Defensive Thought: the Hips
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Loading ...Very simple defensive thought here.
Defense is fundamentally about taking away space. You can do this simply by reacting to your opponent’s movements, or you can anticipate and see what they’ll be doing before they can catch you off guard.
One tool to avoid being caught (as) off guard–observing the relation between your hips and your opponent’s hips. Generally speaking, you want your hips facing towards your quarry (or perhaps more accurately–this may be a situational preference–you want your hips facing in the direction you want/anticipate your (wo)man running in). Any good cutter knows that once a defender turns his/her hips, going in the other direction is a cinch (moreso than continuing to go in the direction they’re moving in). To the extent that you don’t commit your hips, or can force your man to go in the direction you will commit to without letting them beat you the other way, you’ll be prepared to spring into action when your cutter finally chooses a direction to “sell out” in with a hard cut–and even then, you still use your body and read your opponent’s hips to anticipate when they slow and change direction.
Pay attention to the hips. Slowly, it will become second nature. But initially, just pay attention to which setups lead to which results–not in terms of “caught a goal deep” or “dropped a pass,” but in terms of “I was ready for/anticipated that move” or “I was caught completely off guard by x.” Learn to anticipate x. Learn what predicts x, and anticipate what will predict y. Be one mental step ahead of your quarry and you’ll be one physical step ahead of them when it matters.
Good hips practice: when guarding a handler near a sideline, if he throws a short pass towards that sideline, you *must* get your hips in between him and the sideline as soon as the throw goes off.
This way, he has to go around you if he tries to go upline, and you have the inside angle to the bid if he drops back for the dump.