CTG - Flick Outline

Alright, I’ve gotten a bunch of feedback, but I’m gonna need some more. My evil plan is to come up with an outline for each section, let you guys comment on it. Then write a draft and let you guys comment on it. After you’ve commented on the draft of each section, I’ll make changes and put together the CTG. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, here is a rough outline of how I’m thinking about writing the flick section of the CTG. What I want from you is – 1) do you agree with what I’m going to say? – is this the general consensus based on our discussions? 2) are there more topics to address in a particular section? If so what are they? 3) does the organization make sense? Should one topic be moved to a different section?

Just a warning: this is real rough – I didn’t necessarily write in complete sentences because this is just an outline. I’ll clean it up by the time I post a draft.

I. Beginners
A. Grip – encourage some version of the power grip – 2 fingers on the rim. Some folks don’t hate the split grip, but I think the majority opinion has been why waste time with it.
B. Stance – I’m thinking let’s go ahead and put them in the stance I talked about in part III of this series – in other words pivot foot pointing straight non pivot foot forward and open to somewhere between 45-70 degrees. I debated on whether or not this is too much to handle when you’re first learning, but I think it’s fine.
C. Isolation – At this point it’s primarily about generating wrist snap – Focus on this. Don’t let the player use her arm/body to throw. Make them use their wrist snap! One suggested way to do this is to have a new player hold her arm out fully extended and only allow her to throw with her wrist.
D. Drills – 1) throw with a partner. Anyone have another drill that’s good for super new players?
E. Desired Skills – 1) Player is consistently holding the disc correctly 2) Player is consistently standing correctly when throwing. 3) Player has good wrist snap. The player may be throwing the disc too hard or spraying it around, but she is consistently generating a good amount of spin.

II. Intermediate
A. Using Arm/Body – At this point your players are generating good wrist snap and you want to help them generate more power and consistency. Through the course of these discussions we’ve heard some different ways to teach using the arm. We’ve all got our favorite catch phrases – Martin tells players to “pull from the hip” as a way to teach players to get their arms back and away from their bodies” Tarr teaches “lead with your elbow” to encourage proper arm motion. I like both of these and will probably steal them for the guide. Any objections/better suggestions? The drills suggested for teaching this were the sitting and throwing drill and kneeling and throwing drill. In the sitting and throwing drill you have player sit Indian style and throw back and forth. This prevents them from generating power with their legs and forces them to use their arms. I’m not sure if we’ve talked about the kneeling and throwing drill, but it’s another one I stole from Baccarini. Basically you have your right handed player kneel on her left knee and put her right knee up with her right foot on the ground. Does this make sense? It’s like football players in a post game huddle – when they’re on one knee? I’ll have to come up with a better description prior to finishing the guide, but anyway, basically you have your player reach around their outstretched knee and throw. Baccarini likes it because it forces players to get their arm away from their body.

For encouraging use of the body/torso all I’ve got right now is Tim Halt’s mantra of “lead with the hip.” Anyone have anything else here? Drills?
B. Throwing curves – This is about the time when I like to start talking about the different ways to make the disc curve and when to use each curve. Prior to this point, I pretty much preach keeping the disc flat, but I don’t worry if the disc turns over a little bit in either direction. I think my favorite drill for teaching this is the drill the philosophically minded Dawgs call “Nietzsche’s.” Basically it is a two person lead pass throwing drill. Each player forms one point of an imaginary triangle. The player without the disc runs to third point of the triangle and the player with the disc throws a lead pass to the cutter. The former thrower then runs to the point of the triangle no longer occupied and receives a lead pass from the new thrower etc. You (the wise coach) have they players go through one set for each throw (IO Flick, OI Flick, IO Backhand, OI Backhand). The drill also works on fitness as it requires a lot of running.
C. Pivoting/Extension
I like to start talking about pivoting when I start talking about the different curves. The reason for this is that I like to talk about using the throws that have the same curve (e.g. IO flick/around backhand) in conjunction with each other via pivoting. Maybe this isn’t the right place to talk about extension? – it seems to go together with pivoting, but I’m not sure I have a great way to explain what I want players to do in terms of extension – basically I think you want to be able to get as out as possible while still maintaining balance and the ability to quickly pivot back to the complementary throw (Aside – I see a lot of college players who extend way too far – if you extend so far that you’re off balance and can only realistically threaten one throw what have you gained?). If anyone has a better place for this let me know. For drills here – Martin has the Tai Chi drill that I really like – basically he has the girls mimic his go through a series of pivots and fakes that works on maintaining balance while pivoting and getting extension. I’ll have a better explanation of this one by the time this makes it into the guide. The other one I like is just to have players pair up – give one player a disc and tell the other person to mark them. Basically you just say disc in and one player pivots and pretends to throw while the other person marks them. Any other drills for this?

D. Desired skills 1)Player can reliably uses arm/torso to assist in the throwing of forehands 2)Player can consistently throw flicks with all curves and knows what curve to use in what situation 3) Player pivots well and gets extension when throwing without losing balance.

III. Advanced

I’m not sure how I want to organize this. It might make sense to organize the guide such that there are 5 sections two sections for beginning/intermediate flicks 2 sections for beginning and intermediate backhands and then 1 advanced section that addresses both flick and backhand at the same time.

I’m also not sure what else I want to put in this section. I’ll definitely talk about breaking the mark. Maybe talk about how conditions effect throwing?- Throw like X when going upwind and Y when going downwind? Hucking?