Practicing the hand-across

 

The hand-across is a cheat code which lets you transition between club exchanges in any order. It lets you violate the "throw back what you get" rule for chaining natural passes together. The only pattern I know that includes it is Mild Madness (and the feed versions Martin's Mildness and Martin's Madness). Additionally, I created Carl's Identity and Barry's Bounty (two of the variations of Chocolate Bar FLS), The Unusual Suspects, and Straight Jacket. As of this time I can do the hand-acrosses in both sides of Mild Madness and in Barry's Bounty, but am not proficient at the hand-across in Carl's Identity and haven't had the opportunity to practice The Unusual Suspects or Straight Jacket.

I have many videos of Mild Madness. One is:

I also got Carl's Identity and Barry's Bounty on video:

I suspect the best way to gain proficiency in hand-acrosses is to work on The Unusual Suspects and do different variations.

A starting point is to practice by yourself. Start with two clubs in the right hand and one club in the left. Throw the club in your left hand to your right hand, immediately do a right-to-left hand-across, and catch the club coming down to your right hand. Now practice on the other side. When that can be done 80% of the time add three self throws. When that can be done work on the other side. When that can be done 80% of the time switch to two self throws to work both sides at the same time.

Practice the second pass of Carl's Identity with a partner. The partner can do the same or throw a straight pass from the other hand instead.

Practice one or more exchanges from The Usual Suspects.

I would say proficiency is achieved if you can do the following variations of The Unusual Suspects:

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