Must-read for all ultimate athletes.
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Loading ...You can, of course, argue that in college/high school (particularly in the “slower” women’s game) that these intervals are likely longer, but the same general tenets and ideas apply.
You might note the Crossfit affiliation of the writer; this is a good thing in my mind, but I’m heavily biased.
This is the sort of stuff I’ve got (and had) on tap mentally over the past several days, as I start thinking more and more about the How of Coaching next year, rather than the If or What. Lots to look forward to.
Update: Holy crap, that’s a lot of comments. Looks like the Huddle really struck a nerve.
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This is a great article – I am hoping that my team slowly phases out track workouts as our main training foci.
Are you planning on coaching the men or the women next year?
Seigs, I was thinking of you when I read that article.
I guess as a next step I would like to see analysis of individuals. This would vary a lot between O and D (if only because of running down on the pull; you can subtract 7 seconds from each number XX quoted for the O guys) and between handler and receiver. (And also it would vary for Sockeye vs non-Sockeye, maybe ho stack vs vert stack.)
A followup question is whether you should train for the average point or the 95%-worst point.
Jim, sweet of you to think of me.
When I read XX’s piece, I also thought about if and how the results may have been affected by having so many Sockeye points. While there is probably some variation, I doubt it would affect his overall conclusion. Though who knows until the analysis is done.
The O / D split is interesting to think about. XX’s analysis looks at stoppages and not turnovers; a turnover is not always classified by him as a stoppage. It would be interesting to do the same experiment looking specifically at turnovers. For a D guy, you may want to focus on the average for points with at least one turnover (i.e. a break). Plus you have to factor in the pull, as you mention…
I did a workout routine based on Jim’s book a couple years ago, and determined definitely that 400 ability did not transfer well to ultimate for me. Last year, I pursued a shorter-distance training program and found it much more effective in much less time.
I know I’m only one data point, but there you go.
The book training program was built on what we did and what we knew at the time. (Also, at the time at least, both Zaz and I were good at 400 workouts.) I guess now we know more.
About 90% of the workouts (that’s specifically workouts; I’m excluding tournaments, playing basketball, isolated exercises, etc.) I’ve done on my own the last 2.5 years have been short duration high intensity intervals. But even those aren’t that much focused on acceleration. I’m going to start doing an agility workout for that.
How’s this for an ultimate workout. Set your watch to a 30 second countdown, repeat. Then set it to stopwatch mode and start it. For 30 minutes, some of the time, you run all out on a 10 yard wide zigzag course for 10 seconds, when your watch is beeping. After every 30 seconds, hit the lap time button. If the last digit of the split time is odd, you run the next time. If it’s even, you wait and try again after the next 30. This will give you about 30 sprints over 30 minutes, some with only 20 seconds recovery, sometimes 3 or 4 in a row, some with a couple minutes rest. If you want to do more or fewer, use a different rule for the last digit.
Thank you for reading the article!
I wanted to comment on Seigs point about turnovers. I did not classify every turnover as a stoppage because on a few turnovers, there was no stoppage of play. The D got the disc and either immediately started going or there was a brief (under 5 seconds) of a fast transition. Not enough time to recover, considering both sides are jockeying for position during that time. For these situations, I continued the clock because the work on the field continued without rest.
Anytime you see a stoppage on the graph, it was most likely a turnover that resulted in the D becoming O and having time to set up (90% of the time).
Thanks for any feedback!
XX
XX:
I understand where you are coming from and why you measured as you did. I think it makes a lot of sense. As a follow-up experiment, I think it might make sense to look at the same data and splice it by turnovers. Here’s why – You calculate that the average elite point takes about 20 seconds and draw the conclusion that we should tailor our training towards 20 second bouts. However, I assume that many of these points were 0 turnover points. The D pulled, the O scored, and play stopped. As a defensive player, this is a loss. Success for a player *who only plays D points* would be a one turnover point. The D pulls, the O turns it over, and the D scores. Sometimes a turnover will not be a stoppage by your definition, and sometimes it will. What’s the average time of a point with no stoppages and one turnover? What’s the average of a point with one turnover and one or more stoppages? If there is a variation, does it suggest that D players should train differently than O players?
By the way, great article – Well thought out experiment and well done.
Jim – Your description of your workout plan clearly says where you stand on the answer to your follow-up question…Care to explain why?
Actually, I’m not sure where I stand. I guess it would be more toward the 95% (but probably more like 80%), since you need on occasion to be able to do several high-intensity reps with limited recovery. The most crucial points for both O and D guys is when there is a turnover and the O needs to be able to play D and the D needs to be able to play O. Training specifically for a five-turnover point would be too far. Unless you are a cutter on Sockeye’s O, ultimate is a series of off and on, not 45 (or even 20) consecutive seconds of pushing hard.
