Thoughts. » fundamentals

Strength Training for Ultimate – Program Specifics

Mackey — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:35:07 +0000

Foam rolling and mobility work are pillars of athletic (and general) health. Do them to warm-up, (and/) or include them as part of your workout itself.
Follow your “big lifts” with related assistance work (2-4 “extra” lifts after the big one(s)) – for lower body, this means single-leg work and/or higher-rep work; for upper body, this means an appropriate balance of pulling exercises (thin pull-ups/chin-ups and rowing), grip and single-arm work. If you’re doing full-body days rather than upper/lower split, it’s ok to mix upper-lower assistance work.
Core work counts as assistance. Focus on core stability (planks, holds) and rotation for ultimate; situps have less functional carryover. Recognize that a lot of single-limb work emphasizes core strength/stability too – there are many ways to work “core work” into other exercises and save time and see (perhaps better) carryover.
Make sure you’re pulling! This applies to lower-body lifting (deadlifts, RDLs, cable pull-throughs – all technically “pushes” through the feet) but ESPECIALLY to the upper body. The mirror muscles may look nice, but true power and injury prevention is rooted in the posterior chain. Balance any upper-body pushing you do with equivalent pulling, if not with extra pulling work for the majority of us who are imbalanced (those with shoulder woes, I’m looking at you).
Set & Rep ranges: Very much dependent on one’s goals and Training Age. Some generalities:
- “Big Lifts” – squat/deadlift/bench should be at relatively high loads/low rep ranges (~5 or less reps/set). Strength first, here!
- Novice: Focus on quality technique at relatively low set/rep ranges (3×5 for working sets, perhaps 3×8 if you’re not getting heavy). Recovery and progress can be made on a workout-to-workout basis, so less variation in exercise selection and intensity is needed for progress – you can do the same routine over and over and still make progress.
- Intermediate: Technique is less of a concern now, so higher-intensity and higher-volume work can be done (heavy x1,x2,x3 sets – this should be preceded by good fitness base development for any intermediates coming off of some down time). Total reps generally need to be higher than for novices at similar % loads to generate progress – where a novice would do 3×5, an intermediate is more likely to need 5×5, at a higher % of their 1RM. Variation in volume should occur on a weekly level (e.g., 5×5 in wk 1, 4×5 wk 2, 6×5 wk 3, and 2×5 in wk 4 to deload). With greater training stress needed to stimulate progress, greater recovery is needed and this is enabled in part through weekly variation; broader exercise selection is usually necessary as well (even subtle shifts, e.g. from flat bench to incline bench, front to back to box squats, can stimulate new gains).
- True advanced lifters are competitive powerlifters and the like; they’re beyond the scope of what you need for ultimate and what I’m comfortable commenting on, but adaptation occurs over even longer timeframes than weekly to volume due to the massive loads they can wield (monthly or even annually for the most elite lifters) and rather rapidly to specific exercises (necessitating rapid variation).
- Assistance work generally operates in higher rep ranges (8-15); this is where you stimulate metabolic changes (ie, muscle growth) – the lower-rep big lifts are for cultivating strength proper. Novices don’t need assistance work to stimulate progress as much as intermediates do. If your goals include packing on a lot of weight, doing extra volume here (an extra set or two) can be sufficient to stimulate the extra growth – but keep in mind that most are held back not by work, but by recovery here – eat and sleep more!

There you have some of my current thinking on strength training for ultimate. I think all of these points apply regardless of where you are in your season, but are easier to not compromise in your off-season.

When in season, keep your big goals in mind – is adding weight to this lift the most important thing? What do you need to do in order to really thrash this coming weekend? Keep the big picture in mind – lifting is a means to an end (strength) which is in turns another means to the more relevant end (on-field success). It is one component. It is not the only component, and is not the most important one. Set your goals, evaluate the tools that can help you achieve your goals, and never lose sight of that forest for the iron-bound trees you travel within.

Related posts:

Strength Training for Ultimate – Program Structure Considerations

Planning My Training – Gathering Tools

Strength Training For Ultimate – General Considerations

Track Workouts and Running Form

Mackey — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:10:14 +0000

Ironside vs. Chain, Semifinals, '09 Club Nationals. Photo taken by Keegan Uhl.

