Saturday, December 19, 2015

"The Unstopable Drag Flickers". Are They?

The notable drag flicker's in the world are Chris Cirello (Australia), Mink Van Der Weerden (Holland), and the young Gonzalo Peillat from Argentina.

What this drag flickers common features in their movement is when dragging the ball they can deceive the Goalkeepers.

From the video below we can see how Peillat's drag flick beat Jaap Stockman with ease, not once, but twice in Argentina versus Holland game in the recent World Hockey League Finals in Raipur, India.

Jaap Stockman, the Dutch Goalkeeper is regarded as the best Goalkeeper in the world. And even a man of his status can't stop Peillat's drag flick.Why?

What Peillat has created is two frames in his movement dragging the ball into the goal.

The first frame is Peillet's footwork, arm, and hockey stick, and the second frame is the trunk and hip rotation that decides when and where to release the ball that is moving on the shaft of the hockey stick

Peillat's first movement into the ball made Stockman anticipate the ball was coming to the left, his whole body weight moved to the left foot, and when the second movement took place, Stockman didn't have enough time to react to stretch his right leg to save the ball.

Brain scientists have concluded that our brains can't handle 2 tasks at the same time.
( A simple test you can do for yourself to determine whether the brain can do two tasks at the same time is by placing your index fingers parallel to each other. Then move your right finger in a clockwise motion and the left finger in an anti-clockwise motion at the same time). Can you?

Let's look at what they do in tennis where the average speed of a professional tennis player serve is 225KM/H. 

The fastest serve in the tennis world is Sam Groth from Australia, with a speed of 263KM/H.In hockey, the fastest drag-flicker recorded is Sandeep Singh from India with a time of 145KM/H.

For top tennis players, only looking at the racquet and the arm gives them very little information about the future path of the ball. And with such a speed of the service, even if you have the fastest reaction time in history, you still would not have made contact with the ball.

Although in hockey the drag-flicker does a deceiving movement before he releases the ball, experts in the biomechanics field will know where to look and the meaning of what they are looking at.

Professor Mark Williams. an expert in motor behavior and arguably the world's leading expert on perceptual expertise, has put it clear that extracting information is all about looking at the subtle patterns of movements and postural clues.

National Hockey coaches must submit video clips of top drag-flickers after every major tournament to the biomechanics department for analysis, even if your team has not participated in that tournament.

This advance information extracted from analyzing the drag-flickers will give the Goalkeepers the time to react after recognizing familiar patterns and perceptual information.

Thank You.


watch closely Peillat's trunk, hip rotation, and the ball that is moving on the shaft of his hockey stick.
                                                
                         Video 1: Peillat's first goal





Look closely at Stockman's body weight moving to 
the left. Then trying to stretch his right leg. (too late to save the ball)

Video 2: Peillat's second goal



























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