Thoughts.

And so it was that the 25th-seeded pickup team won.

What a great change of pace. After a long denouement to my ultimate career after regionals, with a brief, minor peak against Arizona at nationals, I’d found my passion for play fading (though my fascination with learning and teaching in this sport and otherwise continues as strong as ever).

But a glimmer of hope. Strangely, found it whilst tooling on some 15 and 16 year olds at the summer camp I was working at (perhaps you’ve heard of CTY? More than a few ultimate types got their start playing there, despite the camp ostensibly having nothing to do with ultimate). Somewhere in the flurry of terrible decisions and missed executions, punctuated by goals scored by yours truly (and staff accompaniment), I found it.

What was it? The joy of playing, of course! I had forgotten what it felt like. Those weeks of practice between regionals and nationals–they weren’t joyful. They were focused, they were dedicated to improving ourselves. They were work. Even at nationals, that sense of work stuck. Only when I could bring it all to fruition and really play in Colorado did it all mean something.

Similarly, I’d been tooling around with my throws, sure, thinking a lot about ultimate, yes, but I’d been missing the joy. The dam started leaking tooling on the teenagers, and the trickle became a river playing in Ow My Knee, tooling on dults.

Why lie. It’s a lot of fun to be good. It’s easy when you win. Playing this weekend, with a team of friends who not only played, but were damn good, was EXACTLY what I needed.

Particularly on Sunday, when we played legitimate mixed teams, that practice, and take themselves seriously, it was great to go and chill, pile together, and drink water during timeouts and halftime while our opponents huddled together and talked strategy. And then go back out and beat them (like our come-from-behind, universe point victory over 7 express in the final–we were down something like 7-10 when the cap horn sounded).

This is less a recap and more a rejoicing–this is why I play ultimate. I had my doubts about playing elite when I return stateside (and easing those doubts is not a guarantee that I’ll feel any more confident in a year’s time when I get back from Japan, where I’m teaching English next year), but my passion has been re-invigorated.

College is impossible to recapture–the people, the community, the commitment were all so different than anything I could hope to ever find again–but playing in OMK reminded me of the other aspect, that part that drew m to Dartmouth Ultimate in the first place–not the Dartmouth, but the ultimate. I love this sport.

This is a simple thought.

Sometimes the answer is yes. But learn when you can pick a direction and go.

How do you gauge how far you should space yourself from your man?

Here’s a few factors you should take into account.

• The relative threat of your player, as dictated by his/her spot on the field–is she way on the far sideline in a horizontal stack, when the disc is on the other line? Did he just finish cutting deep, and is so far that any throw made would leave you with time to catch up and make a play? Is he out in the lane, ready to be the primary cutter as soon as the disc is tapped in?
• The speed/skill of your mark. Is he faster than you? Can she beat you in an open sprint? Can you make up a cushion of two steps if he runs straight away from you?
• The role of your opponent. Does she mostly handle, hanging out around the disc? Is cutting deep the only thing he wants to do? Know what to expect when you position.
• Size disparity. Even if you have the ups to sky your opponent, if they LOOK like a good target deep, you’re not going to want to give the thrower any extra encouragement with a cushion there.
• The opponent’s strengths. Can she throw? If not, is the under really your first priority to defend? (hint: sometimes it still is. When?)
• How he/she reacts. Can he juke with the best of them, but struggles to find a rhythm when you take a couple steps out into the lane? Do they always run away from your cushion, or do they try to blow past you anyway?
• Your comfort/energy. Do you like to get physical? Are you too tired to respond to all of your opponent’s motions up close? Do you prefer to chase the frisbee down, and can you do so if you opponent has a lead of a step or more on you?

Play some thought games with yourself, really see yourself in a variety of situations–both static (off a dead disc) and dynamic (as the disc is dumped and swung, or as it flows up the open side, as it goes from a handler to a cutter who can’t huck). What about weather? What sorts of information are the most essential to know/deduce when determining your defensive positioning?

Cut with a mind for adjustments.

When you make a move–finally picking a direction, and committing to going hard in that direction–be thinking about where you’ll be going next. You’ve already put your body in gear to go where you initially wanted; when do you want to give that body its next directive?

If you’re wide open, maybe you’re just catching the frisbee, and you have nothing to worry about (other than watching the disc into your hands, of course). But maybe there’s confusion around the disc, maybe there’s a timing issue, maybe your man has you read perfectly on this cut. All of those are TEMPORARY conditions that will make this current cut ineffective.

The question, then, is what will make your NEXT cut effective? Is it simply a matter of reading your defender and changing direction? Where is new space being created? Anticipate what will happen next: see the handler streaking upline for the disc, and plan on cutting deep for him BEFORE he gets the frisbee in power position (so you’re better prepared to respond and set up space/your man correctly). Notice the man underneath clearing out and plan on making a move in BEFORE your defender realizes that that space is a threat.

Anticipate what will happen next. Cut with a mind for adjusting your cut to enhance its effectiveness–just because you’re moving currently, doesn’t mean you can’t immediately threaten in another direction. Au contraire, it’s absolutely necessary if you plan on being an effective cutter. Use your extra information–knowledge of how your team’s system works/chemistry with other players, or the simple fact that your defender has to follow you AND the disc, while you can focus on just the disc–to gain an extra edge.

So, how you grip the disc is important. However, as with just about anything in sports, it is not enough just to know how to do it right. You must possess the requisite athleticism to execute–knowledge alone can only take you so far.

