In kettlebell exercises, like in boxing, there are no wrists. That means you never allow your wrist to stray away from neutral because it can cause a huge power leak when you punch. And if the wrists are hyper-extended, well they are not as well connected to your body plus it hurts.

Boxing wrap
Photo by Payam Tahery / Unsplash

In Ultimate, the throw is all about the wrist. My throws were the bane of my game - it still is, but it is a lot better now. The constant advice of "more snap" made sense but I didn't really get it. I thought I was but I didn't.

For a couple of years, I had a Saturday badminton game going that was good fun and competitive. I played a lot of badminton as a kid, near daily for many years recreationally. While it was still 20+ years since the last time I played regularly, I made it to a decent standard with a bit of regularity. Badminton is a lot of wristwork. You try to over-hit it, and well, you feel it in the shoulder and elbow and places. You use the wrist, and it feels better and lands better.

And finally, I was able to implement more snap in Ultimate.

That's my forehand face. Thanks Cow, for the photo.

Badminton helped me let my wrists loose which I never did probably because of my kettlebell training. While a software problem and I could've tried other things, or just had terrible throws - point is, once the brain felt the wrist in badminton, it was able to transfer it over.

Seems obvious that doing new things and picking up hobbies, at least to a decent level for a decent bit of time, has good social and physiological and mental effects. Making the time is the hard part.