Today, I managed to acquaint myself with a few of the things being touted as sort of the future of throwing in ultimate, or at least (I think) the future of fundamental training.
Compass throws are designed to let the player throw anything regardless of his balance or pivot. For this - you can do both forehand and backhand sets - imagine your pivot as a direction on a compass with north directly in front of you. Throw with your pivot foot at each cardinal and ordinal direction (so clockwise from in front of you: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW). That's a compass set.
Ninja throws are a set of throws that focus on both (each is a separate set) low, wide and high releases, as well as touch throws (ie soft throws for someone to run onto) and quick zippy throws with as much torque as possible. Ninja throws are designed to give the player more points of release and be generally a pretty unstoppable dude. Today we were doing them in repetitions of ten, both forehand and backhand.
In Australia, we are getting this information from Victorian players who visited Seattle and went Jedi Padawan on Sockeye and Voodoo, the top two men's clubs in that region.
Is this the future? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm pretty sure it should be. As far as standardised throwing drills go, currently we're sitting on 100 throws and the breakmark drill. These two new sets, the Ninja and the Compass, are really good in that they, if standardised by club teams and the playing public, would eliminate bad throwing habits, chiefly getting lazy with release points or staying inside your comfort zone of balance.
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2 comments:
Ah, the influence of Dan Rule.
He is adamant that that set will replace the traditional 100 throws set because inside-out/outside-in throws aren't nearly as useful as flat throws from all stances.
I don't completely agree - I think that IO/OI throws have their place in the game. However they shouldn't be taught early on. Get beginners used to throwing flat from high/low/wide, and introduce curved throws at intermediate level.
A bit more detail on the compass.
The throw is always towards North?
The thrower can choose to throw either forehand or backhand at any point? (thinking specifically about N and S)
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