Thoughts.

Just about everybody should supplement.

Why? Because our diets are inadequate. Quite honestly, unless you are the most diligent of connoisseurs of natural foods, getting food that is full of natural nutrients in balanced fashion (even the veggies you get from the supermarket can be dumbed-down, cheaper versions of what you’d get growing it yourself), you’re probably deficient somewhere or could at least stand to benefit from some extra nutrients.

I take three supplements with regularity. As far as I can tell, I don’t need much else–but feel free to chime in.

Fish Oil

Tons and tons of purported health benefits here.

It’s all about getting the omega-3 fatty acids to balance out your fat intake profile. To get into it a little bit without getting too technical, having a variety of fatty acids is especially beneficial for your cell membranes (which are made primarily of fats)–health membranes means healthier cells, which means a healthier body. There is some hooplah out there about the quality of various fish oils…I’ve done a fair bit of reading, and the best (and simplest) advice I’ve heard is if it isn’t rancid in the bottle, you’re probably ok in terms of getting the O-3 fatty acids. Depending on how much you’re willing to shell out you can get additional assurances of quality, but I go for some of the fairly cheap stuff in bulk and have noticed the benefits. It’s particularly apparent in my skin quality, actually–I find my skin dries and peels a lot more easily when I haven’t been getting enough fish oil in my diet.

It’s also a potent anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is that thing that happens to your body with repeated stress (like ultimate practice, or hitting the gym) or acute stress (like twisting your ankle–ibuprofen is also an anti-inflammatory!). Instead of taking ibu all the time, try fish oil to keep your swelling under control outside of practice. I’m not saying replace ibuprofen with this–if you swell up in practice or at tourneys, go for the more powerful stuff–but it’s better to get adequate fish oil as an extra aid.

DOSAGE–I take anywhere from 2-6 capsules in a day, which equates to 1200-3600 mg/day (I take more when I’m being more active). You can trend higher than that and likely see more benefits, but I’m cheap and this has worked decently well for me.

Keep in mind that, though I’m talking about O-3 Fatty acids here, getting O-3′s from, say, flaxseed oil, is actually a different (incomplete) set of fatty acids. Go for the right stuff, go for the fish oil.

Multivitamins

Your mom or your grandma might have hounded you to take your vitamins every morning when you were growing up. You may have heard it’s a good idea for expecting mothers to take a multivitamin to ensure their child gets adequate nutrition. Seems like getting your vitamins and minerals is pretty important for growth and development.

Why, then, is it so common to stop taking vitamins when we’re grown? Our body is still functioning. Just because we’re not growing in size doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for these vitamins, as our body constantly regenerates itself. Balance out your nutrition. Get a multivitamin that you can stomach (or take it with water to try and avoid tasting it) and take it every day. Make sure you get zinc here, too–if you fancy yourself an athlete, a zinc deficiency (as well as an HCl deficiency, but that’s above and beyond in my book of supplements) is fairly common and will hinder your digestion (read: absorption of nutrients). Ladies and vegetarians, make sure you get some iron here too, lest you suffer from the effects of anemia.

DOSAGE: one a day unless you get two a days, etc. Really don’t worry about getting “too much” of any particular vitamin–this is very rare, USDA recommendations are WELL below any kind of dangerously high amount, and being an athlete means you probably need more anyways.

This is actually a doubly good vitamin pictured above: more on that in the final supplement.

Probiotics

Last, but certainly not least.

The multivitamin above was doubly good because it had a probiotic included in each tablet–if you’re not familiar with the term, a probiotic is typically a bacteria (often acidophilus) that, when ingested, will act synergystically in your gut. If you didn’t know, your gut has its own ecology–things live there–some of them are good, some of them are not. This ups the good guys, helping to combat the bad and keep you healthier. If you’re the type that gets sick frequently, you might see a big difference with some probiotics in your diet (it also apparently helps with constipation, if that sounds like something you might benefit from, too).

You can get them in a supplement or (my preferred method) through yogurt. There are probably other options to get probiotics naturally, but I don’t know of them. Mind your health here.