While the college season is picking up steam, a lot of club players are just getting in gear for the coming tryouts and season.

Ballometrics has been maintaining a fitness list for the past few months (tryouts start soon, if you’re interested in playing competitive mixed out of Boston, drop a line); people are starting to do track workouts now that the land is thawing.

I sent the following to the list about doing pre-season track workouts, which segued into a lot of thoughts on running form. As we still have the luxury of training without the constant performance demand of weekend tournaments and practices, it’s a great time to focus on technique and go into the season not only with a good base of strength and conditioning, but efficient form, as well.

It all depends on where you are athletically right now. It’s pretty early in pre-season right now, so I’d encourage you to focus on form at a brisk pace and short distance–”tempo runs” if you’ve heard the term–rather than doing either long slow distance (though that can have a similar place in getting ready to sprint, and if that’s your thing, that’s fine) or especially full-on sprints at this point if your body isn’t ready for it.

At the very least, I’d encourage pretty full recovery between runs for the first couple workouts. There are other ways to condition, doing circuits in the gym, etc, that have the side benefit of making you better fit without the risk of overdoing it that can come with sprinting full-on before you’re ready.

Again, this depends on what kind of shape you’re in. I know that for myself, for instance, I can’t really do more than a couple full-on sprints right now before my form starts breaking down and I’m liable to hurt myself without a good long break. I’m also working back from injury end of last season that had me hobbling around for a couple weeks, so you normal people might be ready to do more. Regardless, with the luxury of time it’s definitely worth focusing on running form–pretty much all of us can benefit from more work here.

I’d encourage everybody to work some running form drills into the warm-up, generally but especially before running workouts. Check out here for some of the classics (it’s for tennis, but the same drills carry over across sport), and here for ideas for more high-impact stuff that you can make part of your workout.

Doing some drills like the above to prime the nervous system before you run, and then focusing on various aspects of form (I’d say no more than 2 things at a time) while actually running, ideally at something more than a jog, can help train your nervous system to run more efficiently even when you’re going full-out and can’t focus on form as much (ie, in game).

When I say “various aspects of form” I mean things like:

Arm Swing: Straight forward and back rather than across the chest, angle around 90 degrees (a little less on backswing and a little more on upswing). When you’re jogging this angle increases, but when sprinting your hand should go from hip to lip. My old track coach used to cue us to imagine grabbing potato chips from our pockets and bringing them up to our mouth to eat while running. This also cues keeping the hands relaxed, since if you clench you’ll crush the chip. It’s important not to “force” the arm action and tense up, as this just leaks energy and hurts efficiency. Swing from the shoulders, keep your elbows close to your body, and relax.

Body Posture (keeping a tight core): More wisdom from my coach–if you take a yardstick and drop it on its end, it’ll bounce back up, force transfers from the stick to the ground and back when it’s one piece. If the yardstick has a hinge in the middle (a weak core, or hunched-over posture), it simply collapses, and all the energy in ground contact is lost. Keep your core tight and keep from hinging at the hips to run more efficiently. (Keep in mind that when you’re accelerating you lean–this lean should come from the ankles rather than the hips).

Foot Strike: This is a little more advanced and takes a bit more work to make second nature. Short form: Heel strike is bad. “Toe” running is also bad, but that’s more of a misnomer for proper form. The ideal is to land on the BALL of the foot. Whether you’re sprinting or running distance, the body’s designed to absorb force on footstrike with the ball enabling the muscles and tendons of your foot, ankle and calf to absorb force (and exert force going into the next step). When you heel strike most of that machinery is negated or worse, has to work overtime, which can lead to all sorts of issues, from chronic knee injury and wearing to shin splints and stress fractures.

I highly encourage you to examine the heel on your running shoe and consider investing in a pair of shoes with a lower, if not flat one, as most commercially designed shoes have heels that are way too high to allow a natural footstrike. I’ve been training and running in Nike Frees for years now after a couple years of knee woes and ankle sprains, and though it took me a while to adjust, I’ve had much healthier ankles and knees since. If you can’t afford or don’t want to get new shoes, at least do yourself a favor and start warming up and cooling down in bare feet on grass. Strengthening your feet means letting them do their own thing, and it’ll carry over to normal shoe wearing.

