BMU - Moving Forward with Fundamentals

“How do we continue to teach fundamentals to an increasingly diverse team in skill and experience?” – Kennedy

Kennedy presents a real issue facing BMU.  If the team wants to continue to market itself as a place that is fundamentals focused, how do you balance the fundamentals work that younger players need while also challenging your top end?  I think Kennedy’s concerns are directly related to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow”.

BMU takes everyone who shows up.  It is usually around 40-60 people at a practice.  The bottom 10 struggles to complete flicks in partner passing, the top 10 struggle to quickly turn catching an incut into throwing downfield.  If we target the bottom of the roster then the top group will be in the boredom space, if we target the top group then the bottom will be pushed into the anxiety space.

As a preface I want to clearly take a stance against trying to split the talent into different drills and challenging the better players with more difficult drills.  Just as a low-income child who attends school with high-income students is more likely to succeed than a low-income child who attends a purely low-income school, those who are bad at Frisbee will struggle to succeed without given the chance to mix in with good players.

If we look at this issue specifically through the Black Market lens the road forward is obvious.  We focused on fundamentals, but only on a piece of fundamentals.  The entire season was heavily weighted toward being able to hit resets and complete “possession” passes.  We barely scratched the surface of breaking the mark and hucking. 

There are fundamentals outside of throwing that BMU severely neglected.  Our defensive foundation was poor (as evident by our near inability to guard the other team’s best players and to consistently pressure incuts), we had bad marks, and we struggled with handlers that used their legs.  Offensively we struggled to get open and we cleared poorly. 

Black Market can change the weighting of practices toward a lot of 1v1 cutting, we can break down defensive footwork, we can constantly drill spacing, and we can do a marking drill every day.  All of these ideas were addressed at some point during our season, but most were only discussed once.  If we want our team to be good at something then we need to drill it every practice, or at least every week.  We worked on possession passes every day, what if we moved to a different part of the game.

Great but maybe we feel like owning possession passes is the best use of our time and we want to continue to keep that is the focus.  (Spoiler alert: it is).  Now we have to confront the issue of challenging people within the same fundamental umbrella.  My theoretical solution to this issue – no matter how good you are there is always something you can get out of a drill. 

Take a drill like the one below:

This is a brutally simple drill.  It can be learned just by following someone who knows what they’re doing.  There are lines at each blue dot, when you get to the front of one of the lines you run an out-and-in catch a pass and throw it to the person who is making an out-and-in in front of you, then you get in the back of the other line and repeat. 

If you’re bad what are the things you can worry about?  Catching the disc and throwing it towards the receiver are very worthwhile focuses.

If you’re okay what could you worry about?  Running through the disc, getting balanced on each throw, and trying to hit the outside shoulder of your receiver can make you better.

If you’re good what could you worry about?  Accelerate through the disc, catch one handed, catch every terrible pass, reduce the time it takes you to ready a throw, work on throw and go footwork, throw every pass softly, get as much spin as you can without throwing it hard, make the disc sit.  All of these ideas are just focusing in on the moment of catching and throwing.  What if you brought your attention on the out-and-in?  You could work on driving a hard cut, keeping the cut at an acute angle and the footwork involved, and accelerating out of the cut.

As I go up the skill axis I find more and more things to work on.  This is why I like to use Zubair’s progressive drill idea.  Take a simple drill like the one above, and as a coach/captain outline an incredibly rudimentary goal for the drill. 

1.      Instead of starting with an out-and-in you could just stand and jog at the disc, after catching come to a complete stop, and then deliver the pass.

2.      Turn up the speed at which you run at the disc.

3.      Add the out-and-in.

4.      Dictate the side of the receiver you throw to.

5.      Dictate how the catch should be made.

6.      Push people to accelerate through the disc.

7.      Add a defender to get physical on the out-and-in portion.

As you add complicating factors your better players should become challenged and more engaged.  At some point you will end up leaving the worse players behind.  However, with the right guidance you can cue them to ignore the more advanced cues and just stay on the focuses that put them into flow.