Process vs. Outcome
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Loading ...Rock’em Socks-em recently sent me this article about balancing task focus and goal focus.
The short summary (I’ll let you read the article yourself for how it applies):
Recent psychological research suggests one of the keys to getting big projects done is balancing up individual tasks against the grand vision. It’s all about knowing when to flip the frame of reference from looking closely at the details of individual components of a project, and when to look up and see the project’s grand sweep.
Substitute “project” with “season,” or even “game,” and you get a very easy flip to ultimate applicability. I’ve made a few posts on goal setting here, and first wrote about process vs. outcome goals long before most of you read this blog. That said, the notion of WHEN to focus on one or the other is a novel concept to my mind. Generally, I’m a proponent of only focusing on the process goals–let the outcome goals simmer in the back of your mind, leave it out there for your buddies on another team (for me, my buddies on the women’s team) to ask you about every so often and play coy and hedge your bets when they do.
This seems to suggest something a bit more appealing though–dare to dream. Just whooped Regional Rival A? Allow a little glimpse forward to Sunday of regionals, and feel confident. Got your ass handed to you by Small State B? Probably better to back off of your lofty aspirations and focus on what moments of brilliance there were in the prior game (remember, talk in positives), putting the game into context rather than extrapolating.
Keeping performance in mind, it’s not a good idea to get too caught up in the destination when you’re still en-route–such allowances are probably not appropriate for halftime in the game-to-go just because you’re up a few points, but there’s some space to dream.
Outside of games, definitely let those big goals come into sight. Nobody does laps around the track dreaming of early exits or disc defeats…do they?
The effect on performance is probably not too significant (until you get light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel syndrome, that deep well of motivation that bursts forth from months or perhaps years of effort accumulated for the sake of one game or one tournament), but the emotional buoyancy is just as important to having a successful season.
Take the losses in stride, but allow for a little gloating when you find success, too. Evaluate on process, but recognize when you can live a little on the outcome, too.
Thoughts? Opinions? Comment away.
More on endzone offense
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Jim Parinella adds his thoughts. The standard DoG endzone O is also, coincidentally, the standard endzone O for most all of the teams in New England.
Anyway, reading his post for whatever reason made me think of the importance of working on this endzone offense via drilling. You’ve perhaps done 5-pull–Offense gets 5 pulls (or maybe starts at a set position on the field–particularly for a D line), if they turn defense gets a shot to score, if they turn the ground wins the point. Repeat for a total of 5 (or insert arbitrary number here) times, then do the same while having the defensive line start with possession.
At any rate, you should extend this same mindset–getting reps in with a specific focus for the offense (in the case of 5-pull, the focus is on valuing possession), to the endzone as well. In the same way that you would do marker drill or a dump drill to work on marking, I think it would behoove teams looking to improve their endzone O to do offensive possessions starting at the endzone. If you want to excel at something, you should have no problem with doing it to the point of redundancy (efficiency for use of practice time concerns aside).
Progression would include doing this sort of work after conditioning to simulate end-of-hell-point conditions, starting with a lone receiver (and a trailing defender) as if off of a deep reception to work on endzone O in flow, running the same situations with the depth chart shifted–take out stud playmaker A and see if you can fill the gaps, or better yet, put him on defense…I’m sure there are other intelligent permutations to be had out there too.
"Heels," Roles, and Basics (Response to Issue 12, "Endzone Cutting")
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Love the Huddle’s latest stuff.
Scattered Thoughts:
1) Several players mention bum-rushing the defender to “get [them] on [their] heels” before making another move. That’s all well and good, but…can that really be a complete strategy? I suppose if you’re the faster cutter, it is (which of course begs the question of ‘why juke them in the first place?’). That statement really triggers my common sense detector though…there ARE defenders out there who aren’t put on their heels so easily. What then? I like to tack on “…or get him to turn
his hips” on the end of most references to “on his heels,” as I think that situation confers the same advantages to a cutter looking to gain separation.