So how do you train your grip to be stronger? I actually don’t do a ton of grip training anymore–I’m at a good baseline level, though I imagine a bit more training would help with my forehand hucking in particular–but when I did do grip training, I considered a few things when I planned my grip workouts:

There are different kinds of grip strength.
Pinch: Between individual fingers and your thumb.
Crush: Between your fingers and your palm (the “standard” grip when you think about grip–think handshake)
Support: Not a gripping motion, but the ability to maintain one’s grip (think holding on to a heavy bag full of groceries by the handle)

It’s my opinion that the first and the last are the most important for ultimate. The former is particularly important for catching (think about it–attacking the disc, you should be using your thumb underneath/on top to go with your other fingers), while the latter comes into play more for throwing and transferring power from your hips to the disc. Crush grip really has little relevance to ultimate, and it is not something you need to emphasize in your training (though you should still include it for completeness’ sake from time to time).

So, how do you train pinch and support grip? By gripping, of course!

The easiest way is simply to find a gripper or a grip machine at your local gym. these lend themselves fairly easily to a variety of gripping motions–really think about using your thumb–when I talk about support grip, it’s essentially support pinch grip. Start with a relatively manageable amount of force/weight, doing sets in the upper end of the rep range (think 20 reps), and work down to doing a few reps with higher weight, for reps and for time held closed. Pinching and then holding (whether you pinch with one, two, three, or four fingers simultaneously with your thumb is your prerogative–I prefer two fingers, with middle and pointer, as I think they are the ones that do the brunt of the catching work) allows you to work both types of grip simultaneously.

Another exercise I’ve done for supporting grip is holding plates. Grab a 5 or 10 lb plate and simply hold it with four fingers flush on top and the thumb on bottom (or vice versa). Hold for time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Other options for grip training:
-Sand/Rice gripping. I’ve never done this myself, but others have.
-Fingertip pushups. I used to do these with regularity. But consider the range of motion in which you’re training your grip by doing these (see below). If you can get to the point where you can do them just on your thumbs or on three fingers (thumb+pointer/middle), you’re on the right track.

More conventional thought says doing things like farmer’s walks and deadlifts are good ways to train grip, and this is true–but it’s not as specific to ultimate (often training primarily crush grip, and in a range of motion unseen in ultimate). I do think, however, that learning to use the hook grip, with your thumb under your fingers, will emphasize strength of the thumb more and will carry over to your grip in ultimate though (to at least some extent).

Another thing to consider is that grip strength is highly specific to the range trained. I can do grip training for climbing, working on gripping at the outermost edges of my hand’s extension (think a hold several inches thick, so there’s a lot of space between your fingers and thumb), but, despite possessing phenomenal strength on the wall, have little to spare when gripping a disc with very little separation between fingers and thumb.

I couldn’t tell you what the exact range for the specificity of the training effect is, but the more you can work your grip in the range you’ll be using in-game (ie, closer together), the more you’ll find the results carry over to throwing and catching in game. That’s not to say you should avoid training grip at the edges of your range–to the contrary, a balanced program necessitates it–but pick your focus wisely.

Finally, grip strength fatigues easily, and recovers slowly. If you’re some kind of superhuman, perhaps you can train grip every day and continue to see improvement. For me, a good grip workout would actually leave me worse off for at least the day following. Some of my best throwing has come after taking a couple days off from throwing and grip training–my hands can recover fully, enabling more confident, sure throws. Keep this in mind when planning your training. Grip training is, primarily, a secondary focus for workouts, so I usually save it for the end of workouts where I won’t have to worry about a fatigued grip affecting my other lifts.

You’ll be surprised what a big difference this can make, though you might not notice the gradual improvement over time.

New entrant into the blogosphere James Kim ’11 has a great post on his blog looking at some of the issues addressing the image of ultimate frisbee.

I don’t read Match’s blog with any regularity, but while Match seems to rant a lot about all sorts of ideals when he talks about the future of ultimate and what he’d like to see, James definitely seems a lot more realistic and measured in his views, taking the view less of a dedicated fan wanting to make ultimate a really sweet and hugely popular sport and more of a player who simply wants his sport to be respected by the world (and public) at large. Anybody who fancies themselves advocates for the sport would do well to consider the issues he brings up.

I’ve pretty much gone through the different types of conditioning workouts I wanted to send out (again, if you want more conditioning, try to do old workouts faster/better or mix up the exercises. I can give you more ideas if you blitz me).

Your body is a finely-tuned machine–the connections and associations that your nervous system makes are very specific to what you do. If you don’t practice running fast, you body won’t be used to the motion when you try to sprint. Any sprinter in track & field worth his salt does speed work routinely in order to run faster. Ultimate players should, too.

Frisbee is not natural. Man never evolved to throw a flying piece of plastic, and there’s really no analog to it in nature (throwing a rock or a spear to kill prey is a far cry from the mechanics used for most throws in ultimate). The same goes for catching–there are certain spots on the frisbee that make for easy catches (see Zips Tips for more on that–really, just read all of Zips tips) and some that make for easy macs.

It’s absolutely essential, if you want to play at a high level in this sport, to make frisbees as natural to you as any other implement (perhaps even more so). I spent the couple weeks leading up to Regionals my sophomore year (’06) (and during my summer throwing in Japan in ’05) carrying a frisbee with me everywhere, constantly throwing to myself and catching it. Hone your instincts.