comment: >
  
  Do you follow sports? They attract a sizable number of participants.
context: This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.
  Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
  (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)
  Rule-breaking posts may result in bans. >
  
  Well, it's always useful to be able to throw a pizza with accuracy and force - that way you don't have to worry about the toppings falling off! >
  
  Especially on the roof of a house >
  
  Because you're mad at your wife >
  
  So you start cooking on your own >
  
  Jesse... >
  
  If you can throw, try throwing with your non dominant hand to understand this. >
  
  When I was in high school we had an exchange student from the Netherlands who was a really good athlete. Great at soccer, fast runner, nimble and just generally athletic. We were tossing a football though and his attempts to throw the thing were hilarious. He didn’t grow up throwing it like the rest of us and learning it for the first time as a teenager was incredibly difficult. Some skills have to be learned early in life. >
  
  I bet he out fucked and outsmoked all of you though like "I'll spiral your girl on zis dick" While blowing out weed smoke in the image of him fuckin your bitch. I'm drunk but that'd be hilarious lol >
  
  How do you like das dick? zuig het >
  
  Das good yahhhh? I have no idea how dutch ppl sound so I went German >
  
  Just like when I try to have a Scottish accent, it turns Jamaican half way through…damn me for sucking at accents even in text.,.either way, top of the morning to ya..will I try this again..Nine >
  
  Top of the mornin to you too laddie is gettin real eyrie out here >
  
  Jamaican me wanna banger mash..across the pond lol >
  
  I'd keep doing this but my new drug dealer that's a chick wants to come over even though I just bought drugs so I'm bout to bang her gash yelling out bumbaclot >
  
  Just make her scream bloodclat and we’re even 🤟🏾 kill it bro >
  
  Pfff, whatever, I could totally throw a football over them mountains🏈 >
  
  No doubt in my mind. >
  
  Is OP willing to test this hypothesis by balancing on a pole whilwe throw baseballs at them? Purely in the interest of science. >
  
  I can totally bean him in the nads. Just saying. >
  
  Fun fact, this was one of the first human skills, we were throwing rocks way before fire, way before walking >
  
  It’s probably one of the major reasons we got here. We’re weaklings. No claws, no fangs, slow runners, how did we manage to avoid being eaten by tigers? It’s easy, if you can pose a credible threat from twenty yards away then the tiger can’t get into striking distance. You can hit him long before he can hit you. And you have friends who also have rocks. And later on you might even have dogs who let everyone know the tiger was there long before it was a problem. The tiger cannot neutralize all those threats. He could eat you but he would definitely take some damage on his way in, and there are easier targets. 
  Being able to injure him from a distance changes the game completely. Humans ain’t tasty enough to be worth all that noise. Thanks to this, here we are. >
  
  Yup, that and our ability to distance run/hunt that we developed made us pretty badass >
  
  I heard a theory the other day that the reason dogs were the first domesticated animals is because of the similarities in hunting style, which is basically the distance running. >
  
  No, many people can't throw things with any accuracy because they've never tried to do it. Most can learn to throw things with decent accuracy and adequate force if they do a few practice throws and actually try. Throwing things with force and accuracy has never been useful for most people because most people aren't and weren't javelin throwing warriors or hunters. >
  
  This is just wrong. Atlatl's have been in use for quite literally 100s of thousands of years which makes up 99% of human history. >
  
  I think you mean 20 thousand. >
  
  They change that number so often now >
  
  No. It's always been a similar estimate. >
  
  Not if you're losing the argument they weren't >
  
  Playing baseball as a kid and throwing rocks in the creek really helped me because I’m still good at it decades later. >
  
  I've played so much base ball that I think I'd be more effective with grenades than guns >
  
  Jimminy, The granade launcher >
  
  Humans are naturally extremely good at throwing things with force and accuracy..
  Sure practice makes perfect, and if you compare an untrained person with a trained one there can be a pretty massive difference, but still, a completely untrained person is way better than one might think, and it will be super quick at learning it.. it’s just in our DNA, it didn’t go away just cause it’s not useful for most people >
  