2) I absolutely LOVE Peri Kurshan’s talk of delegating an “end zone cutter” role. Brilliant. Energy efficient, strategy efficient. And if you’re using the “one guy creating an open-side break opportunity” cutting strategy or a similar iso, this makes perfect sense, too. This also seems very easily applied in terms of strategy, which leads me to…
3) Where’s the bona fide strategy talk? I suppose the idea of this issue is more to cull pearls of wisdom for playing, particularly for the individual cutter, but I really feel like this stuff assumes you’re familiar with the conventional wisdom to some extent (or at least, it’s enhanced by such familiarity). Perhaps none of this is new to you, but much of what I write is predicated on the belief that there are people out there who are still learning.
Steve Sullivan’s mention of the “gut cut,” along with the many references to dump and swing O by several authors, alludes to probably the basic/default end zone O for many teams…cuts from the back of the stack towards the cone. On the open side, this means one guy to the cone, and a second shortly therafter in the inside line (the “gut cut”), with another (or perhaps the first to the open side, if he’s quick back) to the break side as the disc is dumped and swung. Sometimes this is a “default,” sometimes this is a set play. Depends on the team.
Other common endzone offenses include some kind of isolation play, which gets all but one of the cutters out of the way to feature a stud with enough space for a decent thrower to get the disc to the endzone somewhere stud cutter can catch it uncontested (this is the sort of situation where a lot of the cutting advice dispensed in this issue comes in handy), and a lot of teams allude to a similarly-minded offense perhaps without the overt isolation to it (front of the stack open-side break throw juke, or a cutter from the back doing something similar in the lane while the rest “keep their defenders busy”).
The final major endzone offense (at least, in my mind; feel free to chime in if you have others) I can think of is the handler-driven O. I don’t mean the simple dump-swing, or even strategies that rely upon a good break from the handler.
I mean full-on dominator style weaving, with lots of give-and-go style moves (as Nick Handler alludes to. By the way, Nick probably brings up the most salient strategy points to consider in endzone offense, for any of you aspiring coaches/play designers out there). Perhaps the give-and-go is less common at the elite level, where dump defenders presumably stop the upline cut with more regularity, but I’ve seen that cut made successfully for a score many a time at the elite college level (often by my teammates over the past years).
This tends to work in conjunction with other strategies–the iso or stack motion lets the cutters work for opportunities, but when you look to dump-swing, an aggressive handler set can look to attack the endzone without help from the cutters with the upline, too. The sort of around-the-back “break” that Ben Wiggins talks about would also be the sort of play I’d characterize as a product of a handler-driven O.
4) My own thoughts on endzone cutting: don’t just apply one of the strategies discussed in the huddle: seek to learn and apply them all. I’ve had points where my endzone cutting has been little more than recognizing my defender’s open-side overzealousness and using a chop-step (or a straight-up opportunity cut) to catch a hammer to the break side wide open, and I’ve had points where I’ve run my defender into the ground from the stack, and I’ve had points where recognizing and exploiting the “open-side break” opportunities led to easy goals. The key is recognizing what’s available to you–when your teammates are aggressively cutting from the back of the stack, try to wait and find your opportunity. When nothing’s doing, consider creating some motion and injecting some energy with the brute-force approach (with appropriate tricks employed to increase your odds).
One thing that almost every author hit on–know your teammates, know your thrower. The rest will flow from knowing your thrower, and from your thrower knowing you. It’s when things get tight that chemistry really shines, and more often than not, things get tight in the endzone.
Defensive Thought: Peripheral Vision
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) 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.
Comments
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...No notes about talking in positives here.
For any/all of you RSS readers out there, you should note some of the comments of late–I’ll try to draw attention to them retroactively when appropriate, but I recently added a “recent comments” widget to the sidebar to hopefully encourage some more discussion. New insights can come from divergent opinions, and even simple components or fundamentals can go overlooked, so please don’t feel shy about chipping in your two cents.
Improving Mobility on the Mark
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...OK, so I’ve said you should be mobile on the mark. I’ve said you should work to stay balanced. Great.
How?
Hint #1. Guess what lift the mark shares body positioning with? You got it, the squat.(Hint 1a. You lift on your heels. What do you mark on?)
Hint #2. The squat is a stationary lift. Is marking stationary? Which direction are you moving primarily when you mark? Hey, horizontal (in the frontal plane)!
