long-overdue ultimate post: herd and lunge
Once upon a time, I used to write things about Ultimate. Oh, there were glorious days, days filled with sunshine and burritoes, and the burritoes were filled with even more sunshine and just a little glee.
But then the dark days came upon us, days of darkness and tacos, tacos of despair and sadness.
Well folks, the days of burritoes are back — this here’s an Ultimate post.
(If you’re waiting for kittens or hippos, this ain’t your post. Move along.)
Today, we shall discuss the The Herd and The Lunge.
The Herd
(This was described to me at the FruitBowl Indoor Ultimate tourney two weeks ago by Greg the Bunny.)
When you are defending a player, it is very easy to get stuck in a reactionary frame of mind where you spend all your time following your mark. This leads to being a step or two behind at all times, as you have to react to their actions.
Instead, Greg said that what he thinks about is is actively herding his defender — he works at positioning himself in a manner that forces the other player to adjust his own position, herding him to the part of the field that is most advantageous for the defender. So, instead of being on the, well, “defensive”, he is actively working to affect where his mark is positioned and where his mark is able to cut to. It’s so much more proactive than just chasing your mark.
And it works on the offence as well! Instead of just looking to cut for the disc or clear out of the cutting lanes, the offensive player can also work at herding his defender into a position which opens up space for other cutters or for the handler to throw a disc to the offensive player in a German situation.
All of this is stuff that a lot of players do anyways, but we all agreed that this idea of actively thinking about herding was a very useful way of thinking.
Herding. It’s not just for sheepdogs anymore.
The Lunge
This is a new way to catch the disc (or, at least new to me) which was taught to me by Chris Dabrowski (he who is to be freed). He went out to BC for a year and said that this is something that a lot of the elite players out there are working on.
When a player runs to catch the disc, the standard way that one is taught to catch the disc is the pancake — catch the disc by slapping your hands together on the middle of the disc . Its very safe and everyone knows how to do it.
But with this new lunging catch, the player reaches out with both hands, palms down, and catches the disc along the rim between the palms and the thumbs (like you’re catching it with two hand puppets).
At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But the lunge does have a slight reach advantage on the pancake (catching along the rim instead of the middle of the disc), which can make all the difference in a race against a defender. Also, with the pancake catch, sometimes the inclination is to let the disc come in closer to the belly when catching, giving the defnder even more time to knock it away. Lastly, the action of the lunge (reaching out to clamp the disc between your hands) acts like a body mnemonic, making your whole body reach forward. All these things together can help you, as the receiver, have a greater chance to beat a defender to a disc.
I haven’t fully put this new method of catching into practice, but I fully intend to work on it.
God knows, I need all the help I can get.
(Hey, no kittens or hippos, but I did get hand puppets in there. Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.)
