Monday, January 11, 2010

Some Nonstandard Drills

Is your team in a rut? Doing the same drills every single practice? Mix it up and try some of these. Let me know how it goes.

Breakmark with Intentional Fouls

Same as regular 3-person breakmark, but from stalls 1-5, the marker is allowed to foul in any way except for bear-hugging. From stalls 5-10 there is no fouling allowed. 2 points for completing a throw before 5 and subtract a point from the marker, 1 point for any D, subtract a point from the thrower for getting blocked or stalled. Most points wins. Teaches throwers to pivot through chest fouls and throw through arm fouls. This drill is not about teaching how to foul but how to deal with them. Don't mislead yourself, even if you are a saint, you will still get fouled at the elite level.

2 Person Quick Toss

2 people stand 5 yards apart and toss the disc to each other. The kicker is that you must catch the disc with only one hand and must throw with the same grip you caught it with. This will quickly show the value of throwing with the goal of accommodating your teammates' quick releases and the value of catching palm-up.

Keep Away
I don't get it, every soccer team does this but I have never ever seen a Ultimate team doing it. Whole team in an endzone, try to string the most consecutive passes without a turnover.Double team is legal. Stall 5.
Fun variations: Strips (but not fouls) are legal after stall3, 2 discs in play at same time.
Teaches quick movement and short passes.


Quick conversion
4 players: 2O 2D;

D1--5yards--D2,O1 ----Disc----10yards-------O2 ----------------------ENDZONE

On a whistle or "Go", all players run in the same direction toward the endzone. O1 picks up the disc and looks to put a flat huck out in front of O2 while D1 puts on a no-huck mark and before D2 catches up to the receiver. This teaches no-huck mark dynamics, huck-recieving body positioning, and catching up and coming from behind to D a huck.

Mini
3on3, Field is 20 yards wide, by 30 yards long, with six yard endzones. Make-it-take-it. A goal is worth a point, a turnover i.e. drop, disc thrown out of bounds, stall, block, counts for negative one. A game is won when a team reaches 3, a game is lost when a team reaches negative two. Teaches quick movement and fast thinking with lots of touches for everyone. A mini-Mini tournament would be a perfect competitive warmup before practice.

4 comments:

Brooks said...

We did both keep away and the small-sides make-it-take it games all the time in C'ville. I think the perfect number for both is 4 on 4. Play the keep away in a little box about 15-20 yds on a side, and play the small-sides game on a little field about 20 x 40. The problem with 3 on 3 is that games get a little run down quickly- at any given time, you can only have the guy with the disc, a reset, and an isolated cutter downfield, so it's hard to get any continuity off a throw to that cutter.

Adding the 4th person makes the game flow a lot more evenly. Can we do these in practice, please?
Anyway, I like the post.
Brooks

Stephen Hubbard said...

Thanks Brooks. Suggest them to your captains and coaches.

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Jesse said...

Great exercises indeed. I have incorporated many of these into various practices I gave the last couple of years.

You gave me some nice ideas to mix them up. Cheers!