Stride Length/Rate: Goes right along with foot strike. You actually don’t need to focus on this too much, if you’re getting a good foot strike this should naturally limit your stride length. Keep in mind that the stronger you are the longer your “stride length” will be without you having to stretch; if you stride too far (are consciously trying to) your footfalls are going to become heel strikes, which in addition to being an injury risk also means your feet are too far in front of you and each step you take is braking, rather than accelerating or at least maintaining your speed. Same for rate–you shouldn’t need to focus on it too much. Let your body figure these ones out.

Knee Lift/Butt Kick: These are the things you focus on to boost stride rate and length. The more you can pick up your foot behind you, the shorter a lever your hip has to move forward before taking the next step. Makes a big difference for sprinting. Picking up your knee is a cue to maximize how much ground this short lever covers before you set down again–just make sure you let your foot fall naturally rather than reaching and overstriding.

Short-term, I’d encourage you to focus on arm swing, posture, and knee lift/butt kick depending on which of those you need the most work on (hopefully you can pay attention next time you’re running and pick out if your arms are swinging across your body instead of straight back-forward, or if your foot carry is pretty close to the ground). I find posture tends to increase pretty dramatically with more core strength, so if you’re not already doing core work, especially stuff like hanging leg raises or static holds, working some of that in should carry over to running form pretty well.

I spent a number of years running track in middle and high school and we did form drills for at least 15 minutes every day, so it’s something I take pretty seriously–it’s an easy way to get faster without becoming “stronger” or “better conditioned,” simply more efficient. Hopefully this gives you some rationale to understand and work with the form drills.

Related posts:
Running form: Use your core, and pelvic tilt

Summer Workouts: Speed Work

7/26 Track Workout

What are you working on?

Mackey — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Simple question. What’s your answer when you’re:

Tossing with your buddy at the park?

Warming up for your third game on Sunday?

Walking to work?

Getting up to go to the bathroom?

Standing on the line waiting for the pull?

On the way home after practice?

If the answer is ever “nothing,” you’ve got room to improve your improvement. Better your better.

What are you working on today–right now–to make yourself better?

Sorry for the lack of substantial content lately; first week of classes. Been taking a page out of Seth Godin’s writing of late; working on brevity and a bit of thought provocation, which is convenient since it takes less time to ask questions than answer them (admittedly the pet peeve that leads to the long drawn-out posts I often write–I’ll get back there in due time, hopefully with more read-able content).

Sidelines: Eyes, Voices, Energy

Mackey — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Things the sideline(s–don’t forget to split!) can do:

Cheer

Watch (for patterns, for weaknesses, for successes, for clues. For example, Pete’s defender is breathing heavier by the second–yell at him to step up and punish the mismatch!)

Cue (echoing or initiating mark switches on a force middle defense or dynamic mark adjustments, etc.)

Guide (the old veteran teaches the young rookie where to stand and when to cut from the wing position in the zone. The captain directs the stack to move closer to the disc after a deep pull in the endzone)

Recover–both oneself (stud cutter needs some gatorade-water after a couple points in a row) and others (bench-riding rookie brings said stud cutter water on the line so he doesn’t crash playing a couple points)

Bring the energy level up–see cheering.

The sideline is your 8th (wo)man, and has a massive potential to influence the game. The home-field advantage that fans help confer is something a good, vibrant sideline can recreate–to me, it is the only way to get a team through an entire tournament playing hard, working through the lows and rolling with the highs.

What do your sidelines do? What do you do on the sidelines?

Related posts:
Energy Systems and Training Demands–What’s Missing in the Big Picture

Tourney Food

Zone O, Huddle-Style

Mackey — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:00:00 +0000

The Huddle has an issue on Zone O.

My favorites (Ryan Morgan’s assertion that wings are not just a throwaway position for rookies is worth repeating, too); again, they put things a lot more succinctly than I.

I don’t see a ton of revolutionary (compared with my experience) information there, apart from the number of endorsements of the two-handler set; this says to me that zone O really comes down to a good, solid fundamental approach/understanding.