Not much on the cardio side of things, I think you guys got it, although I got lost on Jim’s workout right when he switched from timer to stopwatch, but I will be interested to see how cross fit fits in. XX, I just hope you don’t go from saying you need more explosive cardio work to suggesting we do 20 pullups, 20 push presses, 20 burpees and 20 cleans in 5 minutes cause that seems the complete opposite mentality.
Congrats on owning a gym though
Faust
Hi there,
I'm still processing my experience with CrossFit and Ultimate for the next piece. A couple of points I will touch on is that:
1) CrossFit is a gateway to training tools. If not for exposure to CrossFit and the training I received from my gym, I would probably not learned many techniques correctly or received the full benefit from them. I would have either needed to hire the right personal trainer or collegiate strength & conditioning coach to learn this training (specifically, Olympic lifting technique and powerlifting technique. Plus a whole bunch of other fun stuff). Or have participated in collegiate sports or a phenom highschool sports program.
2) CrossFit's stated goal is "forging elite broad inclusive fitness" – Not elite specific Ultimate Frisbee fitness.
3) One of CrossFit's observational findings from this braod inclusive fitness, and this is repeated and supported by personal accounts from athletes in many different sports who do CrossFit, is that an athlete in a particular sport can gain significant athletic advancement in their sport by working their non-sport weaknesses. I believe this is true for most athletes who do CrossFit because most athletes are still beginners (me included) in tapping their genetic potential for athletic achievement.
4) Faust, that is a interesting workout and a good little burner that is just right for certain training purposes. I ask out of curiousity, have you done this particular workout for your fastest time possible? If I were to suggest a explosive cardio, non-sprinting specific workout, I might pick yours one day. It would pack a big wallop on the body and get a good adaption response in a short time, I would do 20 pullups, 20 push presses, 20 burpees and 20 cleans, as fast as possible though and hopefully its less than 5 minutes. I will call that workout the "Faust" from now on
xx
That might be the first positive thing ever named after me.
I tossed out my most generic, heavy lifting biased, cross fit workout and I meant to say as many sets of those in 5 minutes, but as long as you name it after me I won’t complain. I will do it today and let you know how it goes.
I know there is way more to Crossfit then what I tossed out there and I agree with you on how it gets people way outside their comfort zone. Ill be interested to see how you align it with explosiveness and power though. And I want to know more about non sport weaknesses.
Mine is either golf or loving to much depending on the context.
Ben
may I suggest you just do one round of that? Push Press weight 95, clean 115. Or whatever scaling you like but make the cleans heavier. Post your time and weights to comments
Seigs,
The more I think about it, the more sense it makes for me to coach the men. I’m more familiar with their (our) team, after all. Though nothing’s set in stone yet and I’m sure I’ll wind up helping the women when I can too.
Xi,
Last year I pushed pretty strongly for a move away from the 400s and the like in our training–our track workouts were much more heavily focused in the 200m range from the get-go (for Seigs and other DoG folks of a few years ago, we started several weeks into the track workouts when they excluded the 3′s and 4′s), and we shifted to speed workouts–short, hard sprints focusing on acceleration and/or top speed with adequate rest–right around spring break.
We won our first tournament ever (I think) that spring break and our second with a regional title. Not that our training was the sole factor, but it sure as heck didn’t hurt. It’s good to see it corroborated with what you’ve seen.
I’m inclined to do some of my own research come this fall timing games in college open and see if there isn’t a significant difference in length of point, but regardless the intervals within said points are still short and intense with brief breaks.
I have some concerns with training, and training crossfit-style, for ultimate–mainly stemming from the nature of recovery in a sport that goes hard on and off for hours and days–but I don’t have my thoughts well-formulated enough to put into words just yet. I’ll comment if they congeal soon or post down the line otherwise, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Jim,
How about this: get some dice. Roll every minute/30 seconds. 1 and 2 are rest breaks. 3-6 correspond to 5,10,15,20 seconds (or pick your interval lengths) of work. Go for 20/30 minutes or what have you.
You could roll on the fly for some drama, or have a coach or confederate roll in advance and keep the intervals secret (this lets you jimmy the total amount of work a bit if you want to amp up or down the total volume).
If you wanted to crossfit-ify the workout more you can do something like Dusty’s card deck workout and have a few exercises to go with the varying intervals (perhaps combining card suit with a dice roll, or simply going by the number).
