Thoughts.

I wrote this up in the hotel at Vegas, trying to stay more concise than my usual rambling fare. The presentation was very informative, and Dr. Goldberg gives a very convincing argument for coming over to his way of thinking. I was going to put a link pointing to the downloads section of the UCPC website, where Devlin’s audio recording of the keynote was posted previously, but it seems that somebody has mandated it be taken down. Your loss!

Anyhow, below are some of the main points Dr. Goldberg made:

•The mind, body, and performance are all related. The Mind’s conceptions of what you should focus on and do, and how you might fare, in turn influences your body, effecting basic physiological changes—your muscles tighten, your breath gets shallower, you essentially can “psych yourself out,” all through the power of suggestion that comes when you think about performance. Even seemingly positive thoughts such as “I won’t drop the disc” are still rooted in failure and prime your body for it. And the Body’s state in turn influences one’s performance, which effects how your mind perceives your ability, and so on…

•The distinction between the “right mindset” and the “wrong mindset” for optimal performance is as simple as the difference between being “in the experience” or “in your head.” When focusing on the experience itself, one should relax, trust one’s skill and LET IT HAPPEN. Practice is when you work and refine your skills, when you’re performing you need to let your body do what it’s been trained to do. Staying in the present, and focused on yourself and your teammates, and things you can directly control, are all part of the “right mindset.” The “wrong mindset,” on the other hand, comes when you are trying too hard, or are too tentative, because you are too focused on the OUTCOME and not focused enough on the PROCESS. Thinking about the last play that just happened, or what might happen if you score this goal, or generally focusing on things you can’t directly control (like your opponents) will all put you in the “wrong mindset,” elevating your stress, lowering your confidence, and therefore lowering your overall level of play.

•The distinction between the fore and hindbrain—the forebrain is where you process thoughts, essentially where cognition takes place. Your hindbrain is where your intuitive knowledge rests, in a sense your more primitive understanding of things. Optimal performance hinges on your staying in the hindbrain, where you have easy access to intuited skills like throwing, rather than the forebrain where you’re too busy processing to react quickly and decisively.

•Finally, Dr. Goldberg emphasized that it is not focus itself, but controlling the loss of focus, that allows you to stay in an optimal performance state. EVERYBODY loses focus—the best are better able to recognize these lapses and put themselves back on target sooner. You can practice/train your mental facilities in this regard through things like meditation—Dr. Goldberg suggests focusing on a Frisbee, set aside somewhere, for set periods of time, recognizing and acknowledging distractions and letting them go to refocus on the disc. Eventually he says you can get to a point where you can set the disc on top of a TV and still maintain focus on the Frisbee.

The Pain Train rolled into Vegas this weekend a collection of ultimate players, and rolled out looking less like a mishmash of players and more like a team than before (albeit with work still to be done).

We went 4-5 on the weekend, winning our last 3 games on Sunday to win the 25th place bracket. Considering that several of our losses were teams that either went on to upset top seeds or were top seeds themselves, it could be said that we played better than our record.

Short game-by-game recaps below:
Game 1: vs UChicago
We rolled fairly easily in this game. I think we won 13-7 or 8? A good way to start of the tourney, as Chicago is a pretty loose, fun team to play against and going in we felt we overmatched them enough that we didn’t have to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform to get the W.

Game 2: vs Colorado
Pretty much the opposite of the Chicago game, as we were rolled fairly easily. Colorado moved the disc very effectively, and in the words of Dan Yi, they “created space extremely well,” which they used with good effect deep and short to score. On O we were able to deal with Colorado’s defense, but our O was not clean and we gave Colorado plenty of chances to break as a result which they capitalized on. I think the final score was in the vicinity of 13-6. Of note during this game–I tweaked my left ankle yet again. Took most of the first half off, and was back in towards the end of the game with a brace for support.

Game 3: vs Texas A & M
This was a solid matchup. With two byes separating this game from our last one, we came in well-rested. We got off to a very poor start, a couple miscues and short turns allowing Texas to go up 5-1 on us, but from that point on I think it’d be fair to say we dominated the game. After getting off to a slow start personally in the first two games, I finally got my legs back under me, so to speak, and made some nice plays deep on D and O. Though we dominated the game after going down early, we didn’t dominate enough to make up for the early deficit. I think we may have lost 13-11 or 10? In any case, this ended our first day.

