Conference Championships

A few weeks ago, the strength bid allocations came out for the series, and my region (mid-Atlantic mixed) got one bid.  I changed my gchat status to “Well, I got what I wanted” with a link to the official USAU announcement.  This triggered a flood of questions of why I would only want one bid to Nationals.

This has been a funny year for me.  I spent part of the spring/summer out of the country and moved out of Philly in August.  I went from thinking I should take the season off to seriously considering playing with my old team to ending up on a non-practicing mercenary squad.  While my current team is a ton of fun (and rather talented), it’s a low investment team.  Someday soon, this type of team will be just my speed.  But not quite yet.  This year, I still wanted to be in the trenches.  I want a team I can put a lot of myself into and get a lot out of.  And that’s just not possible on a team like this.  It’s not that kind of team.

So why is one bid a good thing?  Well, it gives more meaning and consequence to Regionals.  For most of my club career, if not guaranteed, making Nationals was more likely than not.  My focus was to peak at Nationals.  But on a team like this, setting lofty goals at Nationals is pointless.  We’d do alright and upset some teams, but we wouldn’t be rolling in looking to win it.  I’ve used a college football analogy of “Regionals is like our conference championships.  Nationals is a bowl game.”  Maybe that’s another way of saying we’d “just be happy to be there.”  But the key is we’ll have to play not just well, but Really well if we’re gonna qualify.  If there were two bids, I’d give us a better than 50% chance of qualifying*.  With two bids, we could qualify for nationals and go all season with no meaningful wins in consequential games.  With the higher barrier of entry, the challenge is of course greater, and there will almost definitely be consequential games (hopefully meaningful wins too).

Now this is purely a selfish attitude.  This team is not one built around meaningful or consequential experiences of this type.  It’s built around enjoying the ride and each other’s company for as long as the ride goes.  Clearly it would be great if that ride ended in Sarasota rather than Poolesville.  Let’s hope we all get what we want.

* I’m saying this with 3-4 regional opponents quite capable of beating us, so that 50% number is purely based on gut feel and over-confidence.

Dogma and Diversity - Deconstructing Dogma

If you read the previous two posts, don't get me wrong.  More is not better.  In my college days, we were fans of having a dozen different offenses, none of which we could run well.  I think it's important to limit one's team's strategies to only as many as you can properly execute.  If you only have the time to get good at vert stack/cuts from the back and man/force flick/beat them under, then hey... that's all you have time for.  But i'd also add if you're a club team and that's all you can manage over the course of an entire season (let alone multiple seasons), then you might want to evaluate how efficiently you are using practice time.

And don't get me wrong.  All the strategic concepts i look at below are ones i am generally a huge proponent of and often can be heard espousing to my teammates.  Just saying if you hold to them too strongly, you're closing your other options off.  That's how dogma works.

And don't get me wrong.  I don't think these concepts are unique to Philadelphia.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Some of the strategic concepts that have codified into dogma in this neck of the woods:

Don’t get beat up the line:  I’d say getting beat up the line is only bad if it’s for a goal or if it leads to significant yards or if it leads the dump catching it with momentum (so called "power position") that can lead to a huck.  Too often i see dump defenders play so far upline that contesting the break swing is impossible.  We played a team last year at regionals who we dump-swung and continued to the breakside over and over, and their downfield defenders who kept getting scored on would come off the field all pissed, "C'mon guys, no break!"  The problem was their team's defensive strategy overemphasized stopping upline cuts and underemphasized containing the swing.

There are times when keeping the team on the sideline is more important than stopping the upline cut:

• when you have the deep space covered.  (e.g. you are bracketing a vert stack.)
• when they are far enough up field that the upline cut to huck isn't extending the amount of effective space you need to defend.

Put another way, there are times i'd rather them huck it because we're ready for it, rather than letting them break us all the way across the field.

I'd also add against teams that move the disc well from the handler positions, it’s possible to play over top of the handler and hedge them into bad angles, which may not deny them the disc but contains their subsequent throw.

Beat them in:  That is position yourself underneath and force their cutters to go deep.  This underestimates throwers’ abilities to huck it, overestimates the other team’s abilities to work it underneath with tight coverage, and on many of the team’s I’ve played on, overestimated our ability to close on deep shots or contest discs in the air (my teams have always been short).

