Tuesday, September 30, 2008

From the Archives - Throwing to Space

This is one of the first emails I wrote MIT. Still applies....

Guys,
I want you all to concentrate on throwing to space. This is a very difficult concept to grasp, but once you understand that you don't actually WANT to throw to the man who is cutting, but rather, you want to throw to an area which will allow him to easily run upon the disc with his defender in a position to not have a play at it, the easier the game will become to you.
i think for a lot of people, throwing is very difficult because they feel that they actually have to throw directly to someone when they are running, like, hit them in their bread basket at some exact instant in time. in actuality, you have a spacial window and a temporal window that if you line them up, the pass will be completed.

in other words, you have a general leeway, and people normally wait way too long to throw the disc which then causes them to rifle the pass into a hard cutting player giving the receiver too little time to adjust and since you are throwing it with a limited time frame, the spacial window has become very small making it very easy to underthrow someone.

In general, for in cuts, the earlier you can throw the disc to a spot on the field where you want the receiver to go to, the less velocity you will have to throw the disc at making the receivers job even easier. Remember, there are two things that give the disc inertia and make it stable for catching(i.e. makes the disc feel heavy and less likely to doink off your hands), translational velocity and angular velocity, translational velocity is how fast the disc is traveling through the air, and angular velocity is how fast it is spinning in the air. If you put adequate spin on the disc, you can throw as soft as you want and still have a "heavy" disc to catch.

For away cuts, the sooner you can throw a disc out to space that no one occupies, and out in front of a receiver, the easier it is for him to read and run down on it.
i will talk more about throwing to space at future practices, and show you a demonstration of what i mean. also, if i can find video of it, i will show it to you. it won't have all the bells and whistles of dan cogan's video's but, what can you do.
-josh

Monday, September 29, 2008

First Post...

The purpose of this blog will hopefully be for me to keep write down all my thoughts in one place, hopefully be able to download some video clips for instructional purposes, and to keep alumni and fans in the loop with the current team.

Let's hope I make it through more than 4 posts before this falls by the wayside.

-josh