On the skill spectrum, a quick catch-throw turnaround and composure with the disc in your hand are great for any zone handler (and by extension, all players) to have–the former can be worked on pretty much anytime, while the latter would come with more throwing experience/confidence, both under pressure (ratchet it up in practice/drills) and in conditions (find it, and do it).

Knowledge goes hand in hand with skill. Recognizing what kind of zone you’re facing and where the weak points are, along with knowing what your own team’s assets are, likewise will do a lot to prepare for success. Insert Sun Tzu quote about knowing your enemy and yourself.

Related posts:
Zone Offense: The Basics

Zone: Drills

Zone: Offensive Skills

Building the Repetoire: Thought-Guiding Tools

Mackey — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:23:00 +0000

Jeters hits on an important notion for developing your repertoire as a cutter (and, by extension, with any other skill involving adjustments), namely the need to develop a decision flowchart to guide your in-game actions (and especially reactions).

Imagine this. You initiate your cut from the horizontal stack, at maximum speed, in the direction of a deep strike. Now, what is your response if …

… another cutter strikes deep.

… your defender doesn’t commit, but a poaching defender is in a good position.

… you reverse your cut but find that your lane has been taken.

… and the list goes on.

What eventually becomes “instinct” on the field is honed through lots of trial and error or prior thought. (Stop thinking when you play).

To aid that sort of thought process (which is to say, to aid visualization), I’d offer that these sorts of deliberations are exactly why I started drawing up cutting schematics in the margins of my notebooks, and I’d also offer an older post on Threat Points^TM for a bit of this thought process with crappy MS paint schematic to boot (that notion is one I plan to revisit and put more succinctly at some point, as it’s a powerful one).

Related posts:
Cutting Thought: Know When to Cut, and When to Run

Cutting Thought: Use your Opponent’s Acceleration

Cutting Thought: On Being the Primary Cut, and Not Cutting

Zone: Cup Fundamentals

Mackey — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:30:00 +0000

Gwen’s point about a 4-person cup being able to push the disc back on dump/swings more than other zones brings up an important facet of any good cup–the ability to, at minimum, keep the disc from moving forward on dump-swing looks.

If a team can’t work the disc up using the easy dump-swing you’ll force them to resort to other methods–generally speaking, “other methods” means methods you’re more prepared to D and/or riskier throws, so this is a good thing.

As Gwen alludes, it’s the responsibility of the far point in the mark to lock down on the swing, or at least cut off the upfield passing lane:

As the disc is thrown to another handler, (assuming it is not on the sideline yet) the pusher/point on that side takes an angle to cut off the next swing pass, then closes in–sometimes to mark, sometimes to just take away the passing lane (depending on the positioning of the other pusher/point and the threats on the field).

This, I’ve found, is an often-neglected but crucial skill to teach your cup players–to not focus on where the disc is going, but where the disc might go next.

Other things I would list as “cup fundamentals:”

Responding to actual threats, rather than the marker’s fakes–that is, knowing where the targets are behind you and ignoring the fakes to where they aren’t

Along the lines, ‘flaring out’ as a cup to take away continues if the disc is swung all the way across the field, rather than sprinting straight to your ‘position’ and leaving somebody open in the backfield.

What’s on your list? How do you go about teaching this to your young cuppers? I’m traveling in Taiwan this week so I don’t (or rather, won’t–I’m typing this on Sunday) have time to do longer posts right now, but I’ll be back with clam/junk sets and transition zones next week.

Related posts:
Zone Sets: How to Run a 4-person Cup, Courtesy of Gwen Ambler

Zone Sets: How to Run a 3-2-2

Zone: Defensive Skills

Throwing Thought: Balance for Short and Long Throws

Mackey — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:07:00 +0000

I’ve written about the importance of balance before, but it’s a very broad concept, its applications diverse, and bears revisiting.

In the context of throwing, balance comes in to play a few ways–generally speaking, you want to keep your torso balanced by using your core. A good example of this is throwing with your non-pivot foot picked up off the ground. Can you still throw a forehand and backhand on target? How dependent are you on your legs for not just power, but the general trajectory of your throw? Can you balance without your legs? Work this from standing at first, and then mid-pivot–don’t wait for your foot to set down, but throw midway.

