Quick answer. Separate learning the movement from specialising in it. Picking the ball up behind you and drag-pushing it is something young players can start early. Building a penalty corner weapon is a job for around fifteen or sixteen, and the coaches here give that as opinion rather than as a rule. On the back, the message is consistent: the load lands on the spine when the technique makes it, so fix the faults rather than capping the reps. Let the ball roll along the stick, sit low through the hips instead of bending the back, and never flick when the player is tired, because that is when the compensations start. And be honest about what nobody on this site will tell you, which is a safe number of flicks per session.
That is the short version. Here is what the coaches actually say, and where they stop.
The load goes to the back when the body stops sharing it. John Goldberg puts the mechanism plainly in Developing Elite Drag Flickers: “if you don’t let the ball roll on your stick, you’re going to have to compensate too much with, for example, your shoulder or your wrist. And it’s just not good. The body is not really made for that, so we need to use as much body parts as we can.” That is the whole safety argument in one sentence. A flick that recruits the legs, the hips and the trunk asks less of any single joint than one that does not.
Sit lower, and shorten the last step. Goldberg’s own adjustment is worth trying before anything else: “by making this step a little bit shorter, but by getting more, sitting down, so still getting so low, the advantage of that is that you use your right foot and your right leg a little bit more. So it, one, protects your body, and two, gives you extra balance slash explosivity.” For juniors he goes further, and it is about hips rather than spine: “especially for the kids, number one is really flexibility, and having that part really lean, and you need to be able to go down without using too much of your back.”
The mechanism, from a strength coach’s side. Phil Moreland’s pre-season masterclass gives the only explicit lumbar-spine statement in the archive, and it came from movement screening rather than theory: “we noticed really tight hips. They had poor thoracic rotation and extension, and that’s really important particularly for our drag flickers. If our drag flickers can’t get good thoracic rotation and can’t get good thoracic extension, then they’re going to put a lot more pressure through their lumbar spine and through their lower back.” If your flicker is stiff through the upper back and hips, the flick will find the give somewhere, and it will be lower down.
Two faults Goldberg treats as stop signs. The first is a left foot that finishes behind the right: “if you see a kid where his left foot ends up here at the back, you need to stop.” The second is a closed left foot on the last step: “if their left foot at the last step is completely closed, the rotation is not going to be possible, and that’s an absolute no go, and that is dangerous.” Both are about rotation. Take the rotation away and something else has to twist.
Fatigue is the risk, not the repetition. Asked directly whether he caps the number of flicks per session, Goldberg declines to give a number and gives a rule instead: “it depends from athlete to athlete”, then “the more you can do, the better, but not when you’re fatigued, then it becomes a bit dangerous”, and “when they start to feel something or get fatigued, for me, that’s the alarm to say watch out”. His only figure is a ceiling for a tired player, not a session cap: after a physical session, “do three, four, or five. But don’t, on that moment, when you’re tired and you’re hurt, don’t go for 50 flicks.”
Learning it early is not the same as specialising early. Justin Reid-Ross draws that line clearly in his drag flick session, and offers it as his own view rather than as guidance: “I don’t think it makes much sense to be a specialist drag flicker at age 13 or 14 even, because I don’t think you have enough power and I don’t think you have enough technique at that stage to be a credible threat at a penalty corner.” His timing is “around the end of 14, 15, going into 16”. Note that his reasoning is about being useful at a corner, not about injury. On starting earlier he is relaxed, as long as it is the movement rather than the weapon: “it’s literally learning the technique of carrying the ball on your stick and then making the push pass.”
A sensible first version for young players. Ross Gilham-Jones of Leap Hockey suggests the same staged approach from the grip side in Essential Grip Skills: “teaching the drag flick to the younger age group, just getting them to pick the ball up from behind them to start with, and drag pushing it, is a great way to start.” Adam Falla adds why the grip needs its own attention: the drag flick grip “is quite unique in the game. It’s not really a grip that’s repeated in many other skills.”
What the strength coach actually watches, and it is not the back. Matthew Eyles was asked directly about specialist positions in Injury Reduction Training Methods, and his answer is groin and hip: “we tend to monitor the groin strength of the drag flickers a little bit closer.” He adds rotational work in the gym, extra hip and groin work, and mobility rather than only strengthening. Across a long session on injury reduction he never raises the lower back for flickers at all, which is worth knowing when you read confident claims about drag flicking and backs.
Train it high, because bad technique cannot hide there. Goldberg uses height as a diagnostic rather than a target: “training high is actually really good because it gives you a lot of info on your technique, and you can’t flick good high if your technique is not good, but you can flick good low if your technique is not perfect.”
Then make it a contest. His session shape is simple and easy to copy: “what I like to do is starting only with technique, then put technique and competitive together, and then finish only with competitive.” Reid-Ross’s version of the volume question is about habit rather than load: “ten minutes before training, ten minutes after training, or flicking ten balls, you’re really then taking a step to doing more than somebody else.”
Where this page stops, deliberately. Two things are worth saying plainly. First, nobody in our archive names an age at which drag flicking becomes safe. Reid-Ross’s numbers are about being a useful corner option, and the one reference to puberty is Goldberg relaying a mentor’s opinion. Second, nobody gives a safe number of flicks. If a coach hands you either figure with confidence, ask where it came from. And when a player reports pain, treat that as a medical question rather than a technique question. Eyles’s answer when asked about an injury was the right one: “find a physio. That’s my first piece of advice.”
None of this is a programme. What these coaches give you is a way of watching a young flicker, so you can tell whether the movement is sharing the load or dumping it in one place. Watch the sessions in full, take what fits, and stop the session when the technique goes rather than when the count runs out.
Go more in depth here
Read next: Unleashing the Power and Precision: Coaching the Field Hockey Drag Flick, Sprinting is not the risk. Skipping it is.
More coaching questions: How do I coach the hit so players get power without lifting or fouling?, How do I teach the Indian dribble properly in field hockey?, How often should my players train before I’m overcooking them?, What is the best field hockey warm-up to get game-ready and cut injuries?. All of them are in Field Hockey Coaching Questions.
The experts mentioned in this article
John GoldbergBelgian coach at Beerschot in the Honour Division and on the coaching staff for the Belgian women.
Matthew EylesS&C expert from Australia who worked for Hockey India and the Dutch national teams.
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