Week 4: Inside-out Forehands

Here's the general plan for throwing practices:

• 2:00-2:29pm - Unstructured throwing
• 2:29-2:45pm - Dynamic warmup
• 2:45-3:30pm - Throwing drills
• 3:30-4:00pm - 3-on-3 games (keep-away, mini, box, double box, etc.)

Drills for this week are:

• Lines, open side backhands and forehands (10 min)
• Lines, force forehand, breakside cut for IO forehand, PASSIVE mark (10 min)
• 2-on-2 dumps - force sideline (10 min)
• 2-on-2 dumps - force middle (10 min)

Again, I strongly suggest you download the video (that means you need to register for a free Vimeo account). There are a lot of things you can see more clearly when you watch frame-by-frame.

Quick comments on IO Forehands:

1. You create space for the IO forehand with the threat of a big step-around backhand.  All that takes is a small shoulder fake.  Pivoting across and faking a backhand to set up the IO forehand is something you should never do.
2. Square up to your marker and step forward through the mark to throw (rather than stepping out to the side).  Both Gspence and I are take a big step forward.  I'm releasing the disc almost behind my marker.
3. Throw early.  Put a soft disc to space as the cutter is taking his first step out of his cut.  Both Gspence and I are releasing our throws a little bit too late.  That forces either a more difficult throw that needs to go farther across to the break side, or results in a throw behind the cutter.

Week 3 Throwing - Low-Release Backhands

Here's the general plan for throwing practices:

• 2:00-2:29pm - Unstructured throwing
• 2:29-2:45pm - Dynamic warmup
• 2:45-3:30pm - Throwing drills
• 3:30-4:00pm - 3-on-3 games (keep-away, mini, box, double box, etc.)

Drills for this week are:

• 3-man marking drill, open side low-release backhands, passive mark (10 min)
• Come-to cutting drill, open side low-release backhands, passive mark (10 min)
• Lines, open side low-release backhands to 45 degree in cut, passive mark (10 min)
• 2-on-2 dump drill (10 minutes)

How to Throw a Backhand:

Again, I strongly suggest you download the video (that means you need to register for a free Vimeo account). There are a lot of things you can see more clearly when you watch frame-by-frame.

I don't have a whole lot to add to the video, but here are a couple things I'd like to emphasize.

The Step

Step out and forward and plant hard on your heel.  Shin points towards your body, point your toe towards your target.

As you complete your throw and follow-through, your lower body should stay almost motionless.

Throwing with a Mark

You can create space to throw your backhand with the threat of a big pivot to the forehand side.  The farther away from neutral you go, the longer it's going to take you to get across to throw the backhand (i.e. I like what I'm doing more than what Gspence is doing).

Again, I suggest going through these frame-by-frame to get a better idea of what's going on.

Don't Read this if you're not a handler

What types of throwing exercises should I do for the scoobers and hammers, blades and such?

Scoobers:

Have a receiver facing you about 10-15 yards away. Throw blady OI scoobers aiming to hit the right shoulder and IO's aiming for the left shoulder. Once you can do that, go back to normal scoobers that end up pretty much flat (i.e. the print is facing straight down). I can think of three situations where a scoober is the right throw:

• Popping a scoober over the cup to someone who is standing still.
• In endzone offense, if you're forced backhand and you're looking for an iso at the front of the stack. It's a thrower-led pass to space on the break side. The throw is flat to slightly inside out.
• You're trapped on the sideline with a backhand force. Your dump cuts upline and has lots of space in front of him. If his defender goes hard inside to try to cut off the angle for the backhand, you can pop a scoober over the top that will sit in front of the dump cutter.

Hammers:

Do the same, aiming to hit the appropriate shoulder with a blady IO or an IO for distances of 15-40 yards. After that, throw to a cutter who is making horizontal cuts each way, angled cuts, or cuts directly away from you. For the away cuts, you want the throw to drop in over the appropriate shoulder and sit in front of the receiver. Also, check out the discussion here.

Blades:

By blades, I just mean an OI forehand that doesn't sit. Again, you want to start off aiming at the left shoulder of a stationary receiver. If you can control your blades, they are a great weapon for baby hucks of 20-40 yards. You can often place the disc where your receiver can get to it but his defender will never have a chance.

Summer Training

Given your current strength, track and plyos can maximize your speed and jumping in a few months. The only way to get faster from year to year is to get stronger. We'll probably start jumping workouts in December again. The stronger you can get by then, the more potential you will have to turn that strength into speed and explosiveness. If you get in the gym three days a week for the next six months, how much stronger can you get?

The template I recommend is Westside for Skinny Bastards. You can also download a pretty PDF of the same info here. You get to choose what exercises you want to use. You should rotate exercises every 3-4 weeks. I suggest you stick to pullup variations for your max effort upper body exercise. As always, do a dynamic warmup before you lift. You should try to arrange your lifting schedule so you play Ultimate on your upper body days.