You should be able to make passes at 10 yards with touch, without using your legs. This is a pretty essential skill to grasp, as throwing without your legs leads to throwing with touch from any position your body is in. It will vastly improve your dumping efficiency (and resets are the most important thing in ultimate).

Balance comes in to play from your legs, too. One of the best nuggets of wisdom I received when working on my hucking (I was trying too hard, muscling up, and hooking my attempts to throw 60+ yards outside-in instead of the nice float I was looking for): “try to hold your body position at the end of your throwing motion.” I was stepping out to huck, but continuously moving through the whole step and throw–by forcing myself to wait at the end, to find balance in that final, extended position, my throws improved immediately.

Part of it was still that core balance to gain touch, but a lot of it was finding a balance point through my legs–a lunge position I could hold (incidentally, lunging is an underrated component of ultimate training–more on that later).

Find your balance points to master your throwing.

Related posts:
Throwing Thought: Balance

Balance Revisited: Throwing With Your Weight Set

Throwing Thought: The Hammer, or, Throwing to Space

Handler Defense

Mackey — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:57:00 +0000

Learn it, do it, own it.

Want to be an elite ultimate player? Learn how to play good handler defense.

Related posts:
Handler? Know Thyself.

I <3 Gwen Ambler. Or, What Kind of Handler/Cutter are You?

College Defense: Minimize Threat, or Maximize D Opportunities?

"Heels," Roles, and Basics (Response to Issue 12, "Endzone Cutting")

Mackey — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:57:00 +0000

Love the Huddle’s latest stuff.

Scattered Thoughts:

1) Several players mention bum-rushing the defender to “get [them] on [their] heels” before making another move. That’s all well and good, but…can that really be a complete strategy? I suppose if you’re the faster cutter, it is (which of course begs the question of ‘why juke them in the first place?’). That statement really triggers my common sense detector though…there ARE defenders out there who aren’t put on their heels so easily. What then? I like to tack on “…or get him to turn
his hips” on the end of most references to “on his heels,” as I think that situation confers the same advantages to a cutter looking to gain separation.

2) I absolutely LOVE Peri Kurshan’s talk of delegating an “end zone cutter” role. Brilliant. Energy efficient, strategy efficient. And if you’re using the “one guy creating an open-side break opportunity” cutting strategy or a similar iso, this makes perfect sense, too. This also seems very easily applied in terms of strategy, which leads me to…

3) Where’s the bona fide strategy talk? I suppose the idea of this issue is more to cull pearls of wisdom for playing, particularly for the individual cutter, but I really feel like this stuff assumes you’re familiar with the conventional wisdom to some extent (or at least, it’s enhanced by such familiarity). Perhaps none of this is new to you, but much of what I write is predicated on the belief that there are people out there who are still learning.

Steve Sullivan’s mention of the “gut cut,” along with the many references to dump and swing O by several authors, alludes to probably the basic/default end zone O for many teams…cuts from the back of the stack towards the cone. On the open side, this means one guy to the cone, and a second shortly therafter in the inside line (the “gut cut”), with another (or perhaps the first to the open side, if he’s quick back) to the break side as the disc is dumped and swung. Sometimes this is a “default,” sometimes this is a set play. Depends on the team.

Other common endzone offenses include some kind of isolation play, which gets all but one of the cutters out of the way to feature a stud with enough space for a decent thrower to get the disc to the endzone somewhere stud cutter can catch it uncontested (this is the sort of situation where a lot of the cutting advice dispensed in this issue comes in handy), and a lot of teams allude to a similarly-minded offense perhaps without the overt isolation to it (front of the stack open-side break throw juke, or a cutter from the back doing something similar in the lane while the rest “keep their defenders busy”).

The final major endzone offense (at least, in my mind; feel free to chime in if you have others) I can think of is the handler-driven O. I don’t mean the simple dump-swing, or even strategies that rely upon a good break from the handler.

I mean full-on dominator style weaving, with lots of give-and-go style moves (as Nick Handler alludes to. By the way, Nick probably brings up the most salient strategy points to consider in endzone offense, for any of you aspiring coaches/play designers out there). Perhaps the give-and-go is less common at the elite level, where dump defenders presumably stop the upline cut with more regularity, but I’ve seen that cut made successfully for a score many a time at the elite college level (often by my teammates over the past years).