Game 4: vs UCLA
A good game to start off day 2, we played a close game with these guys. I think it was around this point that we really started to diagnose and make progress in our O’s struggles in terms of disc movement and setting the stack, a positive trend that would continue for the rest of the tourney. This was another fairly close loss (I never kept track of score throughout the tourney); ultimately, we played well, but unforced errors and turns kept us from capitalizing (which would become the story of the tournament).

Game 5: vs …? I can’t remember
My mind’s a blank on this one (this is what happens when I recap still tired from traveling back). We lost, but it was close? We definitely played really well in this game, we all went into the next game feeling pretty good. In any case, after this game we immediately faced…
(UPDATE: CalTech. No Boo this year to run an anti-Boo zone against, we were pretty much up to snuff but we had plenty of unforced turns. story of the tourney)

Game 6: vs CUT
…Carleton. We got hosed. This game was a bit of a step down from our last game, and I think our fatigue really started to show here as there were an inordinate number of sloppy throwaways and the like. This guy encouraged the team to “smile!” which I think definitely helped to keep the team looser and enjoy the game rather than getting all up in our own heads. Carleton was coming off of a universe-point upset loss to Las Positas (Las who? I know!), and apparently came out fired up as we scored maybe 3 points in the first half; after that, I think CUT opened up their subbing rotation to work in their younger guns and we perhaps pulled it together a bit more and scored with more regularity, but this game wasn’t close. 13-7, or 8, maybe. The loss consigned us to the 25th-place bracket on Sunday.

Game 7: vs…vs….ah, er…wow, I’m gonna need to update this post when results are posted online. (UPDATE: this game was against UC-Irvine)
We started off the third and final day with a game against a team I can’t remember the name of. I do know that this day was marked by wind, adding a significant upwind/downwind as well as crosswind factor to all of our games. The wind meant lots of turns, but by sticking to our guns on O and working the dump-swing-continue, especially upwind, our motion O carried us to a 4- or 5-point win (I think we had two or three upwind breaks on them).

Game 8: vs George Washington U
This was a really good game, a bit of back-and-forth if I remember correctly. Again, a significant upwind/downwind game. However, while GWU often resorted to the long shot (like the team we had just played) with little success, we managed to be just a bit more efficient by moving the disc and not falling prey to a huck-and-hope strategy (though we did have more than a couple punts on downwind points, and we had at least a few strong hucks that led to scores). Lots of turns, but we had fewer, and won by I think 2 upwind breaks.

Game 9: vs Western Washinton
This was it, the game for all the marbles in the 25th-place bracket. Seigs coached us against his would-be nemesis, Ben Wiggins and his WeWa Dirt. A strange game of sorts, as we wound up winning on universe point, though Dirt had a whole lot of drops/unforced turns that made our job easier. We had opened up our subbing rotation for this game–I only played maybe half a dozen points, trying (in vain) to preserve my foot, which had started to bruise on the heel from the way my brace altered my running gait.

Overall, we improved steadily throughout the weekend. I think we managed to do a good job as a team of keeping things loose and fun, never placing too much pressure on ourselves to win now and instead focusing on the bigger picture of making progress and improving as a team, and by that criterion the tournament was a success. I think we’ve discovered a lot of aspects of our game that need to be refined, from the mark to our dumps to our motion O, and we’re going to bring that home and really work to continue to improve ourselves for the spring season.

Oh, and Vegas wasn’t half bad. We had an extra day to walk the strip after the tourney ended, and my car stopped in more than a few casinos on Monday. Bellagio, Wynn, MGM Grand, among others. Good stuff. Nothing too scandalous, but a lot of walking on my aching, bruised foot, a whole lot of excess and general ridiculousness of Las Vegas, and we hit up a Chipotle for a fulfilling dinner. Flights back took forever–we rolled into the airport in Vegas at 9:00 or so for an 11:30 flight, and combine that with at 2+ hour layover in Charlotte, NC at 7 in the morning, and we were traveling for something pretty close to 12 hours. Good thing I didn’t have any homework or classes to get back to at Dartmouth upon my return!

Continuing in my UCPC seminar review, Ben Wiggins’ seminar on marking.