DOSAGE: I eat (or rather, ate–harder now to get the steady supply I got in college) a lot of yogurt, probably a couple servings a day. I doubt you need that much to see benefits, a single serving a day (or maybe less frequently than that, even) will probably do you. Alternatively, get a physical supplement and take the recommended dosage of that.

I might recommend refrigerating the probiotics–I’ve heard it can help keep the bacteria count high in the tablets–but I don’t know that it’s explicitly necessary.

Keep in mind that I’m going more for general health than fitness here (though improved fitness is an obvious benefit)–while I could spring for supplements like BCAAs, and while I may occasionally indulge in protein supplementation (typically powerbars or the like) post-workout, I don’t have the kind of income nor the kind of training schedule (currently) where I feel such things are necessary. Cover your bases for general health and wellness, but for fitness’ sake, keep in mind that the supplements aren’t putting in the work for you–anybody who works and sweats will improve appreciably, with our without supplements.

Oft lauded, much coveted.

The bid. How?

There’s a mental side to it. But, as with most skills, the mental merely enables the physical–you still have to do the work. What are the fine points of such?

Please keep in mind that I’m talking about ideal layout technique; circumstances may dictate a more reckless bid (with regards to your own body; I do NOT advocate laying out into other players) in order to ensure success, but if you want a long career as an ultimate player more of your bids will be like what’s described below.

The Essentials
If you don’t care for nitty-gritty you check out some of the example bids I size up at the bottom of this post to get a sense of what I mean.

LANDING is perhaps the most important component of a good layout. Sometimes you’ll sacrifice this for the sake of the big play, but honestly, in the big picture you’re going to want to get up and walk away from any bid you make (without an arm held to the side, to boot).

The landing:

• Should be absorbed primarily by your stomach and chest. Ancillary components of impact absorption include your arms and (upper) legs, but both of these have their risks. With arms, keep them extended in front to avoid landing ON them or torquing them in such a way that you might tear something/absorb the brunt of the impact with them. The arms are more for guiding the landing pad that is your torso, and for assisting in keeping your head up. With legs, you might get SOME force here, but this is an injury risk for the knees, so they should not be the primary absorbers at all (ideally they won’t absorb any impact).

  Bend your knees and lift your head before you land, and the resulting position you hit the ground with should force your torso downward so it hits the ground first.

• Should be done at speed (i.e., not from a standstill): My biggest issue with the fall-over layout (and I’ll touch on this more in a little bit) is that it forces your torso on a downward vector when it impacts the ground. Ideally, your impact vector should have a much larger horizontal than vertical component. Ever wonder why layouts hurt less in the rain? It’s partly due to give of the mud, but largely it’s due to being able to slide further–by extending the duration of your impact (sliding means your impact is spread over more space, and therefore more time), the overall force on your body is lessened. This means less achy, quicker return to action. (UPDATE: See the comments for some dispute on the matter–details of the physics notwithstanding, I stand by my point).
• Should have you hit with your chest flat to the ground. Sorry, ladies, but this is the easiest way to ensure you get maximum surface area for impact (again, the more you can spread the layout impact over space, the less force any one point will experience). You’ll see sidewise bids, rolling bids, but there are a few risks in such layouts, number one being the shoulder. You do NOT, under any circumstances, want your shoulder(s) taking the brunt of the impact. This is why I encourage caution with using the arms to cushion a bid, and this is a large part of why I discourage rolling or sideways bids. Even if you lay out sideways, you can torque in midair to avoid the shoulder and encourage more chest/stomach impact.

  Soccer goalie types will be familiar with the sideways/rolling/fall over bid to absorb impact, but doing so is pretty technical (and beyond the scope of this post). Roll at your own risk.

The TAKEOFF is where the real trick to laying out comes. Landing properly ensures you live to bid another day, but a good takeoff makes a good landing a LOT easier.

My main thought with regards to takeoff:

If you’ve swum, or have been watching Phelps dominate the Olympics, you’ll know what I’m getting at here to some extent. What I don’t mean is jumping upwards and out with your body arcing (think gazelle bounding through the African Savannah–explosive? Yes. Impressive? Sure! Efficient for laying out? No). 

