Thoughts.

(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).

Do you think about what you say?

I know you think you do. But do you really think about what you say? About how what you say might reveal things about yourself you had no intention of revealing? About how what you say might affect your teammates’ or your own ability to perform?

There are a few ways to cope in ultimate. By “cope” I don’t mean dealing with failure. By “cope” I mean getting by and continuing to perform with the grind of 3, 4 games in a day. I’m talking about the entirety of your day’s experience, not just what you think of as the “critical,” “game-defining” moments (or especially their aftermath).

Largely, I think you can divide coping strategies into two camps. You have passive coping, and you have active coping. This goes a bit with personality types as well.

Your passive copers more or less go with whatever the flow of the moment is. If things are going well and/or the team is getting excited, they (can) get excited. If things are not going as well, your passive types are generally at a loss for what to do to right the ship. On their own, they can’t create much. They’re sheep, psychologically speaking, able to be molded and guided to various ends.

Your active types, for better or worse, help to catalyze the passive types. This is the guy on the other team that’s always initiating the call in the other team’s call and response cheer. This is the guy that rushes the field ahead of the rest. This is the girl that spikes the disc to get her teammates pumped up.

This is also the type that most strongly influences the team’s level of arousal–how up or down a team gets for playing. Most teams will have more than one of these, but how these individuals respond to the team’s fortunes–whether that be success or setback–will tend to set the tone for the rest of the team. As a general rule, you can get enhanced performance out of getting “up” for a given moment or game, but over the course of a weekend this level of intensity is near impossible to sustain and will be prone to crash downwards (usually responsible in some form or another for most comebacks in ultimate). Rare indeed is the individual who can sustain themselves purely out of emotion, so learning to guide the team towards a more balanced state of mind is the ideal here.

Whether naturally inclined to be more passive or more active, you can still learn to talk and carry yourself in such a way that your teammates can more easily remain at a balanced level of arousal.

For a bit of a discussion on the notion of psychology and performance, check out my UCPC recap from two years ago of Alan Greenberg’s talk on performance psychology.

The key thing to note here–optimal performance comes when a player is fully invested in the experience at hand (literally, if we’re talking about catching or throwing). Players who focus too much on what just happened, or what might happen, rather than on what IS happening, are the sorts of players who wind up in their own heads, botching easy plays or attempting the sorts of actions that you normally wouldn’t expect from them. The score, for instance, has nothing to do with your performance on the field. So you were just broken–so what? Other than perhaps making strategic adjustments, there’s no need to dwell on the matter. So your team will go to nationals if it can just close out this game–so what? You haven’t closed it out yet. Don’t start dreaming about Nationals, and don’t start dreaming of what might happen if you don’t make the cut. Get your head in the game, while cliche, is totally appropriate here.

So how do you talk to encourage continued performance? Some do’s and don’ts:

DO

• Focus on the process rather than the outcome. If you’re a captain or a coach (coaches can afford to think a bit more broadly, as they don’t have to perform), and have to give the team guidance, to some extent you need to be aware of what parts of your team’s process are or are not working. This manifests in talk to the effect of “our dump motion is good; we’re having a few miscues with our handlers, so handlers need to focus on making one hard cut and clearing out to create space for the fill cut,” rather than “we’re getting beaten on short turnovers on the dump. Last point Mackey was dancing out there in the lane and clogged it up for everybody else.” With the former the focus is on improving the process; in the latter it is on the outcome, and additionally focuses on a single individual and a single situation–as soon as you get your athletes thinking about specific incidents in the past you’re taking them out of their game-ready state.
• Avoid talk on the line about anything other than the next point’s strategy. Yeah, you joke around on the line a bit. But at some point, your need to focus on what’s going to happen in the point–you’re going to have to get your mindset ready to play at some point during the point; it’s usually best if this point is before the pull instead of during or after. On Dartmouth this year, our O line cued themselves to get their head in the game and focus on the next point with an all-together clap, in much the same way a football huddle breaks. You might think it’s silly, but all it takes is something as simple and consistent as that to get your head right.
• Cue everyone to keep focused. You don’t necessarily have to do this by explicitly stating “hey guys, let’s focus,” but there are far worse things you can say than that. Your team should want to stay in the game–if they’re reluctant to, you’ve got bigger problems than simply player focus–so it shouldn’t take much to cue players on the sideline to stay focused on the now rather than getting caught up in whatever the day’s drama (or cool play, etc) is.
• Talk in terms of actions the team can take, rather than describing a situation. It’s all well and good to recount what just happened in the first half, but really, that doesn’t help your team out nearly as much as describing to them what should be focused on in the second half. Generally speaking, you don’t need to justify why certain adjustments are being made (you can simply offer, “we’re going to try zone” if they’ve been burning you in man–nobody needs to be reminded to know the reasons for which the change is occuring), simply give instruction and trust your team to execute. Keep the focus on the field in the current point.