My biggest problem with this strategy is that it means the turnovers you're looking to generate will be in your endzone.  If you're the d-team, this means you now have to work it 70 yards to score (and since you're the d-team, you probably can't throw).

Always forcing your opponent deep is like always forcing flick.  After awhile, teams get used to the same defensive look point after point.

See Lou Burruss' post on backing

Win with your legs:  This one is tricky as it's not a strategic concept as much as it is a mentality (and again, i have been heard preaching this one for years).  Husting, running hard to give your throwers easy open looks, and resisting marginal decisions with the disc are all good concepts to emphasize.  There's nothing inherently wrong with this message.  To say it in the game to go at regionals when your team's delirious from fatigue is probably the right message.  To go back to my boxing analogy, when it's the last round, it often comes down to heart.

Where i see this becoming problematic is in what is unsaid over the course of a season or multiple seasons and what is de-emphasized.

• Throwing is de-emphasized, and over multiple seasons around here, few young club players around here go from good to great with their throws.  Didn't Dusty post about how we do 6 workouts a week and only touch a disc on the weekends?
• Going to the right space is de-emphasized (in the name of beating your defender in on the openside).  Sometimes, your team just desperately needs to have someone pop into the break lane or just go deep, but your cutters just want to be the hero and prove they can get open in the one place the other team's defending by going in on the openside.  Geoff Buhl used to call this the "man cut".  This is a vitally important cut that your team must be able to make, but if "beating your man" starts to obscure "winning the point," you're gonna run into problems.

Winning with your legs and your heart is critical in sport (no duh).  What i'm saying is that over the course of the season, don't overprioritize it at the expense of all the other assets you need to develop to be good.  Too often, teams and players focus on the physical because it's more obvious, and they lack the knowledge or sophistication or communication skills or mental discipline to work on other things.  If you gave up one workout a week to go over game film, would you and your team be better or worse off?*

Be Chilly**:  Like "win with your legs," being chilly is a mentality and often the right one to have.  What i'm getting at though is that your team's conservativism/risk taking should not be constant but rather should be dictated by the circumstances (opponent and playing conditions).  I don't think you want to be all over the map, but as a coach, you would want to be able to ratchet the risk taking up or down***.

If you're a college basketball coach for a 16th ranked team going into the first round of March Madness, maybe you know you need to have a big night from the 3-point line if you want a chance of winning.  Likewise, if you're outmatched downfield, maybe you throw more hammers**** or abide less stringently to the rule of thirds.

Again, there's a reason certain strategies have become conventional thinking.  It's because they've proven effective.  The danger is when we accept them as dogma without developing a deeper understanding and we close ourselves off to other ways of thinking.

* Depends of course on where your team is and if you have any idea how to use the information available.

** Do club players still say this?  "Chilly-O" seems like "shit ultimate players say."

*** The championship Sockeye teams in the mid-2000s always impressed me with their apparent ability to dial down their risk taking based on their opponent.  Pike beat them in pool play and then lost to them in the semis at 2004 Nationals.  There was a marked difference in their o-team's risk taking in that second meeting knowing they could work it under against our defense, compared to the supposed "huck and hope" strategy the northwest was accused of having.
**** Hammers are seen as riskier throws in this area.  Is that true in other parts of the world?

Dogma and Diversity - an Australian Aside

I am currently in Australia for a couple months, and I went to my first pickup game the other night.  In one night of playing 6v6, defensively we ran man with various marks, 3-2-1 zone, and 1-3-2 zone; offensively, we ran vert, ho, and German.  We were just goofing off, but it was nonetheless impressive that we tried so many things and with a decent level of competency.  And my teammates were not all veteran players by any means.

By contrast, the last team in Philly to my knowledge to have a German style offense in their bag of tricks was the Philly Peppers back in the late 90s.

Why is that?  Well, in Sydney, they have to travel more to find decent ultimate.  It doesn’t seem uncommon to find someone who’s only been playing a few years who has been to Worlds, so the average player here has been exposed to a broader range of teams.  Just as I believe traveling is important to having a balanced view of the world, gaining exposure to a diversity of ultimate strategies is important to having a balanced view of our sport.

