I found this tutorial video and now have a question.

In the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PyN2MnBOzI

around the 2 minute mark, the elbow is completely folded and the hand almost touches the back of the neck. Is this the goal?  Seems like it would add power as the elbow is unfolded??

I tried it but my hand gets nowhere near my neck. I am more like pan slings videos…which also does not have the hand near the neck.  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/USPRxl_NZg4

Am I supposed to bend my elbow more?

"Supposed to"?  No.  It's going to vary depending on the slinger.  There will be physical factors as well as adjustments that might be needed for different slings.  If what you're doing is working, go with it.  You can try to make slight adjustments and see what the results are.  You might even make adjustments unconsciously as you become more familiar with the form.

Also, notice that Brian leans back when he brings his arm in to get the sling to clear his back. His hand also doesn't actually get that close to his neck when he does the full motion. That tip was just for demonstration purposes. I'll echo what Joe said. Do what feels natural. If it feels bad/uncomfortable, it is. Try different positions until you find something that is comfortable. Stick with that for a while and report back.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I’ll keep doing what is working.

The throws are generally coming out on target and super fast. Self video showed my elbow bending less than the tutorial video. Just needed confirmation I wasn’t missing out on extra velocity bending elbow more.

Threw for 2 hours this morning. Feel good about it, think I have it figured out mostly.  Need to be more consistent, but at one point put 6 in a row in a 2 foot square target at 12 yards. Of course the next throw went straight into the ground about a foot in front of me!

The biggest thing that helped was understanding stepping front foot back like pitching from the stretch and then delaying striding front foot forward until AFTER my throwing arm came up to throw. Just opposite of pitching where front foot leads and arm follows.  Once I figured that out, I was in business.

Actually been looking at videos of pitching from the stretch, trying to figure out anyway to change the current front foot small stride into an actual leg lift/kick as part of the figure 8 throw.

Think will have to lift leg after arm moves back out of the way, and figure out if I can balance with arm moving while lifting front leg. And of course get the timing of all this to work together.  In theory should work…already taking a small front stride so just need to super exaggerate that small front step into something way, way bigger.

In my head I see it working…I also see me falling down after getting all tangled up in the sling cords too.  :(

I'm actually pretty excited to have you on board, my friend.  I've long wondered what a trained pitcher could do with a sling if they gave it a significant effort. 6 in a row is great.

I've studied pitching mechanics quite a bit and tried to apply a lot of the concepts to slinging. Many of them translate, but not all of them. Timing is definitely different. A tip I give people is that the sling cords should be pointing toward your target at the moment your foot strikes the ground for a byzantine style throw.

One major difference that I noticed between baseball and slinging is that starting  acceleration of the sling earlier in the throw seems to translate to higher speeds whereas in pitching, it almost seems like storing energy in the springy tissues for as long as possible and then releasing it all at once results in the highest velocity.  I'm sure there is a point where the two meet that would result in the best of both worlds, I just don't know where that point is.

If you have a chance, look up videos of different slingers to compare your form to theirs.  If you're interested in velocity, Archaic Arms, Primal Slings, Neandrthal, Kinetic Slinger and myself are some good examples. (all YouTube names)

Never thought about storing energy somewhere in the body to throw a baseball.

My training is power comes from ground up. Wind up, high leg kick, plant front foot hard on the ground, unwind, and throw. You can feel power come up through leg, then up as hips unwind, then up as shoulders unwind, finally all goes into your arm as it unwinds.

Naturally there is no power in the ground. It is all coming from me. But never explained it as energy storage.

I can see what you are saying. If we call it energy storage we can call it a spring. Based on the windup/twisting motion the spring has to be a torsion spring. Power then is dependent on how much pre-twist we add to our body prior to throwing (the windup) AND how much we can unwind that pre-twist prior to letting go of the ball or sling (efficient mechanics).

Think I have run into this issue of efficiently unwinding to throw. I read spinning the sling faster does not give you more power. But then I found if I spin it too slow could not throw it fast. Felt like it was eating power dragging a slow spinning sling. Might just be a perception thing but I feel more efficient spinning not too fast but faster to match the throw.  That is, spin fast to throw hard, spin slow to throw easy.