This tends to work in conjunction with other strategies–the iso or stack motion lets the cutters work for opportunities, but when you look to dump-swing, an aggressive handler set can look to attack the endzone without help from the cutters with the upline, too. The sort of around-the-back “break” that Ben Wiggins talks about would also be the sort of play I’d characterize as a product of a handler-driven O.

4) My own thoughts on endzone cutting: don’t just apply one of the strategies discussed in the huddle: seek to learn and apply them all. I’ve had points where my endzone cutting has been little more than recognizing my defender’s open-side overzealousness and using a chop-step (or a straight-up opportunity cut) to catch a hammer to the break side wide open, and I’ve had points where I’ve run my defender into the ground from the stack, and I’ve had points where recognizing and exploiting the “open-side break” opportunities led to easy goals. The key is recognizing what’s available to you–when your teammates are aggressively cutting from the back of the stack, try to wait and find your opportunity. When nothing’s doing, consider creating some motion and injecting some energy with the brute-force approach (with appropriate tricks employed to increase your odds).

One thing that almost every author hit on–know your teammates, know your thrower. The rest will flow from knowing your thrower, and from your thrower knowing you. It’s when things get tight that chemistry really shines, and more often than not, things get tight in the endzone.

Related posts:
Defend Smarter, Not Harder

Cutting–"Threat Points"

Zone Offense: The Basics

Marks: Or, the OTHER Most Important Thing in Ultimate

Mackey — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0000

The mark is to defense as the dump is to offense.

To lack in either is to invite defeat to even the best systems; to excel in both provides the foundation upon which any system will thrive.

Ben Wiggins has said it before (audio, hard copies), but the mark is THE most important defensive position at any given point.

Think about it. How much of the field does the mark take away? Perhaps not the full half of the field that’s expected (that you ask that speaks to the importance of the position as well), but it authoritatively takes away a fair portion and adds additional pressure to a heck of a lot more than that. A great mark can make even great throwers work for anything but the easy open side passes, while a weak mark exposes the weak underbelly of a defense (otherwise known as the break side), leading to more running and, generally, quick scores. If you’ve ever seen a quick break completely open up the field and get an offense into flow, you know what I mean.

So why is it, then, that marking is relatively under-emphasized in the big scheme of ultimate strategy? You can spend all day talking about zone sets, refine the fundamentals of man defense and dictation, but at the end of the day if you can’t force the disc to go where your defense wants it to with a strong mark, you’re spinning your wheels.

I would contend that most or all of the best teams out there apply dedicated practice to their marking on a regular basis. If you’re not at least doing marker drill consistently in some form or another (break mark go-to or some other variant that includes movement is good too), you’re not training to play to your potential. It’s a great hubris indeed to assume that players will better themselves on the fundamentals, or even worse, that players are already good enough. If they’re fundamental it shouldn’t even be an issue to practice them and keep them sharp, should it?

So on to the mark itself. How do you leverage it?

I’ll spread out the technical points over the coming month or so (and would welcome input there, as well, as I’m not at the pinnacle of marking). In short, however, be mobile (on your toes), be smart (know your thrower, and know your situation), and be active (apply pressure and take away looks–don’t simply react to the thrower).

In terms of strategic use, a mark is less a tool for point blocks and more a tool for forcing bad throws or close plays (of course, some players have the tools, wingspan and/or intelligence wise, to get the point block more than others, but this is not necessarily something you can plan a defense around). It’s a tool for taking your opponent out of their comfort zone and forcing them to use the field in ways that either they don’t want to/aren’t used to or in ways that you anticipate and are in a position to D/will eliminate the threat potential of your opponent. Simple adjustments, deciding to pressure the huck with more of a straight-up mark, etc, can have profound effects.

If you don’t have adjustments on the mark in your toolbox as a player and especially as a coach/team strategist, you’re missing out on a very potent tool indeed.

Again, don’t get caught up in the flash. The greatest defense–team defense, that starts with the mark and ends with the last defender downfield (really, with the sideline–but that’s for another post)–never makes the highlight reel, but it’s exactly that which puts a team in a position to make those highlight reels in the first place.