Dogma and Diversity - the Philly scene

I have recently had a few different conversations about how the teams in these parts (Philly) are so strategically similar.  While it’s probably quite common for a particular geographic area to have ideologies that dominate the local teams, my sense is that Philadelphia is more of a closed ecosystem than most metropolitan areas of its size.  Certainly the Boston teams don’t all run a 6-person stack, right?  So where do these ideas that are so prevalent in Philly come from, and why is there not more diversity in the strategic gene pool?  (Disclaimer:  I’m just gonna ramble and I’m sure I’ll say something I disagree with tomorrow).

Where do these ideas come from?

A current teammate of mine was recently crediting the philosophies and plays that are run around here to the Pike teams of the early to mid-2000s.  While that was a NJ team, we drew a lot of the recognizable faces from the Philly scene, who in turn disseminated these strategies to other area teams.  So I wouldn’t argue against that lineage as I see PADA summer league teams calling plays by the same randomly chosen names used in the 2002 Pike playbook.

But to give proper credit, that playbook was pilfered straight from the UCSB* teams that 3-peated in the late 90s brought east via Jim Regetz (though he made considerable improvements).  And the style of play (conservative, possession-oriented offense) comes from the dominant mid-90s DoG teams.  Before them came Earth Atomizer and Big Brother? (Before my time.)

Not saying any of those strategies aren’t still sound, but I think there’s something to be looked at if there’s been minimal innovation on 16+ year old thinking in a sport as young as ours.

Why isn’t there more diversity?

I can only speculate, but I’ll throw out some ideas.

• Philadelphia is not a particularly transcient community.  People don’t move here for a few years and leave.  Not that many people move here from other metropolitan areas.  Not that many people leave.  Off the top of my head, I can only think of a few male** players who’ve recently played in Philly who had history with other top clubs (Joel Wooten – not much of a Philadelphian, Trey Katzenbach – more on him later, and Carl Deffenbaugh).  My impression is that in other geos, it’s more common to find players who’ve played on multiple top clubs.
• Trey really is a force unto himself.  Through the sheer force of his personality and his history of successes, his ideas on how the game should be played have really pervaded the minds of a lot of the community.
• What about all the different college teams people have played on?  Honestly, I don’t know.  All of you who played outside the Philly-metro area, why haven’t you brought back new zones or new plays or new offenses?
• It’s not a particularly cerebral scene here.  Maybe I’m just not talking to the right people, but there don’t seem to be a lot of players nerding it up over strategy.  Maybe Philly’s not an intellectual town.  Or maybe it’s because there aren’t as many college teams with coaches around here.  Regardless of the reasons, I think you’d find the percentage of players who can articulate why their teams run a particular strategy is lower around here than say… Boston, San Fran, or Seattle… or even NY.

Now, I’m not saying being nerdy about strategy is critical to success.  But I do think diversity is important for a community, be it an ultimate community or any other.  Otherwise, you fall into “it works for insert top local club team name, so we should run the same thing” mentality because you aren’t aware of other options.

A real world example: Pike ‘02-’05 ran a vert stack with 2 dumps.  There were no give-gos built into our offense, so handlers never got the disc moving into a power position.  In order to run this offense, you need handlers who can bomb and break with a set mark on them.  Our o-team happened to have Walt, Regetz, Heckman, and Bailey, so we could pull it off.  Unfortunately, our d-team didn’t have the same depth of throwers (though we did have Ian).  If you were one of the unfortunate college teams that adopted our offense, you probably suffered until you gave up, or you got good at those types of throws.

But even if you are good at running your strategies, I will point back to a previous post about pulling off upsets: If you’re not the more talented team on the field, playing the same strategy as your opponent is a losing game plan.  It’s the same as a boxer who goes toe to toe with a slugger who is faster and stronger.  Ali wasn’t The Greatest because he was the hardest puncher.

Next post: Deconstructing the Dogma.

*Funny enough the Condors and Pike had essentially the same playbook when we faced off in quarters of 2004 down to the play calling system.

** I specify male because women and women’s team tend not to drive innovation in our male-dominated world of ultimate.  There have been some transplants of female talent in Philly, but for various reasons outside the scope of this post, they have not led any shifts/growth/evolution in ultimate strategy around here.  If i'm wrong, and it's only because i'm a guy that i don't get to hear about what happens in the women's game, then i'd love to be educated.

