Wednesday, February 15, 2006
In defense of good throwing fakes.
This will be my last throwing-specific post for a bit.
A lot of people don’t make effective throwing fakes. The classic poor faking technique is people who pivot all the way out, fake forehand, pivot all the way out, fake backhand, and so on. The idea at the core is solid – to get your marker moving the wrong way in order to open up the throw you want. There are a couple problems, however:
1) Most people who fake this way aren’t doing it in order to set up a particular throw to a particular place. In fact, faking this way can cause you to miss an open throw because you are faking the wrong throw, and you don’t have time to get to the right throw.
2) Against a good marker, this approach is not terribly effective. You are extending way out to fake. Your marker, on the other hand, has the advantage of being able to move both feet, and can move back to the middle just as quickly as you do. A good marker can just go back and forth with you.
If you have “Stacked”, watch the first clip in the “fakes” highlight reel for a classic example of this sort of “bad” faking. A Fury player catches the disc on the sideline against the zone. She throws a forehand fake, backhand fake, and forehand fake, to nobody in particular. Then Liz Penny comes in to set the trap. Another forehand fake and backhand fake barely move Liz at all. Finally the thrower just drops a dying quail of a high-release backhand over the mark and back to JD. It gets the job done, so I have no problem with the throw. But the point is, the previous five fakes did literally nothing to help the thrower get off the throw she ultimately used. She may as well have just stood still until she put up the high-release.
Basically, the only times a good thrower should be making a full pivot and throw fake are:
- when you’re setting up a big throw against a very aggressive marker who’s trying to block too much. The big fake will get an overaggressive marker to move way out, and open up the huck from the other side.
- when you’re trying to move a defender other than the marker. Sometimes a deeper zone defender will turn their hips or dive due to a full throwing fake, which can open things up behind them.
A weaker thrower can also sometimes use a full throw fake to set up a dump throw, especially if the marker is overaggressive (angling for a point block on the new player). Also, big pivot fakes of this sort are sometimes the only sort of fake a new player really understands how to do. But generally, this sort of fake is not too effective. It just takes too long to recover from.
Now, Al and Idris both claim to not fake at all. Well, Idris admits to faking, but only in the sense that it is a throw that he does not release. There’s no motion before the throw if he’s not at least considering throwing it. Obviously, these are a couple of the game’s best throwers, so there is something to what they say.
But as a way to teach people to break the mark, I think this overstates things. If you have great pivoting, great extension, great balance, and a fast release, you’re going to be able to break a lot of marks without throwing fakes, sure. But proper faking can allow you to still throw in rhythm, and can do a lot to open up your breakmark throws.
Unless you’re breaking using a quick-release or flip under or over the marker’s hands, breaking the mark comes down to being more balanced than the marker. As a thrower, you are trying to make the marker fail to react in time to your pivot and throw. A well-balanced marker can stay with you on pivot after pivot – again, they can move both feet and you can’t. But get them leaning the wrong way while you’re moving the other way, and it’s all over. So a great fake, to me, is a quick motion that forces your marker to commit to stop the wrong throw, without making you shift your weight too far off center. If you have to go all the way out, then the marker has time to get back along with you. In stead, you want the marker to shuffle all the way out to defense your throw while you are already going back the other way.
A perfect example of a good fake is this clip of Shank from Furious. After Shank catches it, he has a cutter moving breakmark. He has to get the disc to a specific spot at a specific time – he knows it and his marker (who takes a peek at the cut) knows it too. Shank throws a quick abbreviated forehand fake, twisting his shoulders and loading his weight on that side, before coming across to break with an inside backhand.
Watch it frame-by-frame. Shank pivots out to the forehand side for just three frames. He is back to the middle by the fifth frame, fully pivoted to the backhand side by the twelfth frame, and releasing the disc on the fourteenth frame. Meanwhile, the marker only STARTS moving with the fake in the third frame (just as Shank starts coming back), and spends the next eight frames moving the wrong way. I could point out at least two or three other video examples of Shank using this exact same fake and throw to great effect.
Now, Shank probably breaks this guy even if he had been moving the right way for those eight frames. His extension is so good and his release is so fast that the mark has basically no prayer unless he just camps out on the inside backhand. But for the rest of us, that sort of temporal advantage is pretty huge. The key is to make the fake believable (i.e. looks just like the beginning of your throwing motion) while it is abbreviated enough to allow you to quickly come back the other way.
