Defensive Thought: Peripheral Vision
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Loading ...Good defense is a lot more than reacting to your opponent.
Body position, reading your opponent’s hips, staying on your toes, these are all important to enable good D, but perhaps the single most useful piece of information a defender can have is where the disc is and where it’s likely to go next (where the thrower is looking/capable of throwing to).
Shutting down that big deep cut is great, but if you knew in advance that the thrower was looking at the dump, or that the thrower was panicking with the disc in his hands, you can conserve your energy and let your opponent get deep on you a bit without consequence–and better yet, when he realizes his error, you’ll be in prime position to deny a cut that actually IS a threat.
It’s important to try and “check in” on the disc periodically as a defender–this is not hard if you’re covering a passive cutter, who neither engages you when she isn’t cutting nor looks to exploit your shift in attention, but good cutters will punish you for looking away, or simply give you no chance to take a breather and look in the first place.
Generally speaking, I try to balance the need to keep tabs on my man while simultaneously following the disc by using my peripheral vision, or in some cases, my hearing (the “clap” of a disc being caught is as good an indication as any that the disc has moved, not to mention the stall count).
In a situation where you are backing your man, it’s pretty easy to just glance past your opponent. But even when fronting you can position yourself in such a way as to track the disc and your man simultaneously. Fix you gaze halfway between your opponent and the disc. In a downfield situation, this might mean turning your head or body in a way you’re not used to doing (instead of “engaging” your man with your hips you take a slightly more open position). Hopefully the return of the crappy MS paint schematic helps clear it up a little bit–I’ve denoted the defender’s head position with a second line (defense in red, offense in blue).
The sort of position I’m talking about (on the right, compared to basic fronting on the left) is pretty clearly playing a different type of defense than manned-up body D, but it can be just as effective and potentially more so–it does, however, require a greater degree of awareness and proactivity to deny options rather than simply reacting.
My main point is thus: by fixing your gaze between your man and the disc, you keep any drastic change in either’s state in your attention register without too big a sacrifice in the quality of details you receive (assuming you know what details to key in on to play good defense). You won’t see where the thrower is looking, but you should get a sense of the mark’s positioning and if the thrower is pivoted over to look at the dump. You won’t necessarily see where your man is looking, but you’ll still notice his first step. And, you can incrementally shift your attention to one or the other by shifting your eyes much more easily and less obviously than if you turn your head from fronting your man.
Where this really shines, I think, is playing dump defense–being able to see when the throw is coming is a HUGE advantage for the receiver over the dump (when the defender is fronting), and often the defender has to choose between staying close to the target or knowing when the throw is coming. With practice, I’ve found a suitable balance between the two by leveraging my peripheral vision–it’s not 100% effective, you’ll necessarily shift your attention back to your man if he cuts very aggressively and forces you to change your head position, but it does prove useful.
Have you found other good ways to balance your man and the disc? Uses for peripheral vision above and beyond what I’ve described here? Tried it and didn’t like it? Leave some comments and let me know.
changing the position of your body to allow a better view surrenders a direct path to your receiver to a true thrower. regardless of whether the defender sees the disc coming, the path is present. also, the defender cedes an advantage to the receiver on the breakside that the defender cannot hope to recover.
while balancing this vulnerability with the lack of thrower-vision of a true “fronting” defense is largely the realm of team-level strategy, it can also be considered individual-level technique and implemented ad hoc, provided it does not undermine team-level goals.
good defense limits the options of your opponent to those which are of least utility to his role on his team.
Great points.
The thought was initially inspired by dump defense, which is where I first started applying it, but I found with enough speed it carried over to downfield for me, too. Any thoughts specifically re: the dump?
I find one of the most helpful benefits is being able to play help defense by being aware of other cutters/defenders around me (this applies more to a straight stack offense, where I’ve cut my teeth). Certainly this is something a team’s defense either chooses to do or chooses not to do (whether that choice is overt or de facto depends on the level of the team). Maybe this doesn’t hold at higher levels.