It rained for practice today.
Yay? I'm not sure. Attendance was far from perfect, and, for the most part, all those who were in attendance had played in Summer League Finals yesterday (PADA/Wudi) and/or today (PADA) and were unreasonably whiny.
I did myself a favor this morning and started stretching as soon as I got out of bed. It improved my practice experience by a ton. I stretched for about 30 minutes this morning and then did some stretching in the evening as well.
We played 3 scrimmages, and we (the d-team) lost each. I can't remember what this puts my record at, so I'll just start over at 0-3. That kinda stunk. We had crazy drops int he rain, including one that I dropped well after I caught it. All that I could think was "Well, that never happened before so it won't happen again" and move on.
My throws/pulls felt really solid in the rain/wind/cold, which was a good sign. I think a good goal for me will be to make sure I get out and throw in "conditions" as the series approaches. It helps remove the adjustment period (however brief) when I play in non-optimal weather. This weekend's finals and practice were all in either wind or wind and rain. I love that weather. It separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
The other thing is that the errors that are occurring now are the sort that just require more team-level familiarity. This is a good thing. There will be no more turnover in the roster now, so we can just learn to play together. Fine-tune the split-second decisions. We've got the basic concepts and forms down, now we've got to work on our improvisational skills.
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Workout Total:
3 hours ultimate
30 min stretching x2
Sunday, August 19
Practice
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2 comments:
How do you muster the steel to go out and throw in "conditions"? And, more importantly, how do you convince others to man up and throw with you? Rain and cold really kill me, when combined.
It's not really hard for me as an individual. I just think to myself "I won't die out here, and honestly this temporarily unpleasant experience will make me a better player."
As for getting other people to join me... that's harder. I can only do so much! That's why any healthy obsessive owns at least 20 discs. In my case, 20 discs and some method of hearing music no matter the weather. This can just be my awesomely light Patagonia rainjacket with a little iPod shuffle.
Fill head with images of perfect form and perfect throws, brave the weather knowing you've got a nice apartment waiting for you, go out and recreate/reinact that image in your head over and over again.
This year I've retooled the backhand a bit to improve my soft OI huck. I've got a specific image of another player's form in my head and I can feel when I match it in the ease with which the disc carries and then drops to the right (OI). When I don't match it, I mess up more often, but not always. Out in the rain or wind is a great time to narrow your focus mentally (really imitating that form!) in adverse conditions to get that point where the "conditions" just melt away and you're dialed in.
Then again, as I've mentioned, I'm a strange guy. I'm also obsessively competitive.
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