Tao of Disc Dog | There is No Faking Flow

FlowFlow is a key component of the modern day disc dog game. Keeping your dog moving with seamless, ever moving and flowing sequences with little to no set up time is the goal... More is about more than keeping it moving or moving fast. Glaciers can flow. Rockslides can flow. Sand flows through the hourglass. The smoother and more flexible the stuff, the more flexible and fluid the flow. Such is the Way of things that flow.

Everyone should be shooting for water:

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

~ Bruce Lee

The Tao of DiscDog seeks to create that granular flow, the ability to be like water in thought and action. There are many ways, methodologies and tools for moving water; paddles, wheels, tubes, walls, channels, plugs, gravity, throwing big stones, propellers, a straw, etc.

These are like martial arts styles from silly to legit, and they represent all the various types of techniques and physical processes that can be use to make water flow.

Styles are metaphors, analogs and frameworks of quality play. They often conceal important basic physical principles that exist whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. Styles are loaded with hidden mechanisms, actions, reactions, and overlap – like the paddle and a propeller.

Flow is being intimately familiar with the basics of the game: how do we move and work together to set up getting the thing? “How we work together to set up the thing” is the Way of Freestyle. It’s ultimately what we’re doing and what is happening out there. Everything else is just fanciness and a finish to good work.

Chasing tricks and scores mistakes fanciness for utility. The fancy tools are not able to be used if you don’t know how to set them up, measure, and use them. If you know the details of the work you can use the fancy tools with ease to great ends.

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Try moving your boat with a plug, tube, and gravity or transfer water from one tub to another with a propeller. Not much flow going to happen in those two situations and odds are you won’t look very cool trying to do it either.

To flow, knowing the Way of Things comes before tool selection and trick performance.

Excerpt from the Tao of Disc Dog
By Ron Watson