What I do mean is exploding straight towards your target in much the same way you would jump upwards for a sky–only instead of exploding vertically into the air, your torso is tilted such that your momentum and thrust direct you horizontally toward the disc.

A simple drill I like to do to teach this kind of form, with which I’ve had mixed success (about as much as I’ve seen with all manner of layout drill–this is a tough skill to teach, and to some extent you can only guide your athletes to a point where they will figure it out for themselves):

Hold a frisbee several feet in front of the athlete. Have them get in a “starting” position as they would for a race (no hands on the ground)–lowered center of gravity, weight on the front foot. If that’s not a good cue, have them get in the position they might when jumping off one foot–again, weight on front foot, lowered center of gravity. Have them tilt their body forwards until their upper body is directed toward the disc (perhaps not completely horizontal, but as close to it as possible–they’ll need to feel it out for themselves a bit with trial and error). In this position, where their weight is pulling them forwards to the point of falling, tell them to explode forwards and grab the frisbee (you can also do this without a disc, but it’s good to have a carrot for motivation). It’s critical to hold the disc far enough in front that they have to get forward momentum before impact, otherwise they’ll flop straight down and it’ll hurt (and that doesn’t particularly encourage further practice!).

The tilt of your upper body directs the force of your legs, so really emphasize the direction the upper body is pointing in (i.e., horizontally) as a means to ensure good takeoff form along with arm drive. Encourage them to explode forward (not upward!) as much as you can.

This drill teaches the critical last takeoff step.  The penultimate step is also critical for lowering the center of gravity going into the last step, but to add that complicates the drill a little; I’m a fan of simple progression. That said, I’m still searching for an ideal drill here; your own experiments with adding an extra step might yield better results. 

I vastly prefer this drill to more brute-force approaches which simply tell players to run and lay out without much guidance (but with a lot of pain along the way). You can get to doing the real thing eventually, but train the components first!

For the landing, fall-overs from one’s knees can help with getting used to taking the impact on the torso (make sure they get the legs up on every fall, so they’re not learning to hit their knees first).Then I’d suggest doing the no-step drill I’ve described above, and then perhaps add in a one- or two/three-step approach before shifting to a full running start.

Remember: horizontal jump. Not a flop. Not a gazelle. Perhaps “horizontal explosion” is more accurate a description. I would add video here, but my means are currently limited–perhaps in a later post…

THE CATCH/D (Arm use while in flight). I’ve already mused about layout grabs a little bit. Short version: you might want to teach two-handed grabs to rookies to encourage proper body position. In the long run, however, the one-hander allows for a bit more arm guidance/cushioning on landing, which also helps a lot. Almost universally, you want to grab with fingers underneath or be prepared to roll your hand over to ensure that the disc isn’t stripped from your grip on impact with the ground (thumb facing the ground on impact=generally too weak, unless you’re two-handing).

Keep your arms extended in front of you! Under no circumstances should your arms be caught under your body (off to the side is acceptable). If you’re doing a close-to-the-chest pancake grab or likewise more of a fall-over bid, landing on your shoulder (BAD! BAD!), try and roll as much as you can to avoid crushing your arms and to spread the impact so your shoulder isn’t completely hosed (I’d suggest avoiding this sort of grab entirely if you have shoulder issues).

Other common means of learning/practicing layout technique:

• Laying out onto a soft surface, such as a bed or high jump pit. Rainy days also make wonderful layout practice days. The dirt and mud add an extra degree of “cool” to the proceedings.

• The pool. Careful not to belly flop! But you can layout into a dive to work on takeoff technique and getting comfortable in the air.

• Visualization. More on this elsewhere on the blog.

• Gratuity/overzealousness on the ultimate field. You’ve all known that guy who lays out for everything. I feel like it’s a phase for a lot of layout learners–building confidence in the skill and testing one’s limits–but sometimes it comes too early, before technique is good enough, resulting in frequent injury or injury risk, and other times this phase never ends and you get guys who routinely lay out for discs they have no chance of D’ing or catching. Whoops.

Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts and ideas here. More than anything else in ultimate I’ve found layouts to be very difficult to get a good universal teaching method for. Sometimes people take to layouts like a fish to water, and others like oil. How do you reconcile the gap between what we think we’re capable of and what we’re actually capable of?