DON’T

• Be “that guy.” The one who’s always talking. Even if you’re encouraging your teammates to stay focused, realize that if you hassle too much (and lack the authority/respect of a coach or captain–and sometimes even if you do have it) you might take their minds off of whatever they were thinking about, only to divert those thoughts to resentment of you. Develop a feel for your teammates and what they need to cue focus, and strive to help them keep themselves in line too–this is not a one man job, by any means, but avoiding pitfalls is a team effort.
• Bring up specific incidents on the field until after the game is over (the need for performance has ceased). I’m talking about call-outs here, not the sort of discussion you have with a teammate after a point ends to clarify when the miscommunication occurred and what could be done to correct it next time. Like the example above, there is little to no productive effect to calling a player out for a bad play, and generally little gain from calling a player out for a single exceptional play (if your goal is learning, however, it might be wise to point out examples of the behavior you want all of your players to model).
• Talk about the other team. Strategically, you can certainly talk to your team with new objectives in mind, but remarking on the team’s: relative level of ability (“we should beat these guys”); personality (“these guys are assholes”); stud players (“#33 is really good!”), etc.
• Tolerate comments or behavior which focuses on results or anything other than the situation at hand. Obviously, social decency means you tread carefully on this rather than stomping on somebody who’s talking–remember the first bullet for “Don’t”‘s–but to the extent that you can eliminate the tendency for your team to, for instance, go on and on about what specifically went wrong in a specific instance or players to offer comments that aren’t specifically geared towards focusing on the game at hand and what actions need to be taken in the huddle, the more your players will be able to remain in an optimal performance state.
• Call players out for good/bad/whatever play while they are on the field. It’s one thing to give feedback after a point is over. One of the worst things you can do to a player who is in the flow of a point is force them to think about something they did previously by referring to some incident in the past or to what you expect them to do in the future. This does not mean you can’t offer encouragement and helpful information–”left/right shoulder” in a zone is helpful; “I expect another hot D this point, Kell” is not. Under no circumstances should you force a player to think on the field! I don’t mean the cognitive processes necessary for a given point, reading one’s man or the defense, etc, I mean thinking about that cute guy on the sideline, or about the last sweet play she made–the play has already been made. Relive it later when she doesn’t have to play.
• Ask what the score is right before the pull goes up when you’re on the line. Big pet peeve of mine. If you think being down by one or up by one should make a difference in how you play, note that you just agreed to thinking–the anathema to performance. The ONLY time score should be relevant to you as a player is in situations like universe point, where you know that you do not need to conserve your energy for another point following this one. Thinking about your team’s lead or deficit is otherwise a pretty fruitless endeavor. Leave the score keeping to your coach, or to somebody who isn’t you on the sideline.

You get the idea. As a general rule, don’t think, do (note that this was one of the first posts I made on this blog). Don’t talk, instruct. Don’t recap…refocus. And execute. It’s that simple (and that hard).

If you’re a baseball fan, watch the outfielders closely next time you catch a game. If you’re not a baseball fan, watch a game and pay attention to the outfielders anyways.

EDIT: CP brings up an excellent point–this applies not only to catching, but to throwing too. Check the comments.

(Part 1 | Part 3)

Next Saturday, look for a third and final post touching a bit on supplemental work, overtraining, and ways to apply your training more specifically to ultimate.

