How many times have you been in a huddle during halftime and you heard “let’s stop dropping” or “no more drops the rest of the game’?

For me, I’ve heard it many times on teams all the way from first time players to some of the best teams in the world.

Why does this keep happening? Granted we can’t ensure that drops won’t ever happen, but I think I know a way to reduce the amount of drops considerably.

A few years ago when I was coaching the Calgary Juniors Ultimate with my friend Leah, we were running a drill at practice and a lot of the kids were dropping. We told them for every drop they had, they had to do pushups at the end of the drill. Right away, they stopped dropping because they were now focusing on not dropping.

But we felt that we needed to go one step further. Instead of teaching them the importance of not dropping, we saw the value in flipping the perspective around and focus on the end goal we really wanted, which was, to catch.

So, “don’t drop” became “just catch”.

It’s a simple flip of how we framed their thinking but it had a powerful effect. It allows players to be more hungry for the disc. Instead of running towards the throw thinking “don’t drop, don’t drop”, they instead are focused on “just catch, just catch” and will attack the disc because their goal is to catch the disc!

What we think, we become.

Try it next time you are coaching or giving a halftime talk. It will also immediately put the power in their hands instead of you sounding like a coaching harping on them to “not drop”, you instead become a motivator to “just catch” and they now have a clear idea about what their role as a receiver is.