teaching
by the time people enter college, they have usually been exposed to a lot of different sports (maybe because they played the sport, or they have seen it on TV, etc), but ultimate is not usually one of them. one of the ways i try to teach ultimate is to draw analogies between ultimate and these other sports because it can help beginners visualize what i'm trying to explain.
some of the ones that i have used:
- pivoting (basketball)
- throwing a backhand huck (swinging a baseball bat - stepping and driving hips, shoulders, elbows, and finally wrists)
- the "get low, chop your feet, and explode" cut that Tiina Booth teaches at NUTC (football wide receiver cuts)
- leading with the elbow when throwing a forehand (baseball pitchers - you always see head on pictures of them as they are coming forward with the ball where their elbow is leading their wrist)
- hammer windup (tennis serve - particularly the rocking back on the rear foot)
what other ones have people out there used? was it effective?
some of the ones that i have used:
- pivoting (basketball)
- throwing a backhand huck (swinging a baseball bat - stepping and driving hips, shoulders, elbows, and finally wrists)
- the "get low, chop your feet, and explode" cut that Tiina Booth teaches at NUTC (football wide receiver cuts)
- leading with the elbow when throwing a forehand (baseball pitchers - you always see head on pictures of them as they are coming forward with the ball where their elbow is leading their wrist)
- hammer windup (tennis serve - particularly the rocking back on the rear foot)
what other ones have people out there used? was it effective?
posted by nancy at 9:38 PM
7 Comments:
Laying out I find is much like diving headfirst into a base in base/softaball....
I tend to use basketball terminology/strategies a lot when I am teaching players. A few off the top of my head that I can think of at the moment are seeing both the disc and your man whenever possible, how to correctly use your body to get position on the disc which leads to how to win a body on body matchup to get the disc (like rebounding) while enduring incidental contact, dump swinging is somewhat similar to moving the ball around the perimeter, fast breaking, defensive footwork, covering the spread with a "help side" defense, the list could go on and on.
but, i played basketball and ran extensively and never really did anything else. so, i am sure i am missing the relevance of soccer, tennis, and football just to name a few. although i see football concepts a lot in ultimate as a receiver.
The women that are learning ultimate for the first time in college often have not played a ton of football or had much practice pitching in baseball since usually those aren't sports women play in high school.
I have found that the most common sports people have played are soccer, basketball, and softball. Tennis, volleyball and track are the next most common sports.
Soccer: creating space for your teammates by clearing out of lanes, "switching fields" to get the disc off the sideline and attacking the other half of the field, field awareness in general, watching an offenders' hips when playing defense to not get suckered in by a fake
Basketball: Lindsey mentioned a number of analogies already. Basketball especially translates well to defense in ultimate: being aware of the passing lanes, closing the distance to the thrower quickly yet under control when setting a mark, getting position when going up for a disc, etc.
Softball: most of the baseball examples apply that have been mentioned. Also, playing deep deep a little like center field where it's easier to read a disc/ball when you can run up to it instead of back-pedaling
Volleyball: side-shuffling and drop step in defensive positioning, ability to get center of gravity low when laying out for diving discs
Some other analogies that I've used for teaching forehands include snapping a wet towel, skipping stones, or cracking a whip. Of course, it all kind of depends on what she's into and what her specific frame of reference is.
Often I use a soccer analogy if someone's throw's tend to fly up in the air - in soccer, if your balance is shifted backwards and, in particular, if your upper body is leaning backwards, your kick will fly up; similarly, if leaning forward the kick tends to stay low. While not 100% analagous, in general this applies to throwing a disc, too. At the very least, it gets people thinking about balance and how it affects throws.
Gwen,
i think a major thing is to actually MAKE people watch professional sports (as much as some people find it lame to watch sports). I love watching professional basketball (especially in the playoffs when D matters) to watch defensive positioning and bodying out. watch how ginormous men (and women too) make themselves low and watch their footwork and communication.
watching a cornerback in football is great to understand the footwork and and hip action (the act of dropping your hips to get low and change direction fast), but it is hard to watch in football because they focus on the ball and not the passing routes.
the concept of "boxing out" on O and D (in other words, making the order, Disc, you, your defender behind your shoulders) took me a long time to learn after transitioning from tennis, so, you might want to be aware of that.
i also really liked your idea of standing on a trashcan and making the girls learn to jump at the right time to hit the disc at their peak. that is also a skill that most athletes (besides volleyball and basketball) don't really know.
pete (dan), your flick is weak because you step too far forward shutting off your hip rotation, and you also have a hitch in your windup which limits getting your major muscles into the throw. how many seasons did i work with your on breaking those habits? steal goose's camera at practice and film yourself hucking. watch it, and then film yourself again trying to correct for the mistakes you saw in the first video. take the tape home and analyze. lather rinse repeat.
oh yeah, what's christmas like with no cold and no snow?
-josh
i also really liked your idea of standing on a trashcan and making the girls learn to jump at the right time to hit the disc at their peak. that is also a skill that most athletes (besides volleyball and basketball) don't really know.
Practicing jumping is definitely a key skill. Bringing it back to Nancy's original post topic, I think there's two main sports analogies that work for jumping:
(1) the basketball lay-up type jump. This is where you jump off one foot and drive up with the opposite arm as your last foot ground-contact. This type of jump is good for carrying forward momentum into your vertical jump.
(2) the volleyball approach type jump. This is a two-footed jump where you aproach your take-off spot and then gather both feet under you before going straight up. This type of jump is more useful when you have to wait for a hanging disc and can't meet it in stride.
Josh: good thing I'm in Colorado for winter break so I can get the full Christmas experience...
another good one for jumping off of two feet is rebounding in basketball where you try to get the ball at the peak of your jump while not letting the players around you affect when you go up. the contact felt is also similar to going up for a disc in a crowd.
i think the cool thing about using principles in other sports to teach ultimate is that your audience only needs to have watched the sport and not necessarily to have played it. when i use these analogies, i try to get people to visualize the action as much as i try to trigger muscle memory.
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