Thoughts.

If you don’t know what a deadlift is, you DEFINITELY need to be doing deadlifts.

If you do know what they are, you should still be doing them. And you can probably be doing them better.

Before you go to the gym, check out this extremely informative crossfit article on deadlift technique. As the title says, it’s a bit, but if you and your training buddy both read this and spot each other, I can almost guarantee you you’ll see good results. Hell, I coached myself without a second set of eyes and saw plenty of benefit.

Train the posterior chain! Anyone can accelerate–but being truly explosive, in starting AND stopping*, will make you unstoppable.

*in my mind, stopping is the most underrated ability in ultimate.

UPDATE: More on deadlifting here.

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.

Watch good ultimate.

One of the best things about ultimate, as it’s currently constructed, is that the UPA series has no arbitrary cutoff for playing. Everyone, from the repeating champ to the pickup squad of you and your buddies, can play. And anyone can show up to a regional (this is admittedly easier in the Northeast than in other regions) and watch.

Since I started playing at Dartmouth 4 years ago, one of the things I’ve enjoyed most is being able to go to Northeast club regionals–first in div. 2 with an 08 frosh squad, than later in div. 1 with Chuck Wagon and Dartmouth–and play against and watch some of the best players in the country compete. From watching DoG my freshman year, wide-eyed and amazed (after all, DoG’s run of dominance in the ’90s was all I had heard about of ‘pro’ ultimate as a high schooler), I’ve found as I become more and more experienced in this sport that, rather than simply being astounded at the level and a simple observer, I’ve come to appreciate a lot more nuance of how play goes.

Watching two good club teams play each other is a really special treat. If you haven’t broken in to that level and had the opportunity to train in a system that creates those kinds players, the nearest substitute you can get is attentively watching. Something as simple as watching the players throw as they warm up can yield some wisdom–players throw hard, but confidently, to their target.

You can observe a lot at the team strategy level, too–zone sets in particular, how teams communicate and what they do to adjust, etc.–but I think the biggest or quickest gains to your own game can be had from simple imitation. I watched some DoG players going through their warmups and noticed how they stepped and threw, quickly and effectively, to their target, and shortly thereafter was working on my own throws attempting to do the same thing.

We all imitate at some level, whether we realize it or not. Mirror Neurons will activate when you observe an action, and the simple act of watching can lead to learning if you’re sufficiently trained. The better you get at ultimate, the easier it is to get better at ultimate–a rookie watching a high-level player might simply observe, “Wow, they’re fast,” while a more experienced player might noticed a subtle shift in the primary cutter’s hip motion that sets up their exploding into their next cut so effectively and seemingly quickly (and then be able to incorporate that same technique into their own game with a little practice).

Watch ultimate. Watch GOOD ultimate. Learn from the best. Ultivillage is a godsend, though you’ll pick up a lot more from the real thing in person. If you don’t have the chance to watch the really good players, find good players who are really good at at certain things (for example, that guy at pickup with the huge forehand). Figure out how they do those things so well. Amalgamate the best in others and you’ll make yourself into a hell of an ultimate player. (And then do the same for people you meet and life skills and become a great person, too).

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.

Check out the candidate statements, audio interviews (after you log in–though I had technical difficulty accessing them. Perhaps because I’m in Japan right now?), and the Huddle’s coverage, too.

Honorable mentions (in my book) go to Todd Leber, who has some great, revolutionary ideas, but whose platform has little else of relevance to UPA members (nothing in his experience or his numerous RSD writings suggest he has an interest in anything short of semi-pro ultimate–making him better suited as, for instance, the president of Major League Ultimate rather than a board member of the Ultimate Player’s Association), and Jamie Nuwer, whose interests are very much after my own heart (Sports Medicine and ultimate and where the two meet), and who has done some great things with the Injury Timeout website (PLEASE look at this site! Be a resource for your teammates. The value of somebody with even a halfway informed idea of how to take care of an injured person is invaluable at practices and tournaments alike!)…hopefully she runs again in the next election.

This really makes me wish I was playing ultimate right now.

Oh well. I guess there’s the one 5v5 beach ultimate tourney with a pickup team to tide me over for the next year…

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.