Related posts:
Resets: Or, the Most Important Thing in Ultimate Frisbee

Marking Thought: Spacing

More on Emotional Defense

Resets: Or, the Most Important Thing in Ultimate Frisbee

Mackey — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0000

Yeah, yeah, throwing and catching. Fundamentals aside, here, let’s talk about one step up–the dump. Absolutely essential as a building block for any offensive strategy (even if you Huck and Hope, you’re going to make some dump-like passes to set that up at some point).

It doesn’t take a team strategist to figure this out. Dumps give you a reset on the count, and, when leveraged correctly, are a WEAPON. Anybody who played against Dartmouth last year (particularly our D line) can attest to the lethality of the dump if you fail to contain it. Conversely, a team that dumps poorly is going to give up its fair share of short turns, and if you can’t dump with competence, then these same dumps will lead to a slower, more predictable (read: easier-to-defend) offense.

You know the whole analogy about how the running game sets up the passing game in football? With ultimate, the dump game similarly sets up the rest of the offense.

There are tiers of dumping. How comfortable are you?

The “get a reset” dump. You look dump at high stall, and have to rush a throw. OR the dump cutting is ineffective (you have a “dancer” who doesn’t get open by much, and takes 4 seconds to do it). Either way, the throw winds up more or less shovel passed to the receiver, who gets the disc somewhere within the vicinity of 2-5 yards of the thrower (and likely coming toward the thrower or moving straight back). No advantage gained, merely a new count to look upfield and insist that somebody “CUT!”

The early/competent dump. Note that those two terms tend to be synonymous. The decision to dump the disc is established early in the count more often than not (before stall 4 or 5–this will vary depending on your team’s offensive philosophy), and/or the dump cutter has an easy time getting separation from her defender. In this situation, the pass is usually made to a receiver in stride, perhaps going upline with the defender trailing (“power position,” anathema to all defenses–the thrower has a free shot deep, with momentum from the run to put it even farther), or likewise going backwards–in either case, the defender is not in a position to stop the next throw, which sets up a dump-swing style offense or a deep offense (hence the “running game” of the dump sets up the “passing game” going deep or side-to-side). This is the level of dumping which most good teams have; I’ve seen many a team that works the upline dump VERY competently, setting up a very powerful deep offense. Less common these days is the team that really works the width of the field, but your Harvards and Dartmouths will still flash this style with some effectiveness.

The skillful dump. Taking the competent dump one step further, this is dumping not just for a reset, and beyond the dump as a building block for your offense. This is the point at which the dump becomes a FEATURE of the offense–the degree of thought and setup that goes into the positioning ensures that (almost) every dump puts the receiver in a position to further the offense. This is the sort of thing that Frank of RSD fame would often go on about with his ambidexterity rants and the like. Being able to run the give-and-go, for instance, not just as a every-so-often technique, but as the basis for your offense (see Minnesota and their often super-quick resets and movement–I don’t know that I’ve ever worked so hard on defense for so little gain), makes it a very potent tool, and can absolutely destroy teams unprepared to deal with it (which is, interestingly, becoming more and more the norm as teams fall into the glamour trap, opting for the big plays and the big players over the big fundamentals).

It’s all about raising the level. I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to go very far without at least competent resents (and you’re not going to thrive unless you can raise it a step beyond that–or you happen to so outclass your competition otherwise that you can make up for it).

If you’re a burgeoning team–high school, club, college–you MUST emphasize the fundamentals. You might key in on the flashiness of it all, the big hucks, the huge plays, but keep in mind that more often than not 90% of the highest-level games are anything but–just good fundamentals, solid cutting, hard defense, and GOOD RESETS. Model yourself after the “boring” parts–the plays that look easy, because they’ve been practiced and polished to seamlessness–and you’ll more often put yourself in a position where the flashy plays actually make a difference, instead of becoming a footnote in your recap of the blowout loss to stud team x.

More on fundamentals next week.

Related posts:
Marks: Or, the OTHER Most Important Thing in Ultimate

Throwing Thought: Disc Placement on In Cuts

Catching Thought: Receiving Under Pressure