More from JHern on DGR that may be helpful.
I've been trying to find an image or something that would illustrate this, but no luck. Here is a fictional story to illustrate what I had in mind: Imagine somebody badly broke their shoulder joint somehow, on their throwing arm. To heal it properly, the doctor decided to immobilize the shoulder by making a plaster cast which keeps the elbow held out to the side. The plaster cast covers the entire chest and shoulders front and back (kind of like the shoulder pad rig worn by football players, but plaster), and the cast also extends down the upper arm all the way to the elbow. The person is then forced to walk around with their elbow pointed out sideways. They can't move their elbow up, down, forward, backwards, or anywhere at all. It is held firm by the one-piece cast that is rigidly attached to their upper torso. Their lower arm and hand hangs down from the elbow, and is free to move about the elbow joint.
OK, got that picture? Now, here is my claim: this person could throw a disc farther than 300' fairly easily. And here's why: all they have to do is swivel their hips back, and with power starting from the ground up through firmly planted legs, they rotate their hips/torso/shoulders back open quickly, and their lower arm will whip around and zoom forward very fast. Put a disc in their hand and have them release it when the arm is near full extension, and that disc will be flying very quickly. It will be moving much more quickly than they could have achieved by keeping their body fixed and trying to whip their arm forward with their triceps strength alone. This is the whip.
BUT DON'T TRY THIS CAST AT HOME! Unfortunately, this person will only get to throw the disc like this once, because they'll break their elbow joint backwards since the cast is fixed in place and the arm can't follow through. The upper arm's momentum will carry through and the biceps will be unable to arrest the motion. This would be extremely painful.
What you want to do is pretend as if you had this cast on, but that the cast suddenly disappeared just after the disc leaves your hand, and then your arm can relax and follow through so that you don't, in fact, break your elbow backwards. But just a split second before the disc rips out, you should still try to stop your arm from swinging open with all your might as if it would break if you failed to stop it. Grip and clamp down as hard as you possibly can on the disc with all your might during this moment, and feel the disc fling off your fingers with a rapid spin.
