A Tiny Bit More Training

23/12: I forgot about this one. I dragged Clare down to the beach and practiced throwing for about half an hour in extreme wind. Got my backhand flat, able to travel a reasonable distance. It floated too much and had a tendency to 'catch the wind' and get carried away, but I was fairly happy with it. Forehands I had much more trouble with. I had no idea how sloppy my technique was and I use way too much much outside in curve. Easily rectifiable, will attempt to adjust. Clare was throwing really well, too - and she was drunk, which I didn't even realise until later. The Womens team have a pretty good receiver in her, although from everyone I know in it they probably are already inundated with receivers.

26/12: About 15-20 minutes of swimming, nothing huge, just an attempt to make my muscles ease up a bit. I did some rockrunning, though. What's rockrunning, and how does it translate to Ultimate? Well, I started doing it to see if there was a pool on the other side of my local beach, but I started thinking about focus and balance halfway along the way, and I sped up. While I wouldn't call it training as such, there's a lot of things at work during a run over rocks - it's not actually 'running' as such, but jumping, so you get some sweet vertical/horizontal workouts. There's the rapid start/stop action you get in Ultimate (and in netball) as well as a heightened acknowledgment of how important balance and subtle adjustments of the body are - a point I find often overlooked, even though it seems pretty important (to me) in terms of cutting and throwing: a lethal fake, the kind I see people much better than me doing (and I constantly fail to defend against) involves lightning-quick change of direction, usually achieved by planting a foot and turning. There's balance at work! - likewise in throwing, where lazy folks don't pivot, or pivot extremely slowly, allowing the mark to shut down the break throw before the offence even reaches it.

So yeah, balance is important and rockrunning helps you balance. Go out and try it. It's really dangerous though so be careful, pace yourself to begin with.

T.