Thoughts.

What the hell does that mean?

I mean, when you pivot from forehand to backhand (or vice versa), you should:

A) Throw a fake to initiate the pivot and

B) Make the fake on an upwards trajectory, using the fake’s momentum to kickstart your pivot over to the other side.

Think about it. Try it. The trick is to make your fakes still look convincing. The “upward trjectory” refers more to your body than your arm.

The next step (or perhaps concurrent step) is learning to throw with those same motions. Convincing fakes are ones that you can actually throw from.

The arm sock.

Underrated and under-appreciated, in my humble opinion.

Yeah, maybe you play in the s’th and you don’t have to worry about things such as warmth. But if you’re up in the still North, why, good insulation is the difference between a great practice on the turf or a frustrating one in the cold. Or more importantly, the difference between throwing with confidence as New England turns cold and stormy and shanking a flick because you couldn’t open your hand in time to throw it.

It’s an easy accessory to make. Get a friend (or don’t, if you want to cover both your arms) and split the cost of some long socks (soccer socks do the job very well). Cut the sock before it reaches the bend for the foot. Cut a small hole in the side that your thumb can fit through. Bam!

Keep your arm warm, throw with comfort. If you don’t like the thumb hole/partial hand cover, fold it down. Pop this bad boy on top of some underarmour, and you’ll never have to worry about cold hands again.

We say lots of stupid things on an ultimate field.

I can tell you until the cows come home that you need to take more care when you throw in the wind, but if it were so simple as simply saying to yourself, “let’s throw better in the wind,” it wouldn’t be a mantra amongst college teams in New England year after year.

What really needs to happen, is that people need to develop a checklist of tweaks to their throws that can be applied to varying degrees in various circumstances to ensure good throwing.

What do I mean? I mean things like:

• stepping out
• flicking the wrist harder
• gripping the disc harder
• tilting the nose of the disc downward slightly to keep the lip from being exposed to the wind when throwing upwind (“staying over the throw,”)
• tilting the disc upwards slightly to avoid the turf (“getting under the throw,” though this is more often an error than a correction in my experience)
• throwing from a lower release point (“getting low”)

When my throws suck, I run through my checklist–are my throws working differently than I wanted because I’m swinging my arm (“hooking it” on an arc) instead of coming through in a straight line ? Is it something as simple as needing to grip a little more tightly?

Learn to debug your own throws. And learn how to teach other people to debug theirs. Part of my pre-game routine is tuning my throws for the day’s conditions (the day’s conditions include my own condition), running through a mental checklist that includes all of the things mentioned above. If it’s windy, I put a lot of effort into adjusting my tilt to compensate during warm-ups, so I don’t have to think about it when I catch a swing pass and only have a split-second to decide whether to throw the continuation or not.

When you get comfortable debugging the mechanics of your throws, think also about things like how the weather is affecting touch, how gusty it is (as I alluded to in my post about hammers, consistent wind can be accounted for–gusty wind, being harder to predict, can wreak havoc. Recognize which throws are less havoc-prone in these conditions), and even things like how your cutters are running today and how you expect the defense to match up (do you want to err on throwing with more float for your receiver to sky for, or with more lead for him to run on to/bid for? Do you laser the pass to the in-cut to minimize the window a defender can make a play, or do you lead with float to give your receiver time to catch and set up his continuation throw more effectively?). How confident are you in your ability to place a throw with touch?

Run through your checklist, fix what you can, recognize what you can’t, and adjust your in-game decision making accordingly.

Don’t be like Derek Zoolander.

A former captain of mine (hi, Seigs!) once remarked that he didn’t realize how much he relied on his right foot when cutting until doing some ladder work and being forced to use both feet equally.

I, too, primarily cut off of one foot–with any cut, my right foot takes the brunt of the force and is usually the first to initiate stopping/change of direction. If I were scouting a team’s stud cutters (as somebody who would defend them), I would think that checking to see which foot they primarily cut off of, while not as game-changing a revelation as “all headband wants to do is run deep,” is a little edge that might give a defender extra confidence in forcing her woman to move outside of her comfort zone.

When you do drills (from your warm-up jog, plant, jog/run/sprint back, to 1v1 cutting), make a conscious effort not just to use your non-dominant foot, but to do so even to the point of exclusion of the other foot. Limit yourself for a league game, or mixed pickup at practice (hi, Dartmouth!), and try to maintain effectiveness. Does it work?

You’ll learn a lot about how you cut by taking away your prime mover. Do you get by simply on the strength of your one foot? Can you compensate for a weaker foot by playing the mental side of cutting more effectively? Can you compensate for it now that I’ve asked you to try?

