i am daniel gempesaw [home] [ask] [submit] [about]

Ben Slade posted the following really helpful coaching advice on RSD for a new captain dealing with a negative attitude on his Ultimate team. I really like having these rules spelled out explicitly, as I try to be as encouraging as possible when interacting with newer players, but sometimes I know I’m not supportive enough. Emphasis mine.

Players have more fun when practices are structured and they can move quickly from drill to drill. I think it is a misconception that players enjoy practices where they scrimmage constantly or have lots of slack time to goof off in between drills.

As far as negative practice/sideline atmosphere, you probably have a few cancerous players that have poisoned the culture. You will have to either cure or cut. When it comes to curing, I would encourage you to do a few things:

1. The rookies are currently untainted by this. Nobody is allowed to offer any criticism or feedback of what a rookie is doing incorrectly without prefacing with something they are doing well. Every time.

2. Encourage the team to buy into the individual goal of taking blame for when things are going poorly. It creates a positive and competitive atmosphere when players hold themselves to a higher standard then their teammates, and leads to situations where guys are thanking their teammates for a good throw and apologizing for dropping the layout bid, while the thrower is apologizing to the teammate for giving such a difficult throw.

   “My bad, I misread your cut and tried to anticipate your next move, but I was a bit quick to release it” goes over much better than “Why the hell did you change your cut, you were open!”

3. Only critique ‘controllable’ or decision errors, and don’t yell the critiques, talk to them afterwards. You don’t mention pancake drops or turfs (except to encourage the player to make the same decision again, and reiterate that you trust him to make that play and will put him in that situation again). You encourage the player to think through his decisions or use good fundamentals if he drops a lazy one-handed catch, gets D’d because he slows down on the catch, or tries to throw beyond his effective range or into coverage.

These ideas all require buy-in from your current players. If they are not willing to treat their teammates (and especially the rookies) with respect, then you will not be able to effect any change.

Read More

Train your body to be ready to play tired. It would be great if there were ways to train so that you are in such great shape that you are never tired. The reality, though, is that you would probably just find ways to pour more energy into each second on the field. As Seth Wiggins says, “Especially on defense, there is always something more you could be doing. There is another fake or chop stop or hip turn that might threaten or disrupt the offense. You can’t be in too good of shape.” Since you’ll always be playing tired, drills and conditioning that force you to perform skills when tired can improve your preparation. Marking footwork at the beginning of practice might improve your marking talent, but that same footwork practiced at the end of a 400-yard interval sprint is improving your preparation. Another way to say this is: train on both sides of a skill. Train it in isolation from distracting and difficult factors to work on that skill alone. Then, once you have the skill, prepare it for game play by training in the midst of other factors like fatigue.

This is one thing that definitely killed me at the most recent tournament. I was getting winded way before points ended and so I’d be giving up valuable resets and under cuts that I should’ve been taking away. (source: ben wiggins for skyd magazine, see also: http://danzorx.tumblr.com/post/17259012802/raise-your-game-day-3 )

An excellent insight from Moses Rifkin: Great players don’t just learn the on-field tricks of the trade, they also learn how to talk about them. Whether it is mastering sideline help commands, or finding the methods that best allow a distraught player to listen to your advice, talk is vital in team sports. These skills can be learned like any other, and are extraordinarily difficult to teach. It can be even more difficult in a tight team culture, where many players have learned the same way to talk from the same original captains. Bringing in ideas about sideline language is especially useful.

Ben Wiggins wrote a five part series for Skyd Magazine on succeeding in ultimate and improving yourself and your team in a systematic and intelligent fashion. I found myself nodding my head in agreement with a lot of what he wrote, and strongly recommend the series to anyone interested in improving their game or teaching others to do the same. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)

vs gscu alum (aka mark poole and experience):

this team was approx 10 older people with tons of experience. they threw an experienced zone defense and got out to an early 6-2 lead on us. howard and me called timeout and we did an amazing job of regrouping to fight back, half was 7-6 in their favor. against their zone D, we put our H stack with rookies as cutters and wings, and the sideline did a great job of helping tell people where to go while the handlers swung the disc around. the second half was really bad on our part though, ending 13-6 or 13-7 in their favor. I got too invested in the game to realize that we needed another timeout called in the second half to refocus, but whatever, hindsight is 20-20. Their vert stack cutters were really experienced at taking what our defenders were giving. If we cut off the deeps, their cutters were getting wide open gainers. If our D cut off their insides, they’d turn and go deep and our D would be underneath & out of position and their handlers were really good at putting the 30-40yard outvert that only their cutter could catch. I’d say at least half their points were this way - just our defender getting beat deep and no one coming to help after the one guy gets beat. cutter defense and especially positioning needs work to prevent this.

Read More

getfastgetstrong:

On an extremely simple level, offense can be broken down into five rules:

1. Take what they give you.

2. If you really want something they’re not giving you, try to fake them into giving it to you.

3. If you’re not sure exactly what you want, fake until they give you something, then take it.

4. Actively get out of the way when someone else is making a better cut.

5. Make smart choices with your throws.

6. (optional) If you smell even the slightest whiff of anyone going deep (cutter, handler, sideline players, opposing team’s coach, etc), send it promptly.

PS: Don’t actually do 6 unless you’re willing to accept the consequences (ensuing hilarity, wildly negative personal stats, scarcity of teammates willing to pass to you)

(via fuckyeahultimate)

Take advantage of temporary 2 on 1 or 3 on 2 mismatches. Unless you’re playing against an extremely focused and practiced defense, you will have many short-lived opportunities to exploit this power play. Anticipation and immediate reaction, as with man to man offense, are important. It’s a rare defense that will simultaneously have one player making a bid for a block while another adjusts to cover. For example, if two poppers are on either side of the middle middle, who bites on a fake left, the other popper is open UNLESS the wing or point adjusts at the same time. If the offense doesn’t know this, then the defense will be able to recover in time to prevent the pass. Just about any 2 nearby O players have a potential mismatch situation. The poppers exploit the middle middle. A popper and a wing work on the side middle. A wing and a deep work on the deep. The off-handler and a wing or popper split the off-point. A good defense will constantly be making adjustments to prevent someone from being open for too long, but it takes a great one to make that time window almost non-existent.

I think most downfield O players run too hard when the disc is still in the cup. When the cup gets broken, that is the time for an all-out fast break. But when the disc is stationary, too much movement merely alerts the defenders as to their whereabouts.

And use the overhead to spread out the cup and side middles.

http://winthefields.blogspot.com/2011/11/zone-o.html

The motivation behind a lot of the movement I make when popping or handling in a zone is captured really simply here. I really really enjoy moving the disc in and out of my hands as fast as possible in a zone; this forces the defense to be way behind in their adjustments so ideally we’d have a permanent mismatch on O.

All this being said, I still find it difficult if not impossible to beat a big 4man cup in the wind. If I can’t go over (wind) or around (4th guy covers the dump), my only choice is to go through; if the defense knows that as well, I think I’m in trouble as a handler. Maybe I should just throw more scoobers. Yea. Scoobers.