Flicx ®

Need a product that helps develop core skills across a range of sports, makes fitness fun and engages the reluctant participant?

Look no further than Crazy Catch, the unique double-sided rebound net reaction trainer, recently featured on the BBC News Saturday morning sport slot with Mike Bushell. Distributed in the UK by leading sports equipment manufacturers Flicx; its innovative sane and insane technology providing both predictable and unpredictable bounce provides an ideal resource to develop hand-eye coordination skills in a controlled or match-play environment.

Whether playing cricket, rugby, netball, basketball, rounders or softball - catches are likely to come at you from any direction. Crazy Catch gets players ready for this, whilst also giving them a fun work-out.

Durham and former South Africa cricketer Dale Benkenstein uses Crazy catch has part of his fielding warm up. “It’s a great reaction aid where an individual can work on their catching without relying on another source, a player or a coach,” he says, “our Academy guys use it when they’re coming back from injury, to practice catching, it’s good for foot movement and hand-eye coordination, too.”

Warwickshire County Cricket Club’s coach Dougie Brown has been really impressed with Crazy Catch, after using it with first team and development squads, this year. “It’s versatile, robust and enables you to vary your warm up routines and fielding drills, making training more enjoyable,” he says.

Northants coach David Capel has also used Crazy Catch with his first team squad and likes the choice of using the ‘sane’ or ‘insane’ side to add variation to his coaching routines.

“You need a consistent return for slip catching routines and a more inconsistent bounce when practicing fielding slip to a spinner or at short leg when the type of catches you receive during games are less predictable,” he says.
And it’s not just cricket teams that use Crazy Catch. Sir Clive Woodward’s England rugby team in 2003 and the South African team who followed them world champions in 2007 used it to improve fitness and catching skills. Walsall Football Club Centre of Excellence coach Dave Woodhall uses it to train young keepers who enrol on his goalkeeping development scheme.  Over the last few years, forty five of his students have moved on to professional clubs. “Crazy Catch will now regularly feature in our shot stopping sessions in the future, for all of our keepers,” Dave says.

Members of the British Olympic team also use Crazy Catch to improve hand eye coordination. According to Zoe Wimshurst, their visual performance coach, whatever sport you play you need to move your eyes really quickly and respond with appropriate movements. “The speed at which events occur in sport is quicker than a person can smoothly track with their eyes,” she says, “so elite sports men and women need to improve reaction speeds and train themselves to more quickly make physical responses to the messages their eyes give them.”

Zoe believes that Crazy Catch with its insane unpredictable return, more accurately reproduces the sort of situations encountered whilst taking part in top level sport. “You can't just get yourself into position and wait for the ball to come to you, you have to track it with your eyes and respond immediately,” she explains.

So a hockey player would need to move quickly to take awkward passes or block opponent’s shots; a skier needs to anticipate and react instantaneously to the nuances of their course and when in full flight bobsleighers need impeccable timing to maximise speed and prevent accidents.


Even the Red Bull Formula 1 team have incorporated Crazy Catch into their pit crew’s training schedule in the hope that their improved reactions will speed up pit stops. Ahead of May’s Turkish Grand Prix Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel stand one and two in the Driver’s Championship and Red Bull Racing twenty points ahead of their nearest rivals, Ferrari.