I think > 10kcal is a bit high, the most I ever seemed to burn last year was over 3500kcal in one day of Regionals:

http://resrie.blogspot.com/2009/05/85kcals.html

but more commonly it seemed like 5000-7000kcal per week rather than per tournament weekend.

Looking at some old logs in 2008, I recorded about 550-700kcal per game.

Saw this on Rif’s blog–KB swings can burn 20 calories/minute:

http://rifsblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-not-like-i-havent-been-saying-this.html

Other interesting ideas would be sports vision training metrics and FMS scores…

You of course would want to factor in things like prior training (if you just worked out that morning vs you’ve been off for a week), weather (less of an issue indoors, but I’m thinking heat exhaustion comes in to play), and sleep, as they all have an impact on perceived exhaustion (to say nothing of performance). You can do a lot of that post-hoc though since they don’t really change.

As I recall, Leslie’s done some stuff with charting her caloric expenditure during a day of ultimate. I may be mis-remembering, but I think a weekend’s worth of ultimate added up to over 10,000kcal! You could probably correlate that with your perceived exhaustion as another measure of how “fit” you are (of course, it could just be an indicator of how much you’re eating over the course of a day, too…lots of potential confounds).

This was the system that I designed for testing that in a game.

Every cut, or cut covered is worth a certain amount of points,
handler cut: 1 point
mid cut: 2 points
Charging the pull: 3 points
Deep cut: 3 points
Deep cut with under cutback: 4 points.

layouts and big jumps add a half a point

For every 20 seconds of down time (turnover, foul, between points) subtract 1 point.

When you come off, rate your physical exhaustion on a scale of 1-10. The goal is to get higher scores, with less exhaustion at the end of the point. Divide by your fatigue rating at the end. Similarly, give a rating at the end of the game to measure overall fatigue.

I think the numbers need to be tweaked, and you’d need a dedicated scorekeeper to measure it, but it would be a form of fitness testing directly applicable to ultimate.

Now that I think of it, a stopwatch and pedometer/calorie counter could do something similar. IE, (Energey expended – time)/Fatigue = fitness level.

Furthermore, if you’re testing Ultimate-specific skill sets, you can generate visual representations that can tell you a great deal at a glance (i.e. http://www.mediatinker.com/blog/upload/2008/04/Big5overTime.png). Plotted over the course of a season, that information might be very useful in evaluating a player (or line, or team).

You’re quite right on the “soft skills” though. I would gladly take “plays nice with others” over “hucks 120 yards w/mark” any day.

I’m not 100% sure which Crossfit workouts it’ll be just yet, but one day a week in the program explicitly calls for Crossfit, so we’ll hopefully repeat the same workouts a few times over the next few months so people can chart their progress.

Even the track workouts are incorporating more of a Crossfit-inspired approach, with some rounds of squats or “plyos” between sprints and less rest overall (there’s still some of the traditional run-200m-rest cycle, too). I’m excited to see how the guys deal with it, and especially how they’re running on the field come Spring.

As for charting my “soft” skills, I haven’t developed a metric for it just yet, as I’m focusing more on getting the “hard” data down first–things like study time. I plan to try something to the effect of establishing a daily minimum for starting conversation and noting when I do take the initiative–already, paying more attention to it is making me realize just how many opportunities there are–and taking “engagement” more on a feel sense. If I get to the point where I feel like I’m making some real breakthroughs there, I’ll let you know.

James,

That’s an interesting thought. The one reservation I have with “summary stats” like that, though, is the dilemma of weighting. The sample points you list are pretty arbitrary, and any given system will reflect the individual bias of the tester.

In an ideal world, I could get all this data, and take that along with gameplay data (especially an adjusted plus/minus) and try and design a system/test/rating that best correlates with actual on-field effectiveness.

File that one away in the “someday” folder…for now, my focus is on collecting data over analysis.

Curious how you plan to come up with metrics to measure engagement & other ‘soft’ skills…