Layout Examples
Pulling on some of the’08 College Natties photos, which capture a LOT of great bids…

This I would characterize as a painful landing. You can tell (look at the previous pic) that he’s curling instead of extending for his impact (likely due to the looming collision with Robin), meaning he’s probably going to hit knees first. Extend your torso into your landing…though he might be in the right here bracing for impact instead of the landing.

This sequence shows a good takeoff. You can see pretty clearly that Dermo is extending off of his left leg, explodes forward with a good body tilt (torso forward), and his trajectory is such that his torso is thrown directly towards his target (that might be harder to tell in the initial two photos, but you can tell by the follow-through in the third and fourth). His left leg winds up staying a little low for impact, though sometimes that’s the sacrifice you make when you really put all your effort in to getting the disc as soon as possible (but note that Dermott has suffered from consistent knee issues from bashing them on layouts. Note the pad on the right knee).

This is more of a fall-over bid (though done from a run). You can tell by the way his entire body moves downwards in the second picture, rather than his chest carrying from takeoff. Note the awkward-looking landing there, where his right leg is clearly going to hit the ground first (and not just any part–the knee gets full service). Also note that a layout in which he explodes more directly towards the disc instead of falling over is likely a D, given how close he is on the fall over.

This is me laying out (I got my hand on it, but guys don’t win Callahan awards without knowing how to go to). I wish I had a sequence so I could analyze my own layout technique (and so you could better decide if I’m preaching what I practice), but in this picture you can at least note the curvature of my body–thrusting my torso forwards, legs are curling so they won’t impact first. The momentum of exploding forwards with my torso means it’ll come downwards to hit the ground before my legs do–and you can hardly tell this in the photo, but my right arm (that isn’t reaching for the disc) is already positioned such that it can help absorb impact when I do hit the ground.

This sequence is a wonderful example of a bid at height. You’ll note the right arm moves on descent, preparing to cushion impact out of the way of the torso and that, for having laid out to reach above his head height for the disc, there’s still a torque throwing his torso down faster than his legs as they begin to come up out of the way.

Another great sequence of a bid at height.

This is something close to what I think of when I think of a perfect bid. Full extension, great technique.

There are most assuredly countless other great layout pictures. But don’t just look through pictures or watch video with a mind for “wow,” watch with a mind to learn. Key in on the little details. Make your own judgments. Use the images as tools for visualization (!).

UPDATE: Jamie Nuwer’s guide to layout safety is worth reading, along with the rest of the injury timeout site.

Catching. Such an essential, fundamental component of ultimate, non? Jesus Christ, just think–250 thousand hits. Already! I hit 2,500 last month and thought I was doing well.

I almost always catch in stride on a small hop for “good” passes that hover from chest to head height for me to run onto. This prevents any ground-up turbulence (uneven fields, while not ideal, are not uncommon in this sport) from throwing off my catching motion, and generally allows me to continue at the speed I was already cruising at to make the catch. Sometimes you want to accelerate through the catch, but I have yet to find myself caught and D’d up because I catch this way. Perhaps I just need higher-level competition, though. Small, but significant when you consider the sheer volume of catches you make.

I don’t know that there’s a player in ultimate frisbee who’s sucessful that doesn’t have confidence. More often than not in surplus; occasionally fragile and easily broken, sometimes shelved for the appearance of “spirit’s” sake, but always there.

You NEED to have confidence to be successful. But you also need to be successful to have confidence, don’t you? How do you develop one without the other?

A few thoughts to this end.
1)You can learn it elsewhere. Even without much success as an “ultimate player,” prior success as an athlete is transferable. Being successful outside of the athletic field can also be transferable, but in such instances the transfer of confidence has less to do with your body’s performance and more to do with your ability to plan, work, and execute (perhaps more important to long-term success in this sport).