Drive and Swerve

Hi out there.  Long time, no write.  I’ve taken the past month since Nationals pretty easy:  made it to the gym a handful of times, worked on my winter league recruiting (we're vomit-worthy siiick), played in an early winter tournament, did a footwork workout once or twice, signed up for the Tough Mudder in April, did a 5 mile run on Thanksgiving for charity.  I’ve been telling myself it’s ok to be a bit of a slob for the past month… but it’s been a month, and I can’t really afford to slide too far.  So hopefully that means a return to not only fitness but blogging as well.

I spent a lot of focus in my training this year on SAQ, efficiency, and technique.  While I understand it's the offseason for the club players, I try not to completely neglect game specific skills in the offseason.  So some thoughts on cutting...

With the rise in popularity of ho-stack over the past 8-10 years, the type of cuts I make on the field have changed.  In vert, the classic cut is a buttonhook (run hard, stop and cut back ~180 degrees the other direction).  In ho (as well as in sidestack), you’re more likely to see a cut that drives horizontally at your defender (putting him on his heels) and then a 90 degree turn deep or in.  Not suggesting you wouldn't use either cut in any type of offense - Boston has been beating you to the openside with this cut since the mid-90s.

Does anyone have a name for this cut?  I could have swore i read something from Wiggins where he called it a step-boom cut.  I've also called it a drive and swerve (DS).

I’m a big believer in footwork and feel that’s an under-emphasized aspect in ultimate training.  If you’re serious about your quickness, you should learn how to properly cut.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the finer points of this specific cut and decided to ask an old teammate, MJ, for his thoughts.

A little about MJ:  I played club with Mike from 2001-2003.  Mike was a college trackstar, has an absurd number of summer league championships, and has coached track, football, and basketball for a long time.  He’s also a certified SAQ coach.  After he got the text message about Pike’s run to semis in 2004, he wrote back saying he was so pumped that he went to the track and ran 200s until he puked, which for him I can only imagine was a lot of 200s.

As an aside, what Tim Morrill is doing is the same type of work MJ did for years.  This type of training is gold, and I would encourage anyone serious about their training to seek out the coaching of an expert like MJ or Tim.

Anyway, enough from me.  Here’s an excerpt from my email exchange with MJ.

Mike, i have a cutting question, and i figured you'd be the most qualified person to ask.  I realize this would be much simpler to explain and ask in person, but hopefully you can follow along.

If i'm sprinting forward 5-10 yards and making a 90 degree cut to my right, i've been wondering on the placement and foot angle of my left foot on the turn.  As i run forward, my toes are pointing north.  As i near my break, i chop my feet still with toes pointed north.  On my break, i jab step with my left foot out to my left and slightly in front of me (at about 10 o'clock) and then step east with my right foot (toes pointed east).  Then accelerate.

My question is on that jab step on my break, should that step be at 10 o'clock?  or 9 or 11 or 12 o'clock?  and should the toes of my left foot be pointed north, north-northeast, northeast-east, or east?

And/or should my penultimate step also start to turn my body right/east?

Hope that makes some sense.

Thanks,
BL

Here's Mike's response.

Hey B-Lo,

Glad you asked. I actually made a living on this cut as a deep threat and possession receiver in football (as you know, they complement each other). It’s a basic 10 yd out or crossing pattern over the middle. The key to that cut (in this case, cutting right on a 10 yard out) is to:

1) Gear down at the closest point to the right angle that you can - this varies person to person, but (this is obvious but worth giving deliberate attention to and drilling in and of itself) the longer you can keep full explosive stride and the quicker you can gear down, the less time your defender will have to respond to your cut. You can drill this by doing sprint-to-stop repeat sets. Run to a line at top speed and work on lowering the hips and digging the balls of your feet into the ground for an abrupt stop. Start at 30 yds and keep shortening that distance. Work on selling the arm swing at full cranking motion. Less than full cranking arms is one defensive key that alerts the defender that you're not really going deep.

