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The Shimmy
by Miranda Roth
My favorite move, that is very popular and can be used by any player, is the shimmy flick. This is a move that I was taught at Carleton but is based on principles that I learned in my first sport, basketball. In basketball as a defender, you are always taught to look at the offense's belly-button because that is the hardest part of the body to fake with. You can get faked out if you look at the ball, the player's head, feet or hands, but the belly button's not going anywhere unless the whole player is too. In ultimate, as a thrower, to get the defense to move you have to move your belly button or, more realistically, your hips. To do the shimmy flick, you start squared up to the downfield and you want to move the mark to a right-handed player's left side (to the backhand side) to open up the inside-out forehand lane. So you shimmy your hips to the left without changing your grip. As you shimmy, you're actually winding up for a forehand so as the defender moves to the backhand side, you are preparing to throw a forehand. For more success step out to the forehand side and get low.
As a reference to my coaches, Michael [Baccarini of Paideia] and Tiina [Booth of Amherst], you can always break the mark by getting low. High releases may be fancy and fun, but in bad weather they will be bad throws. The most important thing to breaking the mark is getting low quickly and throwing with lots of zip.
As a team strategy, I think it is important to have some players on the field who can break the mark well and have all players on the field understand the limitations and preferences of every other player so they can cut to the proper place on the field.
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Tuesday, March 9th, 2009 |
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