2) You can get lucky (or have some natural talent). It’s astounding how much of our lives are decided by a couple fluky moments. Gamblers–”beginner’s luck” is not so because all beginners are lucky, but because the lucky beginners wind up sticking with it and getting hooked. Same with ultimate, or any other endeavor you pursue. Think back to your first experiences with this sport. It’s very unlikely that you struggled greatly out of the gate–too much discouragement would’ve sent you packing. It’s much more likely you found some fascination in your ability to throw a frisbee the right way every once in a while, or played in a tournament early on and caught or threw a goal or something similar.

3) You can persevere. Typically if you don’t get lucky, and don’t have another field to draw confidence from for prior experience, you’re in it for your friends, or the girls (guys), or some other extrinsic reward (perhaps another successful player inspired you to aspire for similar heights). This leads you to playing and improving.

Ultimately (pun intended), you work. Natural gifts are not the rule, and there are so many dimensions to this sport that nobody steps in with a complete toolset. You work, and you improve, and seeing this improvement gives you confidence. You know, when you step on to the field next–”I have worked and I have improved, and I will see better results as a consequence.” And this positive mental feedback often leads to better performance.

Issues come when adversity or bad luck gets our mental cycle off track–a few bad throws, you get burned deep despite feeling faster than you ever have, etc. Doubt creeps in, failure continues to grow, and a negative feedback cycle leads to diminished performance.

You MUST develop a strength of mindset to weather these rough patches. When I talk about confidence, THIS is what I’m really referring to. A lot of it comes from experience, but you can compensate for a lack of experience with a healthy mindset. By “healthy” I don’t mean “positive;” only a fool or a hopeless romantic will continue to see daises when the weeds are growing. But you cannot let the weeds dominate the landscape, either. Simply get to work removing them, eliminating negative thoughts and taking action to correct for perceived shortcomings.

I feel as though one of my best assets as a player is my mindset; as a very analytical person, I typically remain emotionally detached with regards to my performance–sure, I want to do better, but I don’t ever get too high or too low on myself, merely motivated to do better.

In times of struggle, find something to latch on to that you know to be true about yourself. If you find your throws failing you, invest more in your legs. If your offense is suffering, redouble your focus on your defense. Draw from one well of confidence and don’t dwell on your drought elsewhere; while you can tend to the drought directly and, slowly, refill the well that has emptied, it only needs a little guidance to get on the right track (if you’re self-aware enough, you can diagnose what needs to be done yourself; otherwise, get some coaching or let it be). You can channel your emotions more productively into a different aspect of your game, instead of struggling against the force of those emotions in the aspect that’s created it.

Apologies if I’m getting too metaphorical. Know that confidence is a skill like any other; it can be practiced and improved. Being confident in your own capabilities will always lead to better performance; it may not always manifest in success (this is an important distinction), and there may come a time when you need to re-evaluate your approach and change it to get better results for your team. But never lose confidence in your ability. Work hard, develop confidence, and hold it tight.

Straight-up jacked from our jacked Carleton transfer, stud cutter, stud muffin, stand-up guy and stand-out performer, Carson A. Thomas. I label this “Summer Workout Plan” for posterity, but we all know it’s truly “Carson’s Workout Plan.”

This is a good workout. Left me sore the first time, and a heckuva a lot stronger once I’d recovered. Core strength is so often and easily neglected; being fit does little if you can’t properly coordinate said fitness. Get your core in gear. I shaved seconds off of my track workout times this winter purely on the strength of the core work in the following workout.

Abs: This work uses a combination of holds and exercises. It is not a magic formula. I vary it slightly every time I do it, and more than twice a week is overdoing it. There are many other core exercises that are better for building explosiveness. This workout is great for when you have 10 minutes to spare and you’re not in the gym. It can be done anywhere with floor space. It can also be used to build mental toughness. This is a long version, first part can be shortened with bicycles instead of holds and thrusts/v-sits.