As this former Wisconsin stud Muffin can attest, an injury can force you to completely re-examine the way you look at your game, as your attention shifts to other aspects of play. Why wait for an injury? Take away your crutches–impose limits on yourself, and see what you can do, and more importantly, what you can learn.

Bring the disc back as far as you can as soon as you can.

EDIT: Likely also inspired by the huddle, Muffin offers his take on throwing for distance. He articulates the nuance of the shoulder load (he calls it the shoulder jerk) a bit better than I do.

Talked about this a good while ago here, but you probably never read that one.

Do you like catching the frisbee? Do you enjoy stopping others from doing so? Would you enjoy doing both more consistently in the air?

Work on your jumping form. A couple things to keep in mind when you go up for the sky:

1. Accelerate into the jump. Part of jumping is redirecting your horizontal velocity into vertical velocity–this is why most people can jump higher off of a run than from a standstill (and those who can’t should be able to with a bit of plyometric training). Leave yourself space on a floaty disc to really accelerate into your jump and attack the disc at your highest point.
2. Lower your center of gravity. This occurs on the penultimate (second-to-last) step, and helps with the redirection of velocity (it also allows for more complete utilization of your plyometric ability, as the slight dip engages your stretch-shortening cycle to explode upwards on the next step).
3. Use your arms to help with takeoff. You’ll usually see some kind of windup going into a jump by the best jumpers–the extra force you can generate from your arms will help with redirecting your momentum as well as provide a bit more force to propel your body upwards. If you’re on the run, this will typically be a one-arm windup (whichever is in the backswing phase of your run); if you’re doing a two-legged takeoff, you should be able to get both arms into it a bit more (I find one-legged takeoffs far more common in ultimate, however. this may just be my own bodily preference made manifest, so your mileage and results may vary).
4. Reach for the disc with the arm opposite your takeoff foot. This will vary depending on the specific situation, but as a general rule you can reach higher with the opposite arm. Keep this in mind when you practice your jumping and it will become more natural for use in-game.
5. Absorb the impact of landing in your hips, bending your knees. This is more of a recommendation for the weight room, but landing stiff-legged will lead to a lot of force being applied to one’s joints. The more you can absorb on landing via squat (incidentally, the muscles you use to take off are also the ones that should be used to slow you down on landing–you’re simply using them eccentrically, to slow movement in one direction, rather than concentrically, to create movement in the other), the less likely you are to have aches and pains accumulate.

Keep an eye out for these things in these clips. Really, watch anything, observe the pros. You can do a lot worse than imitating the best.

Also note the comments. As Dusty points out, your athleticism can only carry you so far–also think about positioning and preventing the other guy from doing the sorts of things that let him comfortably make a jump to make a play on the disc as you try and set yourself up for success. Remember, if you’re on defense, all you have to do (barring multiple receivers or unpredictable winds) is keep your man from catching the disc to get the turn.

I’m just going to stop commenting and tell you to read Gwen’s stuff. She nails it.

Be a good thrower for your decisions, not your throws. Put your throwing practice in the context of a game-time decision to make it that much more of a seamless process in high-pressure situations.

My two cents on forehands…first, read what Miranda Roth has on long backhands (she covers it very well–all of the articles in this issue have gems):

I’m all about maximizing torque when throwing—using rotation to generate power flowing into your throw. On a long backhand the first point is to step out so that when you twist your body you’re not killing your defender with a giant elbow to the face (this is easier for tall players—shorter players should focus on a quick stepout). While stepping out, I also reach the disc out as far as I can to create the longest lever possible (thus creating the most force). The last major step is to rip it—use your abs to pull your arm across and really focus on opening your body all the way toward where you are throwing.

A lot of the same rules apply for forehand hucks. Take into account your grip and your arm action, but the power all comes from the torque of the hips and torso transferring to the disc (this occurs through your arm and grip, so those things are not trivial: refine your mechanics if you find your best effort still yields poor (wobbly) results), with your core as a mediator (and mover–train your core rotationally).

The key difference between the backhand and forehand hucks is how the body generates power and how power is transferred. Forehands are much more of a finesse throw, but you can still generate a very significant amount of power using your body properly. For me, this means stepping out to the side, even slightly back, as I torque my torso back slightly, particularly at the shoulder (to load the scapula). Using my step slightly, I use the momentum and transfer that energy up from my foot to my body, as my body undulates–leg, then hip, then shoulder torque forward in time, and as the next link in the chain comes forward the previous link comes back, creating a whipping motion (Which is to say, as my shoulder is coming forward, my hip has begun to move back).

