I have brought 4 things to the San Diego Ultimate community (maybe more, but of these I am sure) . I am not saying that these are original ideas, but I do want to take full credit for their existence here. Yeah, I guess its an ego thing.
#1.
The 4-line warm up. We never did it, they I recommended it and people were against it for no reason than that we'd never done it before. Then we started doing it after I continued to push for it, then we started to do it as a warm up before games but not at practice (in my conversation with my coach, his reason for not doing it at practice was, I kid you not, "If we do it too much, people will learn how to "game" this drill just like they "game" the breakmark drill." I don't understand what he was saying, Ill i heard was "We don't do it that much, even though it is a good warmup, because we never did it in the past." Then we started doing it at Squid and Streetgang practices and I think there are 3 reasons:
- Empirical - 75% of all the good club and college team have started to do this drill.
- Philosophical - the point of a warm up should be to touch the disc and run a whole lot which is not achieved by any drill where you are only using 1 or 2 discs.
- Empirical - People actually do run more and touch the disc more in this warm up than in any other warm up. People's throws are better after doing lots of them, people are actually sweating after this drill.
#2.
When putting a live disc is put into play at any spot on the field besides where it comes to rest, you must tap it to the ground after establishing your pivot at the right spot. Often, when the new offense is walking the disc to the goal line, side line, or brick mark the thrower will offer the disc for a check. I could just tap the disc like everyone else, but I make a point of telling them that its a ground tap. Cons: I lose 2-3 seconds of the stall count. Pro: I teach people the actual rules of our sport. Minor pro: I don't feel bad about calling a travel when they throw without a ground tap. Im not saying that everyone knows this rule now, but I would estimate that there were, AT MOST, 3 other players in San Diego that knew when a ground tap vs a defensive check was required before I started my crusade to teach people the rules.
#3.
Lefty backhands. I can't take full credit for this one; I was majorly influenced by the first player in SD that I really looked up to: Christopher "Phelps" D'arrouzet-Nardi. His last year was my first and he threw a lot of lefties. His reasoning was simple: you could get a lot more spin on short throws. There certainly are situations where the off-hand backhand is useful - short breaks, dumps, dish passes - and it seems that the big restriction on them is just people's own mental limitations of seeing what is possible. I don't know if other SDers are adding lefty backhands - I think some are - but people are figuring out that you actually can cut to areas that previously were off limits because people didn't have that throw.
Joke of the Day: Did you hear the joke about hydration? OF COURSE YOU DIDN'T, BECAUSE HYDRATION IS NOT A JOKE!!! (#4. )
