Intro to Fidgets

Fidgets are hand skills performed with our discs for a few reasons:

  1. to look cool
  2. to get more familiar and comfortable with discs
  3. to improve the confidence

Fidgets Make You Look Cool!

Whether you are standing around leaning up against a pole spinning a disc over your knuckles or you are popping a disc over your thumb during your routine, fidgets can really add some flash to otherwise pedestrian moves.

When adding fidgets to your routine a few things must be kept in mind. They are not really that cool when it comes to scoring. Some judges will be swayed by a cool fidget here and there, but just whipping out fidgets on every single move is not guaranteed to give you a monster throwing score from judges. In fact, fidgets can be over done and they can get in the way of a good score.

Also, while fidgets may or may not add additional points to you as a thrower or to your routine’s ability to wow people, they almost surely add to the probability that you will make a mistake. A missed fidget looks terrible, especially if the trick the fidget was added to in order to enhance it’s coolness doesn’t go off because the disc fell out of your hand.

Fidgets should be added to your routine rather sparingly and should be 100% effective to make sure you don’t look silly and lose the ability to perform moves that the judges are actually paying a ton of attention to. They should also be used in conjunction with your moves or throws, the closer they are to the action, the more likelihood they have of improving your score.

Another place we can add fidgets to our routine are on set up moves and during times of not much action like when the dog is retrieving.

Fidgets Help You Get Comfortable

If you have seen Tiger Woods repetitively bounce a golf ball on his 9 iron, you’ve seen baseball players playing around with baseballs in the dugout, soccer players juggling, or football quarterbacks or basketball players spinning, dribbling or otherwise messing around with the ball, you are already familiar with fidgets.

In all sports, these things are done to make the players look and feel cool as well as to gain familiarity with the tools of the trade and to be able to comfortably handle adverse situations.

Fidgets Can Improve Confidence

Doing awesome things with discs in your hands can make you far more confident in your throwing ability. Because you know you look cool and because you are familiar with the tools of the trade, your confidence and competence can definitely bump up.

Tricks to the Trick

When it comes to fidgets there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Fidgets almost always catch themselves. Rarely are you going to aggressively go after the actual catch of a fidget. Almost always, the fidgets wind up rolling into the catch on their own accord. Patience is a necessity with fidgets. Nothing will make a fidget fail like being too anxious to catch the disc.

Fidgets almost always are lazy and gentle skills. Fidgets are not twitchy, aggressive skills. even though they might look like it. They don’t require a ton of power or speed. Once you are competent with a fidget you can try to do them very aggressively and bump up the speed. When learning fidgets be very soft and gentle.

Don’t repeat failure. If you are having serious problems with a particular fidget, give it a rest and do something you are good at for a while. Fidgets are most likely to happen if you are feeling good and are building on success.

Left Hand is Money

You’re going to have to trust me on this, as you surely will not believe it until it happens.

As soon as you get a fidget working, or almost get it working, try it in your Left hand (off hand). People I work with shudder at the thought of trying to do fidgets in their left hand, as it seems impossible, but the Left hand is often easier than the right because there are not decades of garbage – writing, catching, throwing, typing – our strong hands already know how to do these skills, and that historical knowledge can really get in the way of learning new skills.

Another benefit of the left hand comes in the form of bolstered confidence. If you accomplish a fidget in the left hand, or even come close to accomplishing it in the left hand, when it goes back into the strong hand, it will feel much easier.

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Responses

  1. I find fidgets to be most helpful right before my round at a competition. The announcer has called me to the field, but inevitably the judges or time keeper or music isn’t ready. By doing disc fidgets during this time, I keep loose, keep myself from getting in my head (nervousness) and hopefully look somewhat cool for the crowd as they wait for the round to begin. It definitely boosts my confidence before a round.

    1. I feel the same Jack. There’s really something to be said about expelling nervous or anxious energy via an activity that makes you look and feel cool.

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