It was an interesting seminar–definitely different from what I was anticipating; instead of perhaps an endorsement of well-known marking strategies, or a long list of little tips, Wiggins goes for the marking jugular, so to speak, with a few solid to useful ideas and a few more radical, though potentially very useful, ideas, as well as a fair bit about team defense (of which the mark is possibly one of the most important components, as the mark is the most powerful defensive position on the field in terms of space defended by a good mark). Wiggins’ target audience for a lot of these thoughts is elite-level play, where a defense cannot expect the offense to turn the disc over without considerable pressure, and where the offense will likely score with great consistency nonetheless–where a single turnover or two might be all a D-line needs to win a game, so a lot of these ideas aren’t necessarily for, say, rec league pickup.

I’m going to shoot for more brevity in this post and try to list more than rant.

Simple, useful ideas:

• The notion of “blocking back,” whereby a mark reaches away from the thrower rather than towards them when attempting to pointblock; this allows for a slightly longer window to react to the disc’s movement.
• Similarly, Wiggins suggested keeping the head back as far as possible while marking, to give oneself perhaps an extra split-second to see (and perhaps tip/block) a throw
• When trying to stop a continuation off of a dump/etc., the player setting the mark should take a very quick glance (glance, don’t stare) upfield while running to set the mark–look for a split second, and then process what you see as you run to set the mark, don’t get caught looking away from the thrower
• A good mark will learn which fakes are bad, and will ignore them as non-threats, rather than responding to any movement and letting the handler toy with the mark.
• Finish drills! In a dump-swing drill, for example, the last handler and mark should go for 1-2 seconds as though the handler were trying to continue the disc upfield. Over many iterations of a given drill this gives everyone on the team dozens more opportunities to work on marking per practice.

Less simple, but useful ideas:

• Marking with staggered feet–a bit controversial perhaps, but Wiggins insists it has situational value. Going on the notion of “blocking back,” the side which your foot is back on will have a slightly larger window with which to react to a throw on that side (so one generally wants the foot back on the side of the throw that’s a bigger threat). It also should help with movement toward or away from the thrower to avoid potential fouls.
• A moving start out of a stoppage–instead of standing passively when tapping the disc in on the mark, while the O makes play calls, etc, Wiggins suggests a mark that is moving from one side to the other as the disc is tapped in–supposedly this takes away certain options and forces the O to adjust immediately as the disc comes in, but I’m not so sure of its efficacy. Something to try.
• The notion of “baiting,” where a mark will show one look (say, with hands held as though to stop a high-release, allowing the under) for a few marks/a full point, and then when they know how the handler will throw against this mark, make an adjustment and go for the point block. Definitely a risky proposition in some cases, but against high-level O, a chance like this for a point block is as golden a chance as any you’ll see.
• The idea of always covering the space on field with the mark, instead of the sideline (i.e., having your butt facing the sideline, stopping a backhand when the backhand would be OB anyways): this is common sense to a point, but Wiggins advocates for it to the point where the upline throw, while difficult, is (I think) unacceptably easy to get off. Again, how you implement this would depend on the level of offense you’re trying to D up.

Team D strategies: you’d be better served looking at Wiggins’ materials on the UCPC downloads than my explanation here (UPDATE: note that the link is now broken, with no apparent replacement elsewhere on the internet–my apologies). It’s definitely worth noting that a tall, athletic team like Ego designed their D to force deep throws and use their athletes to their advantage, while a team like the Drizzle implemented a team D strategy that focused more on creating havoc and poach opportunities since they were playing a team that was clearly above their heads. Something to consider when thinking about one’s own team D.

Improving individual/team marks: nothing too revolutionary here, I think. Obviously a fitter mark is a better one. Wiggins suggests keeping stats to assess the quality of marks (yardage allowed), as well as using video. Pickup is a great time to implement new strategies or work to incorporate more elements to your game. It’s important to scheme one’s defense to play to one’s strengths (and/or to dumb down your opponents’ strength). Realize that the best defenders are not always the best markers, and vice-versa. Know who excels at what so you don’t put a line out that’s overmatched on the mark, and realize that good marks invariably contribute to errant or rushed throws that result in D’s downfield.

This was probably the lightest seminar, in terms of relative amount of stuff I might take with me and incorporate. That said, it was still definitely some valuable stuff.