Jim Parinella lays it out in simple terms that belie his wisdom (emphasis mine):

Think about the opportunities that are created (and taken away) by your opponent’s attention on an ultimate field (if you’re really thinking, you could extend this to disrupting a team’s sideline help, too–but don’t be a douche), and strive to use that as much as you would use their acceleration or your patented drop-step shoulder juke.

More often than not, I find myself completely agreeing with what she says, and there are some great gems in her bit on subbing:

Divide your handlers up into groups of those who generate offense with their throws (big breaks and/or big hucks) and those who generate offense with their legs (effectively get the disc up-the-line and are always open for resets). You’ll want some players from each category on every line.

Divide your downfielders into groups of those who can get open with jukes off of a stopped-disc and those who are great at getting open in flow with timing and filling spaces. Again, you’ll want some players from each category on every line.

The whole issue on subbing is a great opportunity to apply a new lens to yourself as a player: how would somebody in charge of subbing view your abilities? Gwen’s bit here touches on it the most explicitly, I think…what kind of player are you? Do you create offense or augment offense? Are you a big playmaker or a solid contributor? How versatile are you, offensively, defensively? What are some flaws that might lead to you getting less play time (e.g., lack of height/athleticism/conditioning, inconsistent throws in the wind, an inclination towards high-risk shots, etc)?

What kind of player do you want to be? If you’re a coach or a mentor for other players, what kind of player do you see them becoming/what kind of player would make them the most useful? The notion of subbing also harkens to making cuts and forming your team’s identity and strategy in the first place. Lot of good stuff to consider for anybody who fancies themself a team leader/decision maker.

A few things that are important for throwing the hammer:

Grip. If you can hold a frisbee to throw a forehand as I’ve described previously, you’re probably in good shape. As I touch upon briefly in the video, it’s not so much the grip that matters as the fact that the grip allows you to hold the frisbee in line (parallel) with your forearm. If you can hold the disc, however you can manage, parallel with the forearm, you’ll be able to learn and maintain a consistent hammer.

Grip is also essential for throwing in the wind or throwing for distance. You have to be able to hold the disc firm in windy conditions, lest it be blown off-track before it even leaves your hand, and you also need to grip the disc tightly enough to transfer power to your throw.

Arm angle (tilt). This will change depending on the situation. How much you adjust this angle will affect the flight path of the throw–do you want a low, fast trajectory? A double-helix that floats? Something closer to a blade? Develop this sense with trial and error. This also affects how the disc flies in wind. Throwing upwind, you want to stay over a hammer like you would any other throw–this means a slight alteration in the tilt and follow-through of your throw so it flies lower (see arm action below). In a downwind, you want to throw with a bit more touch so the wind doesn’t turn your hammer into a sinking rock. Crosswinds are perhaps the most difficult to gauge–depending on the intensity and direction of the wind, you will need to tilt the disc so it comes out more like a blade (if the wind is blowing from your left for a righty) or with more of a flatter profile (if the wind is blowing from your right). As a general rule (this applies with “normal” throws, too), try not to expose the underside of the disc to the wind. If anybody has more insight to offer to this end, feel free. I find I have to calibrate my hammers for the wind more often than not instead of knowing right off the bat, but it doesn’t take more than a handful of warm-up throws to get to that point.

Related note about the wind–wind is not a nonstarter for over-the-tops or hammers; GUSTY wind is. The change is what makes the throw unpredictable–if the wind is consistent, you can make a consistent adjustment and maintain effectiveness.

Body angle (tilt). I’ve found a slight lean (to the left for righties) aids in-wind adjustment of the disc’s flight path. This follows pretty naturally from the footwork of the push-off described below.

Arm action (trajectory). This ties in to the above. How you project the frisbee–in my mental lingo, I cue myself to “project” rather than throw the disc–makes a big difference. Again, how do you want the disc to fly and arrive at its target? You can project the disc with a higher trajectory so that it takes longer to arrive at its target or a lower trajectory to try and speed it along. This is critical to throwing a hammer successfully in a game (particularly outside of zone situations with stationary targets). You have to learn to appreciate not only the spatial aspect of the throw–throwing to your target–but also the temporal aspect–throwing to your target in such time that it can be caught. I feel like, with hammers more than any other throw (ok, I’m really just talking about forehand and backhand) in ultimate, you need both to be successful. This is why defenses will concede the hammer more readily than the rest–the skill and sense to consistently place these throws is hard to find, and the margin for error creates easy turnovers/turnover opportunities.