We used to use a similar system for the occasional workout on the swim team–suit for stroke, dice roll (2 die) for distance and number of reps. Absolutely killer, though half the fun was drawing/rolling and celebrating with your lanemates or giving shit to the guy who drew+rolled butterfly for 6x200m. Ugh.
Mackey, look at all these comments…Your blog is hitting the big time! It’s not quite the PuPs in puppy prime, but that’s probably a good thing.
Anyway, I asked if you were coaching the women because I agree with your original point that XX’s analysis probably wouldn’t apply to women’s college ultimate.
Anyway, I would be glad to see the men have another dedicated coach. Being in Hanover, you’d be much more dedicated than I ever could have been from Newburyport.
I have a lot of ideas / experience with the club – We should chat sometime when you’re back in New England.
Given that all the commentary is driven not by me but simply by the fact that the huddle doesn’t have their own comments feature, I don’t think I can claim much in the way of “big-time” status. Was definitely surprised to wake up to a dozen new comments this morning though.
I’ve already started corresponding with Nate a bit–I think he’s planning to talk to the team leadership this weekend about next year.
Won’t be back in the country ’til late July at the earliest (Zargham’s getting married, and I’m hoping to make it back by then), but we can definitely chat after that (or before, if you care to email).
Email is cheap, only slight better than communication via blog comments.
The conversation can wait.
Jim,
I love your book btw, I certainly didn’t mean to hate on it; just wanted to give a data point that shorter, harder training was more effective for me. I did get good at 400 workouts on your plan though
Also, my favorite drill that I invented for training short is run on a football field. One rep starts at the intersection of the goal line and the sideline. Run a suicide of 5,10,15, then 20 yards, but make the cuts diagonally across the field so that you finish at the intersection of the goal line and the *other* side line.
rest for 10 seconds, then run it again.
Since the suicide takes me almost exactly 30 seconds, this gives me nice tabata sets. I do 4 reps, then rest a few minutes between sets and try to do 4 sets.
It’s important to really think about going maximum intensity during this workout.
I've been trying to figure out how much of Ultimate is a strength sport and how much is an endurance sport, and I guess the answer is yes but as for the specific balance I don't know.
On one hand, my Polar F11 tells me I burned 3720+ Calories last Saturday at Regionals in Corvalis, OR (a chunk of that in a game where we got to Universe point against Santa Cruz), which is in the same ballpark as running a half-Ironman. On the other hand I do know that my HR went above 210 at times, so I was definitely sprinting here and there throughout the day.
Another way to put XX's analysis is to note that LSD (long slow distance) isn't the recommended way to increase your endurance anyway, and suggest that folks do Tabata intervals or 15:15 sets like Kenneth Jay recommends as a starting point.
That said, starting out with higher volume and lower intensity then progressing to lower volume and higher intensity doesn't sound like a horrible plan overall (since it's easier to stop early when jogging slowly for longer distances), the question then is, what kind of intervals should one run after one can run safely and slowly?
A lot of the posts above mention measuring distance, but both the Tabata protocol and KJ's Vo2max protocol are time-based rather than distance-based, and I think programming based on time makes more sense than programming based on distance, at least based on what experts seem to say.
KJ's Vo2max protocol has you start at 15s work : 15s rest intervals which would be shorter than 200m, and Tabata would be 20s work : 10s rest, also less than 200m, so even if you're going to work on endurance you'd mostly run for times in the 15-20s ballpark with equal or less rest anyway.
Here's what one CrossFit endurance trainer has to say (ran across this last month):
http://www.gotrimax.com/TriMaxBmac.htm
Anyway, Mackey, have you read Vern Gambetta's book on _Athletic Development: the Art & Science of Functional Sports Condintioning_? I highly recommend it, not only because you mentioned his blog before but because it would be a great fit for someone who wants to coach Ultimate.
He talks, for example, about periodization and planning when it comes to the sport season, something important to think about when scheduling out interval and strength work throughout the season.
Hey Resrie,
Another recommendation I haven’t read–while I’m pretty well acquainted with the fitness-related blogosphere (or rather, was at one point), I can’t say my interests have driven me enough to shell out for hard copies previously.
Presently is a different story. It’ll be in the queue for reading in the next couple months; thanks!
Heya,
just thought I’d chip in with a comment on tabata intervals which I recently started doing. I first started running them on a track, doing full circuits of sprint/walk. It was hard, but it was also difficult judge and push for top speed for the 20s.
I found it better to run them on grass doing shuttles between two cones about 15m apart – this way working out what my speed should be wasn’t important, instead I was focusing on turning and accelerating as hard as I could. It hurt a lot more and I think it is more applicable to the game.
James (UK)