Hint #3. Core strength enables what is a “reach” for some to be easy for others. Athletes are Athletes for a reason.
Hint #4. How do you teach players to use their legs instead of relying on their reach on the mark? Courtesy of one Peter “Socks” Bonanno, ’08, #88, I’d like to date, he’s really great…we call it the black knight drill. (Yes, I know–Miranda Roth in The Huddle beat me to it already. But I’ve had this written out for a while, and redundancy only reinforces the utility of the thing).
Really simple. Take your regular marker drill…and start channeling Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (“Just a flesh wound.“). Mark as normal, but put your hands behind your back.
You’re not exactly going to stop a lot of throws here. Try and resist the urge to footblock (too much), and focus instead on moving your body such that you force the thrower to move (fake, pivot, or otherwise) once or twice. Your thrower should start off with fairly basic pivoting and faking just to allow the marker to get used to the notion of moving to follow before making a serious attempt to throw past. Keep the drill relatively honest, no over-the-tops and try to avoid the temptation to take the shot through the big hole left by no arms (make the mark work laterally rather than frustrating her with a quick break past the body at stall one).
Of course, you can scale this any number of ways. Early last year we would start a marker drill with some 5 seconds of Black Knight (with no throw) before allowing the mark to use his hands and the thrower to make his pass, which seems like a nice compromise between learning and practice (the dichotomy coming from the eternal dilemma in which things that might help the team learn more quickly [i.e., dedicated, focused, deliberate drilling, with no consequences] are not as appealing to players as jumping in headfirst and “practicing” or scrimmaging, which is essentially just performance with lower stakes than a real game or tourney).
I think it might have been one of Zip’s Tips (though I can’t find it now) to always push beyond your comfort zone in marker drill; if you’re not getting point blocked or turfing every so often, you’re not expanding your repertoire enough. This applies just as much if not more so for the guy on the mark as the guy with the disc. Figure out your thrower. Experiment with baiting. Choose what throw you’re going to make your quarry take, and deny everything else with extra gusto. Learn.
Marking Thought: Stay Balanced
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...I alluded to the importance of not reaching (by which I mean “over-extending.” Certainly you will use your hands and arms while marking) when I wrote about being mobile. The opposite of reaching is balance.
Balance originates from your core.
Balance means not overextending yourself (don’t get caught reaching!).
Balance means being poised to respond to anything the thrower will, well, throw at you. Don’t get lulled into a false sense of security–stay poised to deny the thrower’s options. (An awareness of where the threats are behind you–dump? streaking cutter deep?–help significantly to this end).
It’s a challenge to develop the mobility, and particularly the discipline to avoid reaching on the mark and to strive for balance. But really, how many point blocks have you seen come from a guy leaning over and reaching? How many pictures have you seen of a thrower breaking a mark who is practically falling over, she’s reaching so hard?
Of course, rules are made to be broken, and you’ll find that the big reach (the layout on the mark, the foot-block attempt) will occasionally work at causing a turn, if for no reason other than the sheer surprise of the thing. Sometimes David Ortiz can steal second because the catcher isn’t expecting the 230(+)-pound DH to be fleet enough to try in the first place. Doesn’t mean it should be your standard. Discipline yourself. Learn by the conventional wisdom so you can cast it aside in the instants where it is most effective.
More on mobility and balance on Thursday.
Marking Thought: Spacing
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...There’s a time and a place for near and far spacing.
Incidentally, the spacing and location of your mark can and should be changing over time. Jackson makes some good points about the utility of spacing between yourself and your mark, so start there:
Are you looking to prevent the break throw? If so, back up. You’re right that you can easily get your arm past a close mark, and by being farther away you’ll have more time to react to pivots, fakes and throws.
However, if you’re looking to put pressure on hucks, then get close. Yes, you might get broken sometimes, but if your defensive strategy is to pressure hucks, while still keeping substantial pressure on break throws, then I think close is the way to go.