  Yes, it is in the DNA. But our ancestors would perhaps be amused by how many of us "throw like a girl".
  My wife throws like that, actually :) >
  
  Ever heard of sports? Quite a few people participate in them. >
  
  Like but like 80% of people don’t. >
  
  There is no way this is true. >
  
  20% is 1 in 5, i.e 1 in 5 people participate in sports. That sounds about right to me if I were to make a guess as to how many are into sports. 1 in 5 is a minority but still quite common when you think about it. >
  
  ~72% of children participate in sports each year.
  Source >
  
  I’m talking about adults, not children. >
  
  So you think the adults that can throw learned it in college, or something? >
  
  Intro to Throwing
  Moderate Throwing
  Advanced Throwing >
  
  Throwing 701: History of Spears >
  
  As a juggler and trick shot hobbyist. I have some issues with this.
  Cuz while i know it is probably mostly true, the majority of my friends and acquaintences can throw things with force and accuracy so i have a bias telling me its not true. >
  
  As someone who plays disc golf I can tell you that this is true only when I play a sanctioned round. >
  
  There are countless skills that are incredibly useful these days that people can't do simply because they are lazy >
  
  Not lazy, but it's just not worth it most of the time.
  That's efficiency >
  
  Efficiency is formed from the desire to be as lazy as possible whilst getting the most amount of work done possible. >
  
  Correct. It's not pure laziness. >
  
  I can throw with force OR accuracy but not both because of Heisenberg >
  
  So back in the days of side show games & fairs, carnivals with throw games way more prevalent. Back when Dads played ball in the yard with junior after school more often - you’re saying our world was filled better accuracy throwers?! 
  Yeah makes sense to me actually lol >
  
  I feel like it’s kind of an innate sense to be able to throw accurately. I never really played any organized sports where I had to throw (just soccer) but I can throw pretty accurately and hard. I’m actually amazed sometimes at how accurate humans are when throwing >
  
  Yeah me too, especially when it's a throw while on the move, tracking a moving target. The computing power to calculate all the moving parts in play must be insane, but you kinda know almost exactly what's required just by feeling the weight of the ball etc. It's honestly crazy but you just take it for granted. >
  
  Yeah it’s wild. The shit my brain does in the background is insane and I don’t even realize it because I just throw and it goes where I want it to >
  
  I get tickets at arcades now with throws.  Was surprised that my wimpy 30mph fastball was giving me tons of tickets. >
  
  Being able to throw accurately and with force is a matter of personal responsibility if your dad didn't teach you Be willing to bet that those who can are more successful in dating etc. .. >
  
  It’s not a hard skill to maintain, just a bit of strength and hand eye coordination >
  
  When I was in school in Russia, we had a throwing "normative" (kind of like a standard for a type of physical test) that was done with a dummy grenade. The distance you needed to throw it for the minimally acceptable grade was 25 meters, which coincides with the wounding radius of a standard offensive Soviet RGD-5 fragmentation grenade.
  We also had a Civil Defense class, where we would learn some military basics, e.g. disassembling and assembling an AK, learning the types of armaments, etc. Re: grenades - not sure if the same classification is done in the West, but they would teach us there are offensive and defensive grenades, the latter type having a significantly bigger blast radius. Our teacher would stress that the latter one is called "defensive" for a reason and should only be thrown out of a trench or other type of full cover.
  While all of the above probably sounds like a fun class for a teenage boy, you can probably judge its "effectiveness" based on how the war in Ukraine is going. >
  
  Except for, ya know, in like almost every sport. Or if you're a juggler. Or have a job that involves tossing things onto a shelf or into a bin. Or like a million other things.
  But yes, we probably can't take down a mastodon with a spear anymore if that's what you were thinking. >
  