I emphasize placing the hammer and projecting the disc here, because hammers are all about touch, in my opinion. This is not a throw that can simply be “gripped and ripped.” You might get the disc to fly somewhere close to where you intended by doing so, but you have to be able to control for the temporal aspect–putting the hammer in such a way that it is catchable by your receiver, ideally in uncontested fashion. A quick-moving hammer is one of the hardest catches to make for a moving receiver unless it’s placed perfectly (hi, Misha!).

Release point. I snap my wrist and release somewhere above my head/right shoulder. How soon or late you release determines in part how much (or how little) touch the hammer will have, so keep that in mind when you project this throw.

Footwork and Shoulder Use. I’ve seen/heard a few different schools of thought on footwork. I’m of the opinion that you should be able to throw a hammer from a standing, balanced position, and also capable of throwing it out of a forehand pivot. For me, my footwork requires pushing off with my right foot a little (really, it’s more of a shift of weight to the left), usually ending on my toes or with my foot slightly off the ground. I find, however, that the importance of footwork tends to pale in comparison to the importance of loading the scapula. A hammer more closely approximates a football or baseball throwing motion than a forehand or backhand, so the shoulder loading really enables one to put a lot more power behind the throw. When you generate power from the shoulder, rather than the arm, it allows you greater control over how the disc is projected–it allows you to put touch on a powerful throw.

Me, circa summer 2007.  Albany Summer League.  I must’ve thrown at least 3 or 4 goals (or should-have-been goals that were flubbed) off the hammer this game.  I also threw a greatest for a goal this game to force universe point, which we then won.  That was a fun day.

Wrist snap. Remember that the wrist snap is what puts rotational force on the disc–it does not project the disc forward. That’s what your body and shoulder are for. Impart a velocity to the frisbee with your body and shoulder, and then snap your wrist when you’re ready to release and not sooner. It’s a nice, compact motion (as it is for all throws, but it’s harder to get away without doing for a hammer).

Troubleshooting:
If you find your throws wavering or wobbling (in the wind), examine your wrist snap, but also examine your grip to make sure you’re holding the disc in proper, parallel alignment with your forearm.

If you find your throws double-helixing when you don’t intend them to, or doing just the opposite–too bladey, mind the wind first, and mind how much you’re tilting the disc second.

This is far too deep to be covered in a single post.

(Part 2 | Part 3)

But perhaps you’re interested in training and have been looking through some materials. There’s an absolute shitton of resources out there. Some of it’s crap, some of it’s useful–you can learn by doing and you can also cull wisdom from that which is repeated throughout many sources (usually–sometimes bad advice gets repeated. Use your discretion).

The big question, however, is how exactly do you go about structuring your training? I’ve already touched upon the essentials of this when I wrote about goal setting. If you haven’t set your goals, stop reading right now and figure them out. Honestly, if you don’t know what you’re working towards you’re just going to waste your time more often than not, unless you have somebody like a coach or a team to make goals for you. However, even those are not guaranteed to be in line with what you want, however, so take some time and think about it for yourself, too.

Structuring your training is like building a house. Your goals are the foundation upon which your progress will eventually be built. You can try building with a shitty foundation, but it’s likely to look pretty shitty when it’s done and be nothing close to what you expected, and will fall apart as easily. Get ‘em right–you can always refine later, but do it as well as you can from the get-go. Don’t be afraid to set ambitious goals; know that they can serve to motivate you more than setting no goals will.

Once you have your goals, you’re ready to plan. Where do you start from here?

Look at your goals. Let’s take a look at mine from two summers ago and use that as a framework:

.1. Eliminate Ankle/Knee woes
If you have pressing injury concerns, this should be at the forefront of your planning. For me, my ankle and knee issues were enough to limit how hard I could train in more general terms, limiting my range on squats for instance. I added a lot of single-leg work geared toward strengthening both, and TOOK CARE OF MY BODY. Get enough rest. Ice when it swells. Take ibuprofen if necessary. Braces are a question that depends on your needs–if you really need it or really need to perform now, go for it. Otherwise, aim to wean yourself off of it–even if you still feel compared to wear a brace, say, when playing, if you can get comfortable training without it you’re that much less likely to have the brace fail you as a sole support.