Still in the reviewing queue:

• Keynote by Dr. Goldberg
• Applying Mental Toughness Strategies by Tiina Booth (ARHS coach)
• A Season of High-Level Ultimate by Nathan Wicks (former Brown men’s coach, ’00-’05 (note they won championships in his first and last years coaching them))
• Perhaps a brief bit on the Panel Discussion.

Probably in that order. (UPDATE: check the UCPC label for the other recaps)

Some links to other UCPC reviews:
Lean and Hungry FitnessGeorge Cooke
Jim Parinella

I plan to disseminate all the information I gleaned from this weekend’s Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference (UCPC) on this blog; I’m going to break it up into parts for (hopefully) easier reading.

Let me first say that the UCPC was a great success. All of the seminars I went to were very helpful and informative, and I’ve come away from the conference with more new knowledge to apply than I know what to do with (thankfully, I have pages of notes to refer back to). Tiina and George definitely surpassed what I think anyone was expecting for the first time a conference of this kind was ever put on, and I’m looking forward eagerly to see what they do with it in years to come.

I’m going to start my recaps with the part I’m most likely to forget detail about soonest, the seminar on training for ultimate. You might think I’m most likely to forget about it soonest because it’s harder for me to remember, but it’s more the opposite–I’m so familiar with a lot of the material that if I wait too long to go over it I’ll confuse what I learned with what I already know.

The presentation was definitely useful–given almost entirely by Bryan Doo, a former DoG player who is now the trainer for the Boston Celtics (Dan was there, but he seemed to be playing tech support…I’m sure what exactly his role was in the program, actually). Just one look at him would tell you that he’s a pretty fit guy, but he continued to put it on display for us through demonstrations of his athleticism in the various drills and exercises he went over for us.

Doo opened by saying that Ultimate is, by far, the hardest sport to train for, and I’m inclined to agree. Given that in a single point, you can be running, sprinting, stopping, changing direction, jumping, laying out, and throwing, and that you have to maintain this level of performance over the course of at least a minute or two, oftentimes longer, before you can get a break, and that while most sports have single games, ultimate has players going for a full day or weekend, it’s definitely unique in that it requires great conditioning as well as great strength and athleticism to excel (or a deep roster so you can sub out often).

He began his discussion of fitness by talking about the two most under-worked (and under-appreciated) muscle groups in the body: the hamstrings and the gluteals. The majority of people are quad-dominant; with better hamstring strength and better gluteal activation, you’ll take a lot of strain off of your quads and enable yourself to go harder for longer, as well as reducing injury risk.

Doo strongly advocated against using simple leg curl machines for training the hamstrings, emphasizing movements that involve eccentric contraction (legthening the muscle under force), as the hamstrings are your primary decelerators when running. He pointed to leg curls with the legs on a stability ball and deadlifts (I volunteered “deadlifts” when he asked what people did to train their hamstrings and got a cry of “Yes! It’s like I plant them out there!” in response) as great exercises for exercises to train the hamstrings. With stronger hamstrings, you’ll be better able to stop–I shouldn’t need to say how important being able to stop is for cutting in ultimate; additionally it’ll reduce your injury risk–if your hamstrings aren’t strong enough to stop you at a full sprint, you’re more likely to be slowing down/stopping/planting and tearing/straining your hamstrings.

For the glutes, Doo took a different approach. The thing with the gluteal muscles is not so much to work toward strengthening them as it is to work towards activating (ie, contracting) them better. Proper gluteal activation ensures proper hip function, and weak glutes will force your quads to work harder and heighten your injury risk in the back and hamstrings, as they’ll have to compensate as well (an aside–this illustrates why it’s important to not simply “treat the symptom” with regards to injuries. Your hamstrings can get tight or be strained for any number of different reasons–don’t just do leg curls and expect it to get better, because it won’t fix the true problem. Look to the rest of your body for the cause and treat that). Doo had a number of different exercises and drills to work towards better gluteal activation–leg bridges, single leg leg bridges (going up and down or holding them, and putting your hands on your butt to feel the glutes and make sure they contract), and a couple of drills I couldn’t possibly do justice trying to explain here. Check out the UCPC’s download page for a link to the videos we saw (I haven’t checked the links myself, but you should be able to find them directly or in the powerpoint) to see–Doo definitely emphasized the importance of these drills for becoming more athletic.