  
  Or if you're a juggler
  
  Tries to come up with something that's not rarely useful.
  Lands on juggler.
  Juggler. >
  
  Being able to throw accurately is useful if you are a juggler. Whether or not being a juggler is "useful" is a seperate unrelated question >
  
  I could knock a 3 year old out at 50 yards with a baseball no problem. Not useful my ass >
  
  Never threw rocks as kids? Not at anything but just to throw them? >
  
  Boomer comment:  Back in my day we played baseball instead of the wussy video games they play these days. /s >
  
  I grew up in spear-weed country, so, I learned to throw things hard and with accuracy at an early age, and I've kept up with it. >
  
  Those that can throw with force and accuracy are prized and idealized as sports heroes and rewarded handsomely. >
  
  I can throw with force just not accuracy. Or much force for that matter. >
  
  What about all those people that crumble up paper and say “Kobe!”? Does that not count either? >
  
  It can be learned by almost anyone though, and with enough force to kill a decently sized animal. >
  
  Our techniques for throwing today are much better than back then. After a week of practice you’ll be throwing better than most ancient people. >
  
  Bullshit. "Rookie" pro football players have been training their whole life to hit moving targets and they'll still improve.
  There is no way an average person can train for a week and beat someone throwing on the run who has been practicing it their entire life. You can't even develop the muscle needed to do it because its all novel flexor strength. There's a good chance you'll get worse at it from overtraining the muscle and losing mobility at the end.
  And it'll look even worse if you're doing it with an atlatl >
  
  Uhh nothing about your comment has to do with my comment lol. 
  I never said someone who just started would be better then someone trining their whole life I have no idea where you came up with that.
  My point is in reference to the post that we as a society don’t throw as much compare to say Hunter/gatherers. My point was that our understanding of technique has come a long way and someone who put in a weeks worth of effort today with modern techniques could probably put throw a first man. >
  
  A "first man" would have been training their entire life to throw a javelin, and regardless of technique, you would not be able to develop the shoulder flexor strength to outhrow a paleolithic 15 year old in one week.
  Also, the technique would be shit for hitting a moving target while on the run. >
  
  I mean when you look at javelin throwing in the Olympics from when the sport began to now the techniques have gotten far more efficient.
  If someone today learned todays techniques they would surpass someone from long ago whose been doing it longer based on initial technique alone. Their muscles would be used at a far more optimal position.
  A 60 year old dude whose been golfing their entire life with a bad technique isn’t going to be better than someone who just started with a good technique just because he’s been doing it longer. >
  
  No, their muscles would be inflamed if not straight up injured from over training. There is no way they'd be anywhere near an optimal position.
  Its not powerlifting, flexibility is at least as important as strength. Your shoulder and back anatomy are so complex that you need to be in good condition to throw adequately, let alone optimally. If you lose even a degree of mobility on how far back you can pull your elbow behind your back and your hand behind your ear from when you started, you will not be able to throw as effectively. >
  
  I can do both of these things very easily, just never both at the same time. >
  
  It’s useful when you have all brothers and live where there’s lots of snow during long winters. >
  
  I found myself painfully embarrassed at the axe throwing place. I thought the targets were sooo close until I actually started throwing. Let's just say: that target remained wholly unscathed by my mighty axe. >
  
  This is why when my buddies and I play darts or go ax throwing we do "murder throws" no point in getting accurate if you can't do it with the force required to be effective irl. >
  
  I get the thought, but if you've ever participated in Shot put, you'll quickly improve technique. Its one of those skills where your first throw will be terrible but youll see quick improvements after repeated attempts. >
  
  Anyone who knows how to throw far knows that whiplash feeling you get in your arm after >
  
  I was watching the Cellar last night, movie on Prime, shit movie on Prime. In one scene the son is doing a Steve McQueen against the cellar door with a ball, but repeatedly throwing the ball like he'd never, ever held or thrown a ball in his entire life. It was odd.