The essential component is to relax. Whereas you can usually brute force a backhand, too much tightness on a forehand will sap your power. Allow your body to flow, to seamlessly send the energy up through your body and into your arm. You will be tense at the core, but your arm will be very loose up until the moment of release (but your grip will remain tight throughout). Unlike the backhand, where the arm can do a lot of work, the arm can really only hinder a flick. You’ll see a lot of people throw with their elbow on the hip, which displays the lack of necessity for the arm very nicely–the ideal, however, is to get the elbow off the hip and leading the throw, much the same way a pitcher like Chad Bradford throws (but with more upright posture). Get that extension, but relax and let your body (esp. your shoulder) whip the disc.

(Part 1 | Part 2)

Supplemental work, in my mind, refers to work or mini-workouts that you do in addition to your normal routine(s).

This can refer to grip training, for instance–not enough to be called a “workout” in its own right, really, but it goes great as a finisher after a lifting session. Other things you might consider supplemental work:

• Forearm work. Slightly different from grip, but also very important for putting good snap on your throws. Think forearm curls, with the palm facing towards or away from you. Think wrist rolls, and bar twists (with extra leverage as you improve–hold the bar further and further off-center). A good ultimate player, more often than not, has well-developed forearms, or at least one on his throwing arm.
• Core work (but see here for a discussion of what core training really is, and give some thought to the work you’re doing)
• Single-leg work (this can make its own workout as well, but things like stability ball squats, while good for balance/proprioception/etc, generally tend to be followed with heavier/more intense work)
• Working on your weaknesses, for instance your posture–lot of fun reading to be had there, if you’re interested…otherwise, short version–you probably need to do more external rotation work for your shoulders and develop range of motion in your hips and thoracic spine so you can stabilize your lumbar (core) more. The latter range of motion comes from practicing proper squat form (I opt for olympic style squats more often than not–the extra range of motion and getting more strength from less weight both mean fewer injuries in the long term). If you’ve been benching for years and years and your back is lacking as a result, you might consider doing pull-ups or rows to try and deal with it as supplemental work (ie, a little every day) rather than as a part of your regular workout.
• Practicing lifting technique. Seriously. If you haven’t squatted or deadlifted before, practicing the form should precede any lift, and you should start light–and even after you’ve gotten a good hand on either/both, a bit of extra work on the range of motion will only help. Similarly, if you’re looking to get into olympic lifting (check snatches and the clean & press on the crossfit exercises page), practicing the form before you get into working out proper will go a long ways towards keeping you healthy.
• This also refers to recovery work…foam rolling, yoga, whatever suits your fancy. I call it “supplemental” but really it’s pretty essential stuff to do if you’re at all serious about your performance and health. Stretch before bed.

As for overtraining…this ties in to doing recovery work. Keep in mind that “overtraining” has become something of a buzzword to be avoided in fitness these days, but that overtraining (or, rather, over-reaching) can and should be part of any good exercise plan–you have to push your body beyond what it’s used to if you want to see good results. The trick is not to over-reach for too long–that’s when the physical symptoms appear, your testosterone level drops, and you start to see symptoms like mild depression, a loss of motivation, and a decrease in training returns, all of which can take weeks or months to adequately recover from. Again, the occasional period of under-reaching–intentionally doing less than you are capable of to give your body room to recover and grow–will go a long way toward ensuring you aren’t taken down for the count by overtraining. PLAN on under-reaching and recovering. And be willing to be flexible if your body tells you to back off sooner.

Again, when I talk about over-training I really mean over-reaching, a temporary plateau. If you’re curious about physiological overtraining, which is a treatable medical condition (requiring more than just rest and recovery, though that is also a big part of it), the NYT has a nice article on it you might find interesting.

Finally, applying training more specifically to ultimate. When you condition, seek to incorporate more game-specific work–you’ve surely done drills that involve lots of running along with catching and throwing. That’s the sort of thing I mean.

Outside of conditioning, or outside of using a disc, you can incorporate visualization–seeing game situations; for instance, when you do speed work envision running down on the pull or chasing a huck; when you do plyos, see yourself covering a defender and having to keep quick feet to respond to her, or leaping to sky for the disc. When you do track workouts, consider starting your reps with a quick one-two in the direction opposite your sprint, to emulate the stop-and-go of actual cutting. Practice accelerating from the dynamic positions you will be in in-game rather than the same old starting stance you take every time on the track.

In the gym lifting, you can gear your training more towards ultimate–this flows as a consequence of your goal setting. If your goals include catching or throwing, it would probably behoove you to work some grip work in to your training (stability for your head while running will also help with catching, as I recently posted about).