First run. Then catch

Pumping arms increases sprint speed

Today's lesson is one that my dad taught me when we were playing catch in the backyard when I was a little kid. I bring this up because it really reinforces to me that this is knowledge that is culturally transmitted. It's not a skill we're born with, but a skill that we can intentionally add to our toolkit. Too often I see players who haven't fully internalized this skill, so I'm writing this article because we need to do a better job of transmitting this knowledge through our culture.

The lesson is: use your arms to run fast before you use your arms to catch. First run, then catch.

Pumping our arms helps us generate power to run fast. If we hold our hands up to prepare to catch a disc, it will slow us down. Generating power with our arms up until the last moment when we reach up and make a catch allows us to reach discs that we wouldn't have been able to if we weren't pumping our arms.

Here are a few clips from the April 22, 2023 game between the Colorado Alpenglow and Los Angeles Astra. Let's start with a positive example of excellent running form. Watch how Colorado's #92, Hannah Filley, takes off deep after a Los Angeles backfield turnover:

This is, in my opinion, near-perfect sprint form. She's using the full range of motion of her arms and legs to generate power, the way all the best sprinters do. Check out how high that rear elbow gets:

Later in the game, however, she also provides our example of what not to do. Watch on this dump cut, as she has her hands up, as if getting ready to catch the pass. The pass ends up just outside of her reach. If she had used her arms to generate a higher running speed from the beginning, she could've caught this disc with ease:

To play devil's advocate on myself, there might have been a few things going on here: I think it's not unreasonable that she had her arms up as the pass was being released. She had created enough separation from the defender that the thrower could've thrown a pass directly to her instead of putting it to space. Perhaps she had her hands up because she was expecting that pass.

(Also in Filley's defense: everything else about the cut was very impressive to me. Elite quickness and power to generate that separation in the first place. The subtle hand signals to communicate with the handler before the cut were also elite.)

Once the disc is in the air, it's also possible that the disc got taken slightly by the wind, and she had to re-adjust when she thought she was about to make a catch. It's hard to tell from the broadcast whether the disc's flight path moved by a few inches. So it's possible it was more an issue of "wasn't able to read the disc correctly" than an issue of lacking the "first run, then catch" instinct.

Although those are possibilities, I've seen a general trend of players reaching out early instead of using their arms to sprint closer to the disc. I can't speak with confidence on what was going through Filley's mind, but I can say that the outcome as it appears on tape is a clear example of what not to do — don't hold your hands up in front of you before the disc arrives if there's still running to be done. First run, then catch.

Postscript

If you've found this helpful, I'll point out that I could write a sequel called first jump, then catch. Use your arm swing to generate power in your jump before you reach up to make the catch.

Edit (2023-04-23):

A friend who reads the blog pointed out that in American football, receivers will drill this skill. For example, watch the clip below of college football players working on this skill (and here's a clip of an NFL receiver doing a similar drill). This is a skill we can develop and ingrain with practice: