Steve's thrower/marker drill

I figured any excuse to work out how to post to the blog (seems pretty simple so far!), but before I get onto Steve's Sydney training session on Tuesday night, just thought as an aside I put the question out there....

Who is going to be last to sign up to the Blog?! It looks like 20 out of 24 are in at the moment. By my reckoning, Dan, Mike, Lavis and Tats. (The internet did make it to Newcastle didn't it?)

Lavis is probably the bookies pick (now that Gus has been scratched), but I'll go a cheeky 10 shinies on Mikey!

Btw, Tats, I'd be interested to hear about your massive cycling mission.

Anyway, back to Tuesday...
In attendance: 14 incl 2 gimps - good effort gimps, cos castle hill is a LONG way out there (Gus had always wanted to know where the Hills district actually was!)
Timae, Steve, Gus, Matt, Wavy, Pete, Tubs, Gav (G2), Ant (G3) - (Kenny's G1 jersey has been retired!)
Pete L, Yorst & Tim from Fakulti, Charlie B from Masters, Tom T from Barefoot/juniors.

The thrower/marker drill involved 2 lines of 4 throwers facing each other with a marker between each pair. For the first 5 seconds of the stall count, the markers had to have their hands behind their backs and the throwers couldn't throw, only pivot. The markers had to concentrate on keeping their legs "under them" ie not too far apart - about shoulder width - so they could quickly react to the pivoting and move side to side. Once 5 seconds had passed it became like a normal thrower/marker drill. After marking the throwing moved to the line on the opposite side and to the thrower in the next pair along. When you got to the end you became the next thrower in the line and eventually another thrower would join opposite you and the flow of markers would come along. So the lines gradually moved down the field in the same direction and to go through a full rotation meant you did 6 marks each before becoming a thrower again. There was 2 or 3 rotations until we go to the other end.

We then had a break and talked about it and Steve emphasised that the mark needed to get closer to the thrower, with a bit of bump and grind, and cause more pressure. So we did it again.

Except this time, instead of rotating diagonally to one of the throwers in the next pair, the marker had to go straight across field to the other thrower in the same pair before going diagonally on every second rotation. This meant that instead of marking only 6 times, we marked all 12 people before becoming a thrower again.

Normally in a thrower/marker drill, you mark for about 2 or 3 seconds before the throw goes out. This drill however, meant that was more like 7 or 8 seconds. Doing that 12 times in a row is a great quad-burner let me tell you! Similarly, as a thrower you would normally only have to pivot briefly, but with the marker not being able to use their arms for 5, you felt obliged to pivot widely and continuously to get them moving - so it was almost as tough being the thrower.

All in all a great workout and great practice at generating and maintaining a strong and aggressive mark. Something that Steve said is emphasised more in the US. Good practice throwing against a hard mark - a crucial skill for us to have at Worlds!

I highly recommend people trying to recreate this drill at your Nats team's training if you can.

Thanks Steve!

Wavy