2) Think of your right foot as the plant foot - NOT the left. This is counter-intuitive as we tend to think of the outside/opposing-force foot as the foot to plant on. It’s actually both feet working in tandem - but we like to overemphasize the underemphasized to sharpen fundamentals. The right foot should plant at 90 degrees in the direction you're heading in as you turn your hips and widen your arms for balance - THEN, you reach and finish the cut with the left foot to 10:00, it's almost instantaneous, but the right foot definitely plants first on a truly violent cut (think scissors), with the left foot finishing the momentum shift and starting the acceleration east.

3) Yes, you're correct about the left foot extending to 10-11:00, but it’s also important that the left toe be pointing toward 4-5:00 because you'll need that backward force to compensate for your residual forward momentum.

4) Lastly, don't think of it as a 90 degree right angle - think of it as an 80 degree acute angle. If you think of it as a right angle, you're likely to end up on an obtuse angle (10 yard cut to 11-12 yards out - not creating as much separation between you and your defender and giving your defender a chance to sneak underneath the cut for a D). If you think of it as an 11 yard cut to a 9 yard out, you'll end-up at 10 yards with separation.

Hope this helps!

MJ

Gunning for Goliath

So my last post was about how to approach games where your team significantly outmatches your opponent.  But the more interesting question is what to do when your opponent is significantly stronger than you.

If your team is one of those teams that takes themselves seriously, then you probably have goals.  And if those goals are appropriately high, then you probably have a team ahead of you that you need to beat (unless you play for Fury or Revolver).  Maybe your goal is to make the second day of Regionals or make Nationals or make quarters or win everything.  In all divisions, those teams on their respective bubble are wondering how to knock off that team just ahead of them.

Maybe you’re Rhino trying to defy the odds and finish top 2 at Regionals.  Maybe you’re Scandal and you draw Fury in quarters at Nationals.

Now don't get me wrong; maybe you’ve played them tight a few times.  Maybe you’ve even beaten them at a summer tournament.  But how likely are you to beat that team in an elimination game when it matters most and when both teams are focused and peaking?

In games like this, your “A” game can’t beat their “A” game.  Maybe your “A+” game can beat their “A-“ game, and if that’s the case and your teams are that closely matched, then maybe you take your chances and hope things break your way.  But if the disparity is more extreme, then your measures need to be more extreme if you’re gonna bridge that gap.

Going toe-to-toe with a team that has better throwers and better athletes is a sub-optimal strategy.  You need to get the other team off their “A” game.  This should be obvious, but how many teams out there all seem to have the same offensive strategy of try isolate their receivers to make vertical cuts while their handlers dink it back and forth… defensively, it’s man-force flick.  There are plenty of good strategies in there.  Unfortunately there are a bunch of teams out there who are better at it than you are.

Every year in Sarasota, if there’s significant wind, there seems to be a Cinderella story of some team that beats their seed on the back of their zone defense.  Florida in 2000?  Fury’s comeback in 2008 in the finals down 10-1.

Didn’t the Condors take down DoG in 2000 thanks in large part to bringing back the out-of-fashion straight up mark?

Don't let them have their first option all day long.

Defensive adjustments are the most obvious way to try throw a kink in an opponent’s plans, but there are offensive looks that will force the other team to adjust.  Maybe you run a split stack.  Maybe you send your deep cuts from the dump position.  Maybe your incuts down the lane clear laterally to a break cut.

One of my most rewarding ultimate experiences was as the 8 seed in the quarters of British College Nationals and upsetting the 1 seed by running a German offense and a 1-3-2-1 zone (Shout out to the Sussex Mohawks!).

Flip the script and make them think about how they play you.

Take risks.  You’re not gonna get enough wide open cuts against a superior opponent.  Throw some hammers.  Get your team used to throwing hucks that tail to the far corner.  Hang discs to the endzone rather than take a marginal dump throw.  Jump out early on a team, have fun doing it, and let them know you’re having fun doing it.

Which brings me to my last point.  There’s a certain level of gamesmanship that can knock an opponent off their game.  I don’t necessarily recommend all of these tactics, but being loud, talking trash, marking hard, getting physical… even making a ton of travel calls… they’ve certainly been a part of more than a few upsets.  Most teams out there have a narrow comfort zone.  Play outside of it.

Good luck to all the teams in the Series.