30 sec leg hold (holding feet 4-5 inches off the floor, try to avoid hands beneath butt)
20 leg thrusts (keeping legs in the air, thrust your legs upward using your hips)
30 sec flutter kicks (still haven’t put your legs down)
20 V-sits (bring your knees and chest together, still haven’t put legs down)
30 sec swivel kicks (swivel your legs in the air)
30 crunches
30 crunches with legs up
40 side crunches (each side)
side holds with 20 hip dips and then hold for 40 sec (each side)
50 alternating supermans (on your belly, arms and legs in the air, alternating right arm, left leg and left arm, right leg, raise one arm and leg in conjunction)
30 sec lower back hold (hands on butt)
alternating bridge (holding each position for 15 sec. – right arm out, left arm, right leg up, left leg, left arm and right leg, right arm and left leg, normal)
stretch and recover

For those of you who don’t follow RSD (congrats), some pics of college natties are up online. I reserve the right to link to a picture of me (I was very impressed with the quality and quantity of shots of me playing in the Arizona game–incidentally, the best game of my ultimate career).

CP put up some good Dartmouth highlights(from the same website) on his blog, too.

Nothing like reliving the glory day(s).

As I alluded to in previous pots, you can hose your defender by getting him on his heels, or by getting him to commit his hips and then going the other direction.

I’ve also alluded to the notion that it’s possible to compensate for being off-balance (ie, having your hips committed) by having a good degree of strength. It is often (or occasionally, depending on your level of play) not enough to simply get your defender to have her hips committed.

You have to catch him accelerating.

If your opponent is still speeding up in the direction her hips are committed, she will not only have to turn those hips, but fight the force she’s just been applying in order to change direction. This is in contrast to cruising at a constant speed (or accelerating/decelerating slowly), where all force applied is going to change speed and direction. There is an inertia to an accelrating defender that you won’t see at rest or when cruising.

So, how do you create and exploit such an opening?

This is where the beauty of the juke comes in, of the chop-step, the two-step feint. It’s all about a quick change of motion. Particularly if you are already in motion, a quick one-two in a different direction will have your defender scrambling to keep pace–accelerating harder than you–and you’ll have an easier time changing it up than they will at that point.

I’ve already touched upon this briefly in my post about juking, but with a bit more time and a bit more thought I feel like I can phrase it more clearly now. You really should be getting your opponent accelerating as hard as he can here–the harder (faster) he can accelerate, the bigger the potential to exploit it when they’re going all-out. If you’re sub-maximum, your opponent is more likely to be accelerating under control–and while you might still be able to exploit the gap in acceleration between you, it’s less likely to win you big separation. Some knowledge and feel for your opponent is necessary here (as is often the case).

This works especially well if you are a fast/explosive cutter (or at least, if you are relative to your opponent/she thinks you are relative to her). If your defender knows that she cannot keep up with you in a footrace, when you set up footrace-type cuts (i.e., taking what she gives you–running straight in from the back of the stack without faking or with a quick chop-step) she’ll compensate for the speed gap by pushing hard to accelerate to top speed in the first few steps while you’re still in a lower gear to try and get ahead of you. This is what I really mean by using your opponent’s acceleration–know what will cause her to speed up too much and lose control, if only for an instant, and be prepared to exploit it when she does.

This is one of the simplest, yet most powerful notions I’ve ever heard in ultimate frisbee.

When you’re playing defense, stay on your opponent’s outside shoulder (“outside” referring to the force side).


In this position, with the defense set up on the outside shoulder of the cutters, there is no such thing as an easy throw. Even on the far right, where it would almost seem to make sense to shift around…When you leave that alley open the throw becomes uncontested if you lose the footrace (and why, even if you can win the footrace, you wouldn’t choose a superior starting position is a good question–if you’re going to play even, you should still do it on your opponent’s outside). If you stay on the outside shoulder, you’re forcing a throw threaded between the gap between the mark and your positioning without sacrificing the open-side risk.

Even when it seems counter intuitive, stay on the outside shoulder. Always consider the throwing lane. Don’t let yourself be run around and in so doing concede the straight open side cut.

This would be best explained with video, but I don’t have the time or the means on account of my traveling to Japan and not having a team to demonstrate (I haven’t checked the availability of the Buzz Bullets, but I imagine they’re preoccupied getting ready for worlds). Keep an eye out for it in video–lots of shitty defense with a defender getting deked away from the outside shoulder, spectacular defensive plays compensating for said deking (doesn’t justify it unless you get a D on that play consistently!), bad throws forced by good defense keeping its position downfield. There are fundamentals that work or do not work underneath every highlight reel play.