A lot of people don’t make effective throwing fakes. The classic poor faking technique is people who pivot all the way out, fake forehand, pivot all the way out, fake backhand, and so on. The idea at the core is solid – to get your marker moving the wrong way in order to open up the throw you want. There are a couple problems, however:
1) Most people who fake this way aren’t doing it in order to set up a particular throw to a particular place. In fact, faking this way can cause you to miss an open throw because you are faking the wrong throw, and you don’t have time to get to the right throw.
2) Against a good marker, this approach is not terribly effective. You are extending way out to fake. Your marker, on the other hand, has the advantage of being able to move both feet, and can move back to the middle just as quickly as you do. A good marker can just go back and forth with you.
If you have “Stacked”, watch the first clip in the “fakes” highlight reel for a classic example of this sort of “bad” faking. A Fury player catches the disc on the sideline against the zone. She throws a forehand fake, backhand fake, and forehand fake, to nobody in particular. Then Liz Penny comes in to set the trap. Another forehand fake and backhand fake barely move Liz at all. Finally the thrower just drops a dying quail of a high-release backhand over the mark and back to JD. It gets the job done, so I have no problem with the throw. But the point is, the previous five fakes did literally nothing to help the thrower get off the throw she ultimately used. She may as well have just stood still until she put up the high-release.
Basically, the only times a good thrower should be making a full pivot and throw fake are:
- when you’re setting up a big throw against a very aggressive marker who’s trying to block too much. The big fake will get an overaggressive marker to move way out, and open up the huck from the other side.
- when you’re trying to move a defender other than the marker. Sometimes a deeper zone defender will turn their hips or dive due to a full throwing fake, which can open things up behind them.
A weaker thrower can also sometimes use a full throw fake to set up a dump throw, especially if the marker is overaggressive (angling for a point block on the new player). Also, big pivot fakes of this sort are sometimes the only sort of fake a new player really understands how to do. But generally, this sort of fake is not too effective. It just takes too long to recover from.
Now, Al and Idris both claim to not fake at all. Well, Idris admits to faking, but only in the sense that it is a throw that he does not release. There’s no motion before the throw if he’s not at least considering throwing it. Obviously, these are a couple of the game’s best throwers, so there is something to what they say.
But as a way to teach people to break the mark, I think this overstates things. If you have great pivoting, great extension, great balance, and a fast release, you’re going to be able to break a lot of marks without throwing fakes, sure. But proper faking can allow you to still throw in rhythm, and can do a lot to open up your breakmark throws.
Unless you’re breaking using a quick-release or flip under or over the marker’s hands, breaking the mark comes down to being more balanced than the marker. As a thrower, you are trying to make the marker fail to react in time to your pivot and throw. A well-balanced marker can stay with you on pivot after pivot – again, they can move both feet and you can’t. But get them leaning the wrong way while you’re moving the other way, and it’s all over. So a great fake, to me, is a quick motion that forces your marker to commit to stop the wrong throw, without making you shift your weight too far off center. If you have to go all the way out, then the marker has time to get back along with you. In stead, you want the marker to shuffle all the way out to defense your throw while you are already going back the other way.
A perfect example of a good fake is this clip of Shank from Furious. After Shank catches it, he has a cutter moving breakmark. He has to get the disc to a specific spot at a specific time – he knows it and his marker (who takes a peek at the cut) knows it too. Shank throws a quick abbreviated forehand fake, twisting his shoulders and loading his weight on that side, before coming across to break with an inside backhand.
Watch it frame-by-frame. Shank pivots out to the forehand side for just three frames. He is back to the middle by the fifth frame, fully pivoted to the backhand side by the twelfth frame, and releasing the disc on the fourteenth frame. Meanwhile, the marker only STARTS moving with the fake in the third frame (just as Shank starts coming back), and spends the next eight frames moving the wrong way. I could point out at least two or three other video examples of Shank using this exact same fake and throw to great effect.
Now, Shank probably breaks this guy even if he had been moving the right way for those eight frames. His extension is so good and his release is so fast that the mark has basically no prayer unless he just camps out on the inside backhand. But for the rest of us, that sort of temporal advantage is pretty huge. The key is to make the fake believable (i.e. looks just like the beginning of your throwing motion) while it is abbreviated enough to allow you to quickly come back the other way.
# posted by Tarr : 2/15/2006 01:22:00 PM