Injury prevention work means doing (pre)habilitation work before every workout. Even 5 or 10 minutes will help keep you from overdoing it and setting yourself back. It also means flexibility work. More on that later.

2. Get into “Better Shape.

These are covered in more detail in the actual blog, but whatever your general fitness goals are will determine what direction your training should go in. Of course, a balanced program is best–one that doesn’t focus on strength to the point of sacrificing conditioning, etc. But keep in mind what your current needs are as well–sometimes a bit of sacrifice to shore up your weaknesses (or further augment your strengths) will ultimately lead to better results.

If your goals tend towards the explosive (ie, improving your vertical), you should focus on plyos. HOWEVER, focusing on the plyos alone won’t do it unless you’re out of shape–your absolute potential for being explosive is limited by your strength, so you should also include strength work. If you can’t squat your bodyweight, you shouldn’t be doing plyos. If you can’t squat at least 1.5 times your bodyweight, you shouldn’t be doing exclusively plyos. If you can’t squat 2x your bodyweight, you should not be doing too much of the really high-impact plyos (one-legged depth jumps and the like). Just trust me on this one, unless you want to shell out $40 for the VJDB to get the same info.

If your goals are more grounded in strength (this is often in addition to other goals), hit the weights. It’s a little beyond the scope of this entry to go into that in too much detail–but if you’ve never lifted before (and I mean on a regular basis–if you’re trying to structure your own program without knowing how and are reading this, you probably haven’t lifted in the way I mean), start with a focus on the basics–squat. Deadlift. Bench (if you’re inclined–and balance it out with some rows). Work in one-legged versions of the first two and a one-armed version of the last one. Train your core. I touch upon a bit more detail here as far as rep schemes go…if you’re in doubt, try 5×5. If you’re still learning the motions, go lighter and try for 3×8 or 3×10. Shoot for a total of between 20-30 reps (not counting warm-ups if you start light) on a given exercise in a given workout.

If you’re going for GPP (known by most as “conditioning,”) you have a lot of options. Crossfit is a great source of workouts (and workout resources–check out their exercises page!). You know what a conditioning workout is like–work hard, rest little, get better. The key is to make sure you can either time your workout or do it with a time limit for number of reps/distance covered/etc–in this way you can track your progress.

So, your goals are the foundation. The exercises are your tools. When you know generally what kind of exercises/workouts you want to do (finding them is where the research comes in–check out the exercises page of Crossfit, and give T-nation a scouring (search for squat, deadlift, bench press, and dig a little) if you need help with coaching–or better yet, find somebody who knows what’s what and learn from them. I’m talking somebody you pay, or somebody who shows the results of their own work–your roomate probably thinks he knows how to squat, but just dips his butt a few inches), how you combine your exercises into workouts and place them throughout the weeks and months provides the framework for your improvement. This is perhaps the trickiest part to master.

Anybody can go in to the gym and dick around for an hour or two every now and then. The reason why you set goals in the first place is because it is from this foundation that you can draw your motivation, and motivation is absolutely essential if you’re going to consistently work on the house that is your body and your athletic potential and make progress.

Next Saturday I’ll finish by talking more about specifics to how each component of training should be incorporated into a larger structure.

In the meantime, allow me to insert a plug for Ross Enamait. Quite frankly, my experience with program design is driven in large part by information I’ve gotten from his Infinite Intensity program. I recently purchased Never Gymless to guide my training here in Japan, and it has been equally helpful. Ross gives very broad guidelines and a number of specific exercises for you to pick and choose from (and a sample 50-day program if you’re a sheep and don’t want to bother to think for yourself–I’m not judging you, I swear), all of which are likely to do far more to enhance your training than my ramblings. The dude doesn’t pay me to give him shoutouts (Hah! Like I get enough traffic to warrant such a thing), this is just me speaking from my own experience.