that feels right, put in an inch diameter pebble and daisy-cut a forest or two...”

Again, is this the "tennis" technique? (Geo.)

Dravonk wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2007 at 9:45am:


I agree. It seems that David Taylor's video must be pretty close. George, how about having a look at that video and telling us if that is close to what you mean?

I'm also continually puzzled about mixing tennis (serve presumably) and baseball. Can someone who plays or knows both sports better than me tell me if a baseball pitch actually has the same arm and body action as a tennis serve?

Oops... left off the other part of the response...  I'll get to town today and have a look at the Taylor.  Also the GIF I mentioned is in my first posting where I asked specifically about the figue 8.

With 1 3/4 turns, it sounds like you are describing a sidearm-adapted variant. The way I throw the "fig-8", I can set up for a perfectly vertical release, with the final snap being up-and-over. Depending on where and how you release the initial step, you can bias the natural release path a little either way. Starting to the left sounds a bit ackward, sitting here at the keyboard, but so did the description of the fig-8 I can see how this could set you up for a powerful step-through "baseball" throw, with the arc at maybe 30 degrees of vertical? I'll have to give it a try.

Mark Weaver's description and videos in the gallery is a very good one as well if you haven't had a chance to see it yet: http://www.slinging.org/34.html

On the other hand, it isn't clear from the description you posted where the "1" in 1 3/4 comes from. The inital post describes setting up on forward, tossing left and then pitching forward onece the sling comes around. Isn't that a "U" or 3/4 of  a turn? What DavidT uses to whack the bucket.

The fig-8 (and what I'm picturing as your throw) has a definite rythm. One, two-and-THREE. The initial drop is gentle, I start accelerating to bring the sling up and over the top, and then the final effort kicks in as the sling clears the bottom of the second loop. Like anything with rythm, it's sometimes tough for beginers, but I can use a running launch quite easily with this throw. Putting your whole body into it buys you a fair amount of extra power.

Matthias

I thought we might get to that. Just be careful not to throw in an extra rotation on top of that or we'll have to call it a heli**ter...   JK, of course - lots of potential in that throw. There are certainly more than 3 main styles floating around here though - we'll have to see if we can't find Jurek's multiple-windup-turn-and-a-half masterpiece, it seems like even my original 3/4 turn sidearm is somewhat uncommon.

The fig-8 is worth a second look as well. From the sounds of it it might suit your aesthetic. Have you told us how long of a sling you are using?

Matthias

Hey, I missed this thread somehow!  Haven't been on much for a couple of days.

I read the description very carefully, and what this sounds like to me is what

Ralph Craig

described.  He was at an atlatl gathering, and the folks running the show also demonstrated this slinging technique.  As far as I know, we have no videos of someone performing that style.  But that style is definitely NOT a figure-8.  The sling swings in a horizontal plane just over your head, and you perform a motion like throwing a ball, just when the sling is directly behind your head.

The tennis serve (also known as figure-8) technique, on the other hand, is well illustrated by Johnny Shumate's figures prepared from Nwmanitou's video:

Great article by Ralph Craig... yup he is another testator of the technique.  I have found any more rotations than the two I use are superfulous and for me, at least, confusing to the rythym of making everything happen when it's supposed to...

yep having seen the gif I can see how it would be better than a straight overhand. But nowhere near as good for distance as my sidearm :-) Not only can I get a lot more power into that from my waist and legs and general body rotation but if you get it right you can actually throw with an upward motion giving an extra lift without losing direction or making too steep an arc.

But I'll give the figure 8 a go this evening and see what happens. I was trying to keep the sling entirely on my right side, without passing behind my head - and still make it do a figure of 8.
Managed it, but it was pretty rubbish and extremely awkward.