If you want to do a different program, that's fine so long as it includes heavy lower body exercises. If your lifts are improving and you're using more weight from week to week, keep doing what you're doing. If you aren't getting stronger, you should try something else.

If you are not playing Ultimate this summer: I suggest doing the basic 4-day template and replacing the dynamic lower day with either a track or jumping workout.

If you are just playing pickup or playing on a team that's not going to Sectionals: Do the basic 4-day template and skip the dynamic lower day and lift three times per week.

If you are playing on a team that you will be playing with at Sectionals: For June and July, do the basic 4-day template and skip the dynamic lower day, lift three times per week, and do 1-2 conditioning workouts (barefoot!) per week. For August and September, do two full-body lifts, two track workouts, and 2-3 conditioning workouts per week.

Other stuff:

• Set goals for the summer.
• Throw. A lot.
• Pay attention to nutrition and recovery.

Feel free to email me if you have questions.

Throwing Advice

Most of the players who asked about what they should work on over the summer got a variation of this basic advice:

• Having big hucks isn't that important, but you should try to get to a point where you are consistently able to throw flat 40 yard forehands and backhands with a mark on you.
• Become great at breaking the mark. That means being able to throw low-release IO/flat/OI forehands/backhands with as much extension as possible.
• Get faster with a disc in your hands. The best way to do this is to practice your fakes and pivoting in front of a mirror.
• Work on your balance and footwork so you're really quick running give-and-go's to either side.
• Think about how you throw (grips, footwork, etc.). Decide whether your technique is basically good and you just need incremental improvements, or whether you need to start over from scratch.

If you'd like something more advanced, here's what I sent to the team in 2007:

Some of you seemed a bit confused by part of an email I sent Micah, so I thought I'd try to clarify what I was talking about. For those of you who sent me sarcastic emails or were making fun of me at dinner last night, I did not give Micah any formulae or equations for improving his throws. What I did do was implicitly define a couple equivalence relations.

What I wrote:

Work on varying the flight paths and amount of touch you put on your throws. Rather than just thinking about (1) using throw A to get the disc from point B to point C, think about (2) using throw A to get the disc from point B to point C with flight path D in time E.

The equivalence relations can be described as:

(1) Let A1, A2 be a type of throw (forehand, backhand, etc.)
Let B1, B2, C1,C2 be elements of R^3+ := {(x,y,z) in R^3 s.t. z>0}
Let D1, D2 be the (smooth) flight paths in R^3+

Then define the equivalence relation == by
for throws X=(A1,B1,C1,D1), Y=(A2,B2,C2,D2)
X==Y if
a. A1=A2
b. B1=B2
c. C1=C2
d. There exists a diffeomorphism from D1 to D2 where we consider D1, D2 as differentiable 1-manifolds embedded in R^3.

(2) Let A1, A2 be a type of throw (forehand, backhand, etc.)
Let B1, B2, C1,C2 be elements of R^3+ := {(x,y,z) in R^3 s.t. z>0}
Let D1, D2 be the (smooth) flight paths in R^3+
Let E1, E2 be the time the disc is in the air.

Then define the equivalence relation === by
for throws X=(A1,B1,C1,D1,E1), Y=(A2,B2,C2,D2,E2)
X===Y if
a. A1=A2
b. B1=B2
c. C1=C2
d. E1=E2
e. D1(t)=D2(t) for all t in [0,E1], where D1, D2 are parameterized by t so that:
D1(t)=x1(t)i+y1(t)j+z1(t)j, for t in [0,E1], D1(0)=B1, D1(E1)=C1
D2(t)=x2(t)i+y2(t)j+z2(t)j, for t in [0,E2], D2(0)=B1, D2(E2)=C2

Basically, to improve your throws, you need to start thinking in terms of ===, not ==. Hope that clears things up.

Nationals Travel

Coordinate flights/driving stuff here.

2nd Annual Podbox Invitational - 5/7

Captains meeting at 3:50.

Rules:

• Stall comes in at 5.
• Picks are legal.
• Rolling subs.
• Must clear the disc on every score or change of possession.
• Make it, take it.
• Spikes are mandatory after scores if you are winning by 3+.
• Sun's out=Guns out.

Prizes:

• 2nd Place - 100 burpees each

Seedings:

1. Jonas Brothers + Miley
2. New Kids on the Block
3. N.W.A
4. Take That
5. Menudo
6. The Jackson 5

Schedule:

Round	Time	Field 1	Field 2	Field 3
1	4:00-4:15	1 v 3	2 v 5	4 v 6
2	4:20-4:35	1 v 2	3 v 4	5 v 6
3	4:40-4:55	1 v 4	2 v 6	3 v 5
4	5:00-5:15	1 v 6	2 v 3	4 v 5
5	5:20-5:35	1 v 5	2 v 4	3 v 6
6	5:40-6:00	Final