Saving Sectionals

So with the fall series about to get underway, I’ve been thinking about how to approach Sectionals.  For many club teams in most sections, Sectionals may offer a good game or two on Sunday, but generally there are a lot of blowouts.  How can you keep days like that from being a complete waste of time?  Wiffleball, Yumball, flutterguts, DDC, bocce…?  All good ideas.  Drilling between games?  Running suicides?  Scrimmaging?  It could work.  It depends on your team.

What I’m wondering about though is how to make the games themselves more worthwhile.  Now, if you don’t have a “worthy fucking adversary,” there’s only so much you can do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get something out of it.  What are good areas to focus on when you outmatch your opponent in every way?

Defense

On defense, if the other team is gonna cough up the disc in 2 passes no matter what defense you throw at them, then it’s probably not that helpful to work on your clam.  Not saying you don’t throw it, but understand you’re not getting tested.  Some defensive things you can work on and/or stress as points of emphasis:

Individual skills.  I like to stress staying focused against weaker opponents.  Pride yourself on keeping your pulls inbounds, getting down on every pull, not getting broken, etc.  Don’t get lazy about switching too much.

Team skills: Again, this can be tough if the other team is terrible.  One of my favorite things to work on against weak opponents is transition defenses.  To help this out, focus more on the transition (i.e. finding matchups quickly) and less on applying pressure with your cup.  Maybe even count out loud, and yell out, “Go man!” when you transition to queue the other team to start cutting.

Offense

Offense is generally easier to work on, and the weaker opponent just means it’s somewhere between a walk through and a scrimmage.

With individual skills, again, try to stress staying focused and not being sloppy.  Can you just get open by running past your slow, overweight defender?  Sure, but pride yourself on still cutting from motion and maximizing gains.

Spacing is great to work on against weaker opponents.  Don't crowd the disc, work to get swings all the way across the field instead of just 25 yards, etc.

Team concepts: Break flow offense, especially the continuation.  Fast break offense.  Set plays.  I like instituting a rule for a half like, “we will always fast break if the disc is on the field proper.”  Or “we always set up and run a play.”

These are just some ideas for team leaders to consider when approaching Sectionals... just don't forget the bocce ball set.

Random Spew on Catching

So Brodie just posted a video about catching.  It got me thinking about writing a post on catching, but without a way to structure a bunch of random thoughts, I just have a mess of ramblings on catching, both obvious and non-obvious.

• Catch the disc however you feel most comfortable.  That said, get comfortable catching the disc in a lot of different ways.
• Actively open your hands and spread your fingers.  I notice as I fatigue, I sometimes don’t open my hands up as wide and am more prone to not take the disc in cleanly.
• Watch the disc all the way into your hands.  It enhances hand-eye coordination to see your hands.  I have a tendency on low passes to reach down without looking down, and the disc is actually out of my field of vision at the point of the catch.

Soft Hands and Claw Catching

• In football, people talk about receivers with soft hand – treating the ball like an egg.  Not as much of an emphasis on this in frisbee, but I remember when I first started using the claw catch (took me a while to get it), watching Billy Rodriguez play and being amazed that I couldn’t hear the disc hitting his hands.
• On the other side of the spectrum, I see a lot of players stab at the disc when they’re claw catching on an incut.  There’s something to be said about being aggressive – attacking the disc and all, but I would prescribe trying to be smoother in bringing your arms up.  Less of a punching motion will decrease the net velocity at which your hands meet the disc, and that will lead to fewer drops.  That fraction of a second your hands are up in front of you also will enhance hand-eye coordination.  On top of that, having your arms up half a second early better shields the disc from the defender, whose arm is gonna be punching into that space at the same time.
• To elaborate on that last point, one advantage of claw catching is your arm and hand is more likely to be in the path of a laying out defender.  If you’re clap catching, the side of the disc is exposed.  If you’re claw catching, the defender has to get an inch further out in front of you or get their hand in between yours to get the disc cleanly.  So claw catching makes it more likely the defender will have to go through you to get their hands on the disc.  Think about how many times you’ve made bids and been an inch away or got your hand on the disc but the receiver still caught it.  These fractions of an inch matter.
• Oh, and claw catching will  make you more likely to square your shoulders to the disc and force you to take a direct line to the disc (which for most, though not all, scenarios is desirable).

