Concept 1 – Flashing to seal off the breakside. 

Key Point: When you realise your player is going to get the disc, you need flash to cover the easy continuation onto the breakside.

This involves moving away from your mark and reducing the angle to the around throwing lane before recovering and moving back to a conventional forcing distance.

This does give away the early stall inside flick but this is much harder to complete in flow and will give the downfiel defence a chance to make a play.

Critical Mistake: Approaching your player to attempt to apply the force

Link: https://www.ultiplays.com/shares/vDReKbV4aJu8p82Qqe6W

Correct Outcome: An early flash into the lane

Link: https://www.ultiplays.com/shares/jnK45WardZiM9MBrj3PK

By moving away from the thrower once you realise they will catch the disc, you are disrupting their ability to continue with flow and keeping the disc stationary for longer helps downfield cutters adjust their position.

The main focus in this drill is sealing off the breakside for the next throw to force the disc back to the middle.

Drill 1: Sealing the breakside

The main idea of this drill is the defender backing away to seal off the breakside once the disc goes up. The defender is deliberately not trying to get blocks on the disc as it swings across. The next cutter should set up their cut by making a cut onto the breakside, which is what the previous defender is sealing off.

Link: https://www.ultiplays.com/shares/wOe1Nl7nrYS6K6vVPbwE

Coaching Points:
Start the drill without the throwing attempting to make downfield passess.
Once players have the hang of the concept encourage players to throw the break pass if the force doesn’t seal well enough just to prove the point.

Concept 2: Orbiting in the downfield space

The difficulty of forcing middle is how the downfield defenders position. 

These drills will only focus on orbiting to unders and wont consider deeps as I think generally defending unders makes the biggest difference, especially at uni level.

The main thing to consider as a downfield defender is making sure you are positioned between the player you are defending and the easy throwing space. This is not necessarily putting yourself on the openside of your defender.

Drill 2: Orbiting to unders

Link: https://www.ultiplays.com/shares/knb4193mJDi3X3ynRvkB

To set up this drill, the force needs to remain in one direction, and the player is orbiting into and out of the strong space as the disc swings across.

Groups of 4

The forces need to allow the disc to swing across and are just providing a reference point for the downfield defender.

Focus: The downfield defender wants to try and keep vision of both the person they are defending and the disc. If they need to lose vision of one person they should keep their player in vision and accept a lack of vision on the disc.

The downfield defender wants to try and avoid just standing with their back to the disc and face guarding their player as they will not be able to cover handler led throws. Instead they should be trying to orbit to a side position to keep view of the disc and regain athletic stance into the active space.

Drill 3: Orbiting on moving players

Taking this idea further onto cutters who are moving as the disc is also changing position on the field

Link: https://www.ultiplays.com/shares/Vnk9O2ePwYhK5K8bprJK

The idea behind this is that cutters have to adjust their position on a moving defender. 

Coaching points:
The way I have set the drill up before is that throwers can throw the disc on any of the unders, and as such the defender needs to focus on putting themselves between the thrower and the disc on these 2 under cuts.
You may want to encourage a couple of run throughs first so players focus on positioning before you allow the disc to be thrown in the middle of the drill.
You could expand this by making the cutter run forward through the slalom and then backwards to keep the defender working longer.