Utilizing Winter Break

School's gotten out and for the next three weeks everyone on your college team could easily be sitting at home in her parent's house eating Christmas cookies. Not exactly the best strategy for getting in shape to start off the 2006 season...

I'm sure most teams have their own specific guidelines for workouts to do over the break, but I figured I'd elaborate a little on what I think individuals can do with their time away from school. Stanford divides its winter break suggestions into four categories:

1. aerobic activity to build endurance
   
2. strength training to create a stronger core
   
3. flexibility work to prevent injuries
   
4. throwing practice
   

In this post, I'm going to focus on drills for throwing practice that you can do by yourself, inside, or with a friend who's never really thrown before. The more you can mess around with a disc during the break, the better your disc skills will be next quarter.

• Couch Throw: Use a couch with a high back or pillows set up on your bed against the wall to play catch with you. Work on your throwing motion and a smooth release. The disc should be spinning well and flying flat as it hits the pillows each time
  
• Bed Throw: Lie on your back on your bed with your throwing shoulder blade slightly off the edge of the bed. Practice throwing forehand blades straight up in the air and catching them again. This helps work on your wrist snap and release, so try to get the discs to fly as smoothly as possible without much wobble.
  
• One-handed Faking: Practice switching grips between forehand and backhand without the help of your other hand. Snapping your wrist as you fake one throw will help roll the disc into the grip of the next throw. Your goal should be to be comfortable with the disc in your hand and feel confident in changing your grips. This will help make your fakes faster and more realistic.
  
• Pivoting with Fakes: Combine your practice of switching grips with full fakes. Step out and fake a backhand then push off of your right leg as you step into a forehand. Fake your forehand then push off your right leg and step into a backhand. The more comfortable you feel doing this the more you should challenge yourself to step out further and further for each throw. If you are really stepping into each throw you will feel it in your quad and butt muscle. Try doing this infront of a mirror to see how believable your fakes look (poor-man's video tape).
  
• Disc Golf: Go to a park with a friend (you’ll need two discs for this) and make up a disc golf course with various landmarks such as trees, benches, or bushes as holes. Practice using different throws (don’t just throw your backhand for every shot) and make sure that there is variety in the distances you are shooting for.
  
• Hucking Solo: Gather up 5 or 6 discs and head out to a big open space. Throw all your discs, trying to get them to land in the same spot. Pace out the distance between where you threw the discs and where they landed so you can get a good idea of how far your throws will travel on the ultimate field.
  
• Breaking the Mark: To practice stepping out around a mark when you throw, find a pole where you can set yourself up in front of it and force yourself to step out to one side of the pole to throw. To practice throwing low below a marker's arms, use an old wire coathanger to create a "L" shaped obstacle to release the disc under. This drill works best when you have a partner to throw with, but if you can’t find anyone to help you out, get multiple discs to throw and round them up after you’ve thrown them all.

Even if you are already pretty confident with the disc, pushing yourself to find throws and release points that you are uncomfortable with will improve your throws and help add to your repertoire.

And of course, winter break is always great for joining local pick-up games and playing in hat tournaments where you get to go run around and impress people with how in-shape you are...