Handblocks!

So after however many years of never, ever getting a handblock, all of a sudden I'm finding I'm getting them with alarming regularity. Once every two games or so, more if I'm playing pickup. And for the life of me, I could never figure out why. I don't recall making any conscious changes to my marking, I never got told "do it this way" and I didn't watch any videos/read any blogs. It just kinda...well, happened.

But I got to thinking about it and what I do now as opposed to what I did, say, two years ago. Two years ago on the mark, I'd simply look to contain. Keep the force and trust the upfield kids to do the rest. Over time I've made small adjustments and it seems as if all the pieces have now fallen into place.

1) Usually I start the stall count about two metres back to stop any "flow" passes. I stand up tall in front of the thrower (or slightly to the break side) and put my arms wide. This is to, quite literally, get in their way so they can't see past me. Also useful for taking away the early huck option.

2) By stall 3 I've come in right to their hip and have my arms out wide. I stand square on their hip, crouched and on my toes. I'm still a bit lazy at this point, but by 4 or 5 I'm very close and aggressive on the mark. Being big helps at this point because of an intimidation factor - as the count gets higher and the thrower becomes more anxious, I'm becoming more hectic.

3) I'm never looking at the thrower's face or the disc itself. Until about stall 6 my focus is slightly upfield to see if there are any cuts coming in. I also look at the thrower's arm - a lot of people don't have their wrist cocked on fakes, only on actual throws.

4) A really bad habit I used to have (and sometimes still do) is swiping at the disc on the throw rather than simply sliding my hand out in front of the disc. This irritates the shit out of me if I see the throw coming, but miss the swipe or get a fingertip on top of the disc without altering the flight too much.

5) When I get to stall 6 or 7, the thrower is usually looking for their dump. I go back to standing straight to block their vision again, and if I can see the dump cut in my peripheral vision, I'll shuffle around to follow them. If the dump is in close, I sometimes reach out on the thrower's opposite side and swipe my hand in front of the disc to distract the thrower.

6) By 8, I shuffle back out to about a metre or two directly in front of the thrower and return to the stand-tall-arms-out position to once again discourage the huck. About now I'll bite heavily on any fake because it's almost certainly going to be a throw.

7) I make a really conscious effort not to fast count at 9 and 10 and undo all my work. Instead I just keep the tempo of my count and if they don't have the throw off by the 't' in 'ten', I call stall after I finished the count rather than going "nine...teSTALL".


I'm always looking to get rid of bad habits and often make small adjustments to things I do and use "learn by doing"/"trial and error" to reinforce new changes. This is something that works for me, but I couldn't guarantee that for anyone else. In tune with that, I'm trying to eliminate a lot of tactical bad habits (eg: where to cut) by playing with new teams this year. I'm back playing Albert Park with OK Campers in Division 2, and after the unfortunate withdrawl of BUUF from this season of G-League, I'm looking to hook up with a new team there.