BTW. Pitched through high school and played shortstop too, torn up shoulder, switched to fast-pitch softball for about a decade.  I think I was at my ceiling…might have made a community college team with luck but was not going much farther than high school level. 

I'm mostly referring to the stretch during external rotation of the arm. The hand and ball will basically stay still as the whole body moves forward and the arm/hand stays back, builds a bunch of tension, then all releases at once ( throwing by hand) . At least that is how I interpret the movements. (I am NOT a trained pitcher so maybe it feels/is different than that)
The kinetic chain certainly is there in both disciplines, but the precise movements are a bit different between slinging and throwing.

As far as the spin goes. It is likely more of a timing issue than anything else. Having a faster spin can certainly help. It mostly helps with getting into and out of certain positions more easily. Since you have to keep tension in the sling it's harder to get into certain positions from others given everything has to keep moving (and you can only change direction of movement of the sling through tension).

Any level of pitching training would be good in my opinion regardless of level. I'm not sure how many people on this forum have that background. Not many that I know of.

I think your tension is my twisting, but we are saying the same thing.

Basically do a bunch of stuff to get energy moving forward and arm moves last so arm has to whip forward to catch up.

A sling is a longer arm with one more pivot joint at your hand. A sling moves forward even later than your arm and adds another, second whip action.

Baseball pitch with arm whipping. Arm moves last so arm trying to catch up to rest of forward movement (my leg kick, hip twist, shoulder twist movements above description)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCrDfKttRaJ/



Your slo mo video shows basically the same body twisting with the addition the sling whips forward after the arm whips forward

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwmoPsJP7mk

To me, throwing from a sling is more like hitting a whip. The wave gains strength and a shot is fired at the end. This can be felt well on slings that repeat the geometry of Balearic slings. In which the weave smoothly decreases from the trap to the cracker. I can't get this effect on thin slings, and the accuracy with thin slings is significantly lower. But here you have to choose, either more precisely or more strongly.

I completely agree with Serg, a clean throw from a well balanced sling feels like i am cracking a whip down and to the right of my target for a right handed sidearm ish throw.
Thin/less tapered/single strand slings definitely open differently requiring slightly different momentum path and release. Generally much harder to get that snap but it can be done especially with projectiles on the heavier side. Wrist angle during windup and at the point of release plays a huge factor for both styles of sling.
Obviously every sling is different, every throw is different, every person, every rock etc. Theres very few concrete things but these are tendencies ive noticed

I'm going to try this technique.  I've been working on the figure 8 throw since April 2025.  Only recently, after ChatGPT began coaching me, am I actually getting control of my trajectory.

Xy747:

For figure 8, I found two things that helped my accuracy.

1.  Step directly towards the target. The throw will tend to go in the direction the front foot steps.

2. “Bring your face to the target”.  What this means is when you throw, your head should be facing directly at the target. Head movement can pull your throw off target so you want to make sure your face is pointed at, or moving towards, the target the moment you throw. Bit hard to explain in words but if you look at this video you see the moment the baseball is released, the pitcher’s face is directly pointed at home plate. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RrleF2lthqI

Hey Bandit!

Doesn’t look like I have much to add after what John and Joe said, glad you’re sticking with a mechanic that works for you instead of trying to replicate my video exactly! 

Love hearing your insights as a trained pitcher, now you have me wanting to try working a leg lift/kick into the footwork of the figure-8 throw. 

Brian G.

The man, the myth, the legend reappears! Glad to see you checking in! I still remember your 250m throw with a 24" sling!

Hey John!

Good to see you! It has been a long time, glad there are so many of the old crew still active here.

That was a good throw! I haven't hit anything like that distance in a while, I tend to hover in the 180m to 200m range, but my sling still rides in my pocket everywhere I go, just waiting for an opportunity to send a few rocks down range (normally into one of the lakes or rivers near me).

Brian G.

bandit111964 wrote on May 13^th, 2026 at 9:00pm:

Xy747: For figure 8, I found two things that helped my accuracy. 1.  Step directly towards the target. The throw will tend to go in the direction the front foot steps. 2. “Bring your face to the target”.  What this means is when you throw, your head should be facing directly at the target. Head movement can pull your throw off target so you want to make sure your face is pointed at, or moving towards, the target the moment you throw. Bit hard to explain in words but if you look at this video you see the moment the baseball is released, the pitcher’s face is directly pointed at home plate. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RrleF2lthqI

I just saw this now, after trying the bent-arm modification.  I ended up doing both of your recommendations today while playing with the technique.  I even had to do more of a straight punch action with my slinging arm to flatten the trajectory at a closer target. It took me a while, but I did get some successes today. The real test is whether I can repeat this tomorrow!