Clap Catching

• As for clap catching, i feel more comfortable with my dominant hand on the bottom, which seems less common.  Again, I think you should do what feels right.  Regardless of which hand you have on top, I am a proponent of clap catching the rim, rather than the middle of the disc.  You always hear people saying to attack the disc and catch out in front of you.  Well, if you’re gonna do that, you shouldn’t wait to catch the middle of the disc.  Catch the rim.  This will also speed up your transfer to throwing.  For me, since I catch with my throwing hand on the bottom, the disc is already properly oriented in my hand when I catch (assuming a right side up throw).  But even if my throwing hand is on top, my off hand is on the rim and can facilitate a more secure grip transfer than if it's flat against the bottom.
• To return to the idea of losing sight of the disc, another time the disc passes out of my field of vision is on clap catches to my side.  If you reach to your left at belly height with your right hand on top, your right forearm is actually blocking your vision of the disc.  So I prescribe catching left hand on top when clap catching to your left and vice versa.
• A counter argument to that point I heard recently was from Leon Chou, who was taught by Ricky Chung to lace your thumbs on those side clap catches so the disc doesn’t slide through, which requires right hand on top for left sided catches.

One Hand Catching

• There was a tip on Zip’s tips about catching hammers up high by having your thumb over the top of the rim with the rest of your fingers rather than underneath.  I’ve not had success with this, though i'm not great at catching hammers up high.  I'm curious how many players catch this way.
• When I first started playing someone explained to me the idea of catching the leading edge of the disc v catching the trailing edge of the disc.  Somewhere along the line, I even read an explanation of the physics behind this (written by Mooney?).  Do people still teach this concept?  If you’re gonna catch one handed, you can catch it normally on the leading edge, but if you try catch it on the trailing edge the same way, the disc will spin away from your hand and be harder to catch.  You either have to speed up you arm speed to neutralize the speed of the disc or, as the ever eloquent Jay Brown once told me, “just grip it tight like you’re jerking off.”
• A mistake I see all the time that shows a lack of understanding of the physics here:  someone’s making an angled incut on the open side against a force flick.  The thrower throws an outside in righty flick a bit outside the receiver who reaches out with his left hand and grabs the far side (leading edge) of the disc.  Simple enough.  Where I see this principle applied wrong is when the cutter is making this cut but the force is backhand, so the throw coming out is an inside out backhand.  The receiver still reaches wide with his left hand, but now the wide side of the disc is the trailing edge.  The disc spins out of their hand into their body; if they’re lucky, they just bobble it and recover.  In that situation, the safer and easier spot to catch the disc is the near side.

Phases of Learning - Synthesis

To carry on my thoughts on learning progression, I mentioned 3 phases to learning technique.  If you do a bit of reading on these concepts, you’ll come across different names and different numbers of phases.  When you get beyond those 3 phases, the next step in learning is synthesis.  As one masters a skill and understands a concept, they can then extend those lessons to other scenarios and venues.

If you understand the release angles and corresponding flight paths of a hammer, you can extend those principles to any upside down throw you see or make up.

If your understanding of zone offense goes beyond, “when the disc swings, popper 1 cuts to the line, popper 2 cuts across the middle,” to the point where you understand how to create 2-on-1 matchups and pick on the defense’s weak points, you can extend those principles to any zone strategy and even extend those principles to other sports that feature zone defenses.

That’s the synthesis phase of learning.  What hinders our reaching a higher level of game IQ in our young sport is a lack of coaching and critical thought about how we play.  The simple lack of time working on our sport impedes the depths to which we can learn it.  So we teach the basics.  We (hopefully) tell people where to throw, where to cut.  How to throw, how to cut.

Invest the time to tell people why to throw there and why to cut there.  Teach the Whys.

Why are we running this drill?  Why are we running this play?  Why are we swinging the disc?  Why are we forcing flick?  Why are we running a ho?

We have limited practice time, so it's important for coaches to KISS (keep it short and simple), but plant the seeds for critical thought.  Don't overload a learner with nuance they can't handle or make use of.  It's best to go through any exposition during the drilling phase when you want to encourage the learner to think about and reflect on what they're doing.  But if we take that extra step, a few of our athletes will take it a few more, and maybe our sport will take a few steps forward as well.