I headed to the playing fields local to me to try my hand at flag american football on Saturday. Felt weird going to a practice with cleats but no disc.
Got there a bit early and sat around waiting for a little while.
When the others started turning up it immediately felt like an ultimate practice.
People were late, the whole team didn't turn up but the atmosphere was friendly and it was an enjoyable practice.
We started with some throwing and catching, just like ultimate, a short warmup (not long enough for me) and then running routes. I watch a lot of NFL and play a lot of Madden so I knew the routes but it was interesting to learn some stuff that I didn't know before, like putting the inside foot on the line of scrimmage. I started catching a few and dropping a few and it felt pretty difficult catching the ball, until I was leant a pair of wide receiver gloves. They are INCREDIBLE! I caught almost every ball thrown my way for the rest of the session. I am going to find a pair for ultimate if only to see how good they can be.
After running routes we played bulldog with the flag belts on. Pretty fun and a good drill for learning the basics of tackling (pulling the flags) on defense.
After that we did a drill/practice game with 4 defenders, 2 receivers and a quarterback to practice the basics of zone defense and some more route running on offense. The qb changed between a couple of guys as there were a few new guys including myself and some of the other players never played qb for their team but the defenders and receivers switched around after every drive.
Then we moved on to 3 defenders, 3 receivers to practice man defense in another practice game.
All in all I really enjoyed it. I will definitely be going to all the practices I can get to and if it's possible with timings I will try and play both flag football and ultimate next season (though I will focus on ultimate).
I think I impressed as well. I got 2 Interceptions in the practices, one in the zone defense scrimmage, one in the man defense scrimmage and was close to another couple. I also caught 2 touchdowns and was close to another.
I think I impressed as with my experience with ultimate and all it's transferrable skills I felt really confident (as soon as I had the gloves on and was catching the ball). I think they were quite eager to get me back and were asking about the ultimate season and trying to work out whether it overlapped with their season at all.
They went to the playoffs last year so it seems like they'd be at a pretty good level and this practice was without their #1 qb so it will probably get better from here.
I really felt it on Sunday though, I already said I thought the warmup wasn't long enough and I haven't played any ultimate in a couple of weeks so Sunday I felt pretty stiff in my groin and my arms. I'm wondering if my arms were stiff because a football is that much heavier to throw and catch and also uses a different range of motion on throws. Just goes to show how much actual practice and running cuts does for fitness as opposed to just gym/track etc.
Back to fitness this week.
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