Xy747: post a video. Love to see what I can learn from how you do the throw.

Figure 8 is still the style I am most inconsistent with.

bandit111964 wrote on May 15^th, 2026 at 8:44pm:

Xy747: post a video. Love to see what I can learn from how you do the throw. Figure 8 is still the style I am most inconsistent with.

I don’t quite have it down yet. But if my wife walks with me, I’ll have her take a vid.

The good news is I tried again to and eventually got my throws consistent at close range.  Well, consistent in the sense that i’m throwing close at my target even if I’m not hitting it.   Before when I miss, the target wouldn’t even know I was aiming at it.

bandit111964 wrote on May 5^th, 2026 at 5:03pm:

I found this tutorial video and now have a question. In the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PyN2MnBOzI around the 2 minute mark, the elbow is completely folded and the hand almost touches the back of the neck. Is this the goal?  Seems like it would add power as the elbow is unfolded?? I tried it but my hand gets nowhere near my neck. I am more like pan slings videos…which also does not have the hand near the neck.  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/USPRxl_NZg4 Am I supposed to bend my elbow more?

I believe the answer is yes for the bent elbow.    I bring my release hand as close to my ear as I can, and make the back swing strong enough so I can feel the tension of sling in line with my forearm pulling at my elbow.  By keeping the sling and forearm in line, I initiate the release by leading with my shoulder, then elbow, and punching my release hand straight toward my target  for the release.  All the while I am shifting my weight to my lead foot and driving my head towards the target as I release the sling.

Keeping it all slow enough so that it feels smooth (don't loose tension in the sling) was also a key ingredient for me. I kept rushing the throw. Honestly Fig8 took me months of on and off testing to get it to feel natural.  Changing the swing path of the sling on release to more of a diagonal rather than straight overhead (arm slot) also helped.

IronGoober wrote on May 16^th, 2026 at 11:39am:

Keeping it all slow enough so that it feels smooth (don't loose tension in the sling) was also a key ingredient for me. I kept rushing the throw. Honestly Fig8 took me months of on and off testing to get it to feel natural.  Changing the swing path of the sling on release to more of a diagonal rather than straight overhead (arm slot) also helped.

You are so right!

I didn’t even realize I was rushing my shots until I got so frustrated that I stopped.  Then I decided to throw at a farther target just to vent off steam.  For some reason, throwing at the farther target slowed me down enough to execute a very nice throw.  I tried again at my main target with slower execution, and my throws felt satisfying once again.  I still missed, but within two feet.   The shots were straight and level. 

Yep, rushing my throw is my problem…specifically, “short arming” the throw by reducing the fully back arm position to a quicker “short cut” motion to get the hand more straight to the throwing position. Which of course loses the tension in the sling when you bring your hand straight up instead of swing it fully back.

The other thing that is helping me is to stand 90 degrees from the target (pitch from the stretch)  AND throwing more vertical,”over the top”. 

I kind of want to throw 3/4 motion or diagonally as Irongoober says but my sling tends to hit my back because my windup is also diagonal too. I understand I need to separate windup in the vertical plane and then throw 3/4 or diagonal plane but knowing one thing and doing another is where I am at right now.

I am making progress on the Figure 8 but right now the helicopter is by far my goto, best throw.

I should add standing at 90 degrees to the target helps get me out of the path of the sling as it goes behind my back.

I keep wanting to face the target more and the front of my front shoulder facing the target twists my body into the swing path of the sling as it goes behind me.

In other words been trying to baseball pitch from full windup when I need to pitch only from the stretch.

IronGoober wrote on May 16^th, 2026 at 11:39am:

Changing the swing path of the sling on release to more of a diagonal rather than straight overhead (arm slot) also helped.

Definitely agree with this. Becoming more relaxed and less bound to the strict idea of a figure eight with clean 90°angles if that makes any sense.