Most throwers today will be able to break marks regardless of how you mark. I think that (in general) marking to prevent break-throws is a losing battle. The better approach is to realize that break throws will go off, but by pressuring them, you can increase the chance of a non-perfect throw going off, which gives the downfield defender a chance at a block. Similarly, if you are pressuring hucks, then defenders (who will inevitably be a step or two behind) will have a greater chance at blocking a non-perfect throw. A far mark puts very little pressure on hucks, which makes it very difficult for downfield defense against any team with good throwers
In short:
I’m of the opinion that the best marks apply both techniques throughout the duration of a single mark. As I’ve already said, be active. Even if you’re bouncing around, if you’re not fundamentally altering your approach to marking dynamically, the thrower is sizing up how to beat what you’re showing him–you’re playing his game. Showing the thrower different looks through a point and through a stall count can force them to play your game, assuming you leverage your margin intelligently. I’m also of the opinion that while trying to prevent ALL break throws can be a losing battle, intelligent use of the mark to take away the biggest threat dynamically as the count shifts can be extremely effective. Similar to how you might look to poach off of a cutter who is sitting pat in the stack without threatening to move, if the mark’s position allows breaks that the thrower isn’t currently looking for, you’ll be able to more effectively pressure the throws she is. A very simple example of this is shifting the mark around to take away the dump at a high stall count. When it’s clear that the thrower only wants to hit the backfield for the dump, a mark can find success in conceding easier throws upfield in order to apply more pressure to the backfield option. If you extend that approach to include not only dumps but hucks, inside vs. outside breaks (hint: it’s nearly impossible to throw an IO break past a mark that is a step off), even high vs. low throws, you can present a very dynamic and effective mark. If your entire defense (including your sidelines) is cued in to this as a defensive strategy, the potential applicability skyrockets as downfield can adjust to what the mark is dynamically taking away–if the mark shifts to protect the dump, the defender at the front of the stack can shade to take away the IO option, if pressuring hucks, defenders can front their men more confidently, etc. This extends to more than simply how close or how far you are from your man (how you angle your mark and how aggressive you are are also key), but one of the easier ways to leverage the mark is by simply looking to take an extra step in or out on the mark as the count shifts–perhaps you stay tight on the first couple counts to pressure a huck in flow, and then back off a half-step to contain more conventional break/dump looks and avoid drawing a foul at a high count (I guarantee you your high-level club teams teach this very adjustment as a fact of life–or at least did before the advent of the disc space rule [XIV.B.3] as an additional deterrent). Maybe you start off with a loose mark trap on the sideline of a zone to prevent a quick swing back across the field, and inch in closer to pressure the over-the-top throw attempts after a few seconds. Incidentally, Stephen Hubbard adds some great points about fouling in a comment on the last post, and also brings up the important question (among others): aren’t we just talking about fouling routinely on the close mark? When I say “close mark” I absolutely DO NOT mean foul the thrower. If you’re capable of being mobile, you shouldn’t need to foul. If you have any kind of intelligent defense behind you, you shouldn’t need to foul. If you’re getting hosed by the other team making hucks in flow with no mark and feel the need to foul to stop it…try playing smarter defense and taking away those opportunities in the first place (or make adjustments downfield if you can’t). There’s a wealth of strategic options you can employ on the mark and in concert with the mark, and fouling is really never appropriate. Incidentially, I also find a mark that plays THAT close to be far less effective at stopping any throws (but I also didn’t practice it terribly much–there was a time when we had a “coach” for all of one tournament that encouraged more physical marking and it didn’t sit well with me then). Fouling might win you a few battles, but in the context of the larger war of the game, it is usually not sufficient (teams and players adjust). Experiment with spacing. Think about what might serve you best in various field positions, stall counts, matchups, weather conditions, etc. If you’re a team strategist, consider the vast potential of a team-wide dynamic mark for shutting down a team’s preferred offensive options. For bonus points, consider employing a marking tactic suggested by Ben Wiggins back in Winter ’06: stagger your feet one slightly forward, one slightly back) to facilitate better motion forwards and backwards, as well as to provide a bit more cushioning on a close mark to shield against the IO. This is hard to explain, and the UCPC site is apparently down now, so I can’t link any original materials either. I’ll try and flesh it out a bit more in a later post.