He also made it a point to mention that when doing these drills (some of which are plyometric in nature), they should be done when well-rested and NOT as a conditioning tool unless you’re already very good at the drill. When done as conditioning and form breaks down from inexperience, you’re increasing your injury risk.

The other major training facet he emphasized was core strength, especially rotational strength. As an ultimate player rotational movement is a fact of life, and it also comes into play whenever you run, jump, or really do anything with one arm or one leg. You can train rotational movements any number of ways, I won’t go into them here. He also emphasized general core strength, as a strong core makes your whole body more efficient and stable.

The last two parts Doo spoke about were injuries and general training strategies. On the topic of injuries, Doo spoke briefly, mentioning things like RICE (rest, ice, compress, elevate–the hierarchy of treating minor injuries (minor meaning you don’t have a broken bone sticking out–in cases like that, a trip to the hospital is best)) and the need to maintain conditioning, with lower-impact activity if necessary such as swimming. He also emphasized the need to work slowly back towards athletic activity–with a mantra of “stability before mobility,” Doo said that an athlete should be able to hold a position before doing exercises that move through a position. He also stressed the importance of getting one’s range of motion back after injury–if you fail to do your rehab correctly, for example, you’ll wind up compensating elsewhere and increasing your injury risk–if not at the first injury site, then elsewhere.

Finally, he spoke in broader terms about training well. He started by attaching static stretching in your warmup, as lengthening your muscles before you do activity actually decreases the amount of strength you can apply (think of how much force is applied by a rubber band you pull apart at two points close together vs. at two points farther apart), and instead recomended low-intensity, range-of-motion type movements to get the blood flowing and the body ready to compete–he also differentiated between an “active” warmup where there is light jogging and dynamic stretching from standing position, and a “less active” warmup when you’re already warm (say, between games) and want to conserve energy and instead do less engaging dynamic work sitting or lying on the ground.

He talked for a bit about speed, agility, and quickness, and he went through some drills that work on these aspects; he emphasized a few qualities that will enhance these traits, namely that: an athlete should have a strong base (think of how you stand when getting ready to mark/guard somebody–you should be on the balls of your feet, already applying pressure inwards toward the ground. This gives you a stable position from which you can explode in either direction without having to waste time moving from some other ready position to this one); an athlete should have awareness of where his or her center of gravity is; and that an athlete should apply force to the ground. The last one is of particular importance. The more force you apply to the ground, the farther and faster you go (This is why I place weight/strength training above any other training modalities for becoming a better athlete).

The last thing he mentioned was the need to cool down, admitting that he’s not particularly dilligent about it himself. At this point, it’s OK to do static stretching to increase your range of motion, because you (hopefully) won’t be doing anything too high stress for the rest of the day. It’s important to use the cooldown as a time to relax and get your heart rate back to normal, as these things will enhance recovery.

Oh, RSD.

Look at that, two posts in the span of an hour. Amazing what reading period before finals can do for my non-academic pursuits…

The following is a list of some of my favorite lifts/exercises. The exercise name will be followed with a “why I like it” and a “how it’s done.”

Bulgarian Squats: The Dart endorses it, too. It’s a 1-legged exercise, similar to a 1-legged squat. The difference is, instead of doing them from standing, you do this lift from a lunge, with your back foot elevated and resting on a bench (I try to have it sticking straight back so I can’t use the back leg to push up). You can do it with barbell or dumbbells. It’s a movement you don’t usually do in the gym in terms of the motion and the muscles worked, and you can go pretty deep into it without too many issues. It’s really good for improving squat form and general explosiveness as it pretty much forces you to push through the heel and extend through the hip. You might also consider looking into various other 1-legged squat derivations, as the unilateral (1-legged, or 1-armed, as opposed to both working together) work is very worthwhile for athletics and injury prevention.

I apologize for the lack of any kind of posts, after I said I would a while back. Hadn’t been feeling the muse much. I DO have things to write about, though, so stay tuned.

Booyah.

This week marks the start of training in earnest again. Some more posts on that (and Frozen) to come in the following days and weeks.

Seigs was asking me about some of my workouts as he’s looking to add some variety to his off-season training; I figure it’s worth posting on the blog, too.