Daragh and Melissa at the Cliffs of Mohar

“I didn’t expect Brodie to be quite so large and I didn’t expect you to be quite so short.”  is what one of my clinic attendees said to me at the pre Siege of Limerick party.  One thing you can say about the Irish folks, they’re not afraid to razz you a bit.  Whatever, I’m fine with my reputation outpacing my stature.  In all seriousness, the students at the University of Limerick were excellent hosts.  From the first party I attended Thursday night, everyone went out of their way to make me feel included, taking the time to explain their slang and inside jokes.  It was great craic!

February 18-19th I did my first international fitness clinic at the University of Limerick in Ireland and stayed for The Siege of Limerick (a tournament, not an actual Siege) the following weekend.  Brodie Smith was also brought in for the week (hence the comparison).

The Clinic

Over an intense two days we covered all the principles of training for ultimate.  The two day format allowed us to go in depth into the not only WHAT to do, but also the science behind WHY we should do things a certain way.  The small size of the clinic allowed for personal attention and coaching of movement.  We had time to explore everyone’s questions, discuss theory, and adjust the clinic on the fly to fit what the players’ interests.

The clinic days were divided into four sections in much the same way that The Ultimate Athlete Handbook has four chapters: Mobility; Strength; Speed, Agility, and Jumping; and Conditioning.

Day 1

In the morning we started with mobility.  We went outside for full mobility and warm up routines.  Once warmed up, we did speed and agility drills.  After lunch we hit the weight room to try hip dominant, knee dominant, pushing, and pulling exercises could be put together as part of a complete and functional strength training program.  We finished off the day with a short conditioning session where we sampled the linear and lateral workouts that are the pillars of my conditioning program.

Day 2

The first day of trying things out brings up as many questions as answers.  The second day we had time to address those questions thoroughly.  With this group I went into detail on strength training theory.  We discussed different set/rep schemes and different ways to organize a long term strength training program.  I also gave a lecture about the different metabolic pathways and why this matters for how we do our conditioning.

The second day included practicing what we learned on day 1.   We went through a complete warmup at a normal pace and did a complete lifting session in the afternoon.  I also added some progressions on things we’d learned the previous day.

 Agility and Footwork

Below are a few exercises we did during our agility portion of the day.  The goals of footwork and agility drills are to learn to control the feet and allow them to move quickly and freely in relation to ones center of mass.  Jon demonstrates this pretty well in his first attempt at some gridwork:

Agility and footwork modules are easy to put at the beginning of a practice or a workout. Because footwork is a motor skill, focus is needed to reap the benefits. The good news is, it doesn’t take a lot of time. A few repetitions of focused footwork and agility drills prior to every practice or training session will yield results over the course of a season.

In teaching footwork and agility drills, emphasize the importance of accurate foot placement before speed. Learn the movements well at half speed before concentrating on minimizing ground contact time.

Here Donal demonstrates the jab step and its similarity to cutting from the outside of the foot:

Wally demonstrates the waltz and it’s translation to cutting from the inside foot:

My hope is that the format of learning, trying, questioning, reviewing, and progressing allows for the greatest learning retention.  I must say, I was really pleased with having two days to get a lot of work done.  I was a little worried that the days might be too long and people might get burnt out by so much information or just tired by the end of the day.  But athletes don’t get bored or tired as long as they’re moving.  We even snuck in a throwing sessions during our lunch break Sunday.

For another take on the clinic, read a write up from Donal Murray, player for Rebel Ultimate who won the Siege in the open division.

Next Clinic?

So what’s next?  As much as I enjoyed this experience, I don’t have plans for another weekend clinic any time soon.   For the next 8 weeks I’m going to mostly be hanging out in Lancaster, training at Power Train Sports Institute, and helping my members inside The Ultimate Athlete Project get ready for the start of the season.  For this reason The Ultimate Athlete Project will be closed to new members March 19th.

If you would like to schedule a clinic with me, I may be available sometime in July.  Other than that, it’ll likely have to wait until after the end of October.  Feel free to email me using the contact form if you’d like to set something up.

If a clinic is not a possibility where you’re at, check out The Ultimate Athlete Handbook.  As I’ve mentioned, the clinic followed a similar format to the book.  Many of the principles we talked about and the exercises we did in the clinic are also in the book.  In the book, you can find the above footwork drills and many more.

Whatever resources you’re using, best of luck in your training this season!

1. Focus, focus, focus. And Repeat.

Pick a focus skill or concept and stick with it for several practices in a row. Marking is an important skill to learn early. Instead of learning marking one day and the vertical stack the next, choose to work on marking for several practices in a row. People need to hear things over and over before they will remember. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself and don’t get frustrated by the need to do so. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just a fact of life.

The main benefit of repeating your focus is that it allows your new players to see improvements faster. By the end of the week they should feel competent in at least one aspect of the game. Enabling your players to see clear improvements in skill is the most effective means of motivation. Additionally, you may not have the same players showing up every practice early in the season. Repeating the focus ensures that everyone learns the skill the way you want them to learn it.

Though you’re repeating the same skills try to use different drills at each practice. This strategy will result in better learning for the new players and less of a chance of boredom for returning players.

Throughout the season, the more variety you can incorporate into learning the same skill, the better. Game situations involve endless variety. If you practice with variety, game skills will be better than if you do only one type of drill per skill.

2. Focus once, focus well

There is an optimal time early in practice when players are warmed up but before fatigue sets in that they are most ready to learn something new. All of your practice should revolve around this 20-30 minute window of greatest opportunity. The skill or concept you are working on should be explained during this window and this is the time for doing the most complex drills. Some preparation is required, both on and off the field, to maximize this window of opportunity.

On the field preparation is your warm up routine. Your warmup routine should be simple and should end with players feeling physically and mentally alert. If you do drills as part of your warm up routine, be sure the drills are carefully chosen. Many teams use the endzone drill as a warm up for practices and tournaments, however the endzone drill is not well suited for this purpose. New players do not find the endzone drill to be logistically simple and they will not understand intuitively how it relates to game play. Don’t waste mental resources at the beginning of practice with a drill players don’t fully understand. Save their focus for your area of focus. Even worse, returning players find the endzone drill too simple and there is a lot of standing in line. Both of these factors cause players to relax, start chatting about dinner plans later, etc. This is the opposite effect you want your warmup drill to have. A better choice might be something like a two line hucking drill with offense and defense. This drill only requires two lines and a few throwers.

It is easy for the new players to understand what to do and how the drill relates to game experience. The drill remains challenging for returning players if they choose their match-ups correctly and you can never have too much practice reading or defending a huck. These are the characteristics you want in a warm up drill.

Off the field preparation includes mentally rehearsing how you are going to explain your chosen concept, skill, or drill. Pay attention to the details. How long will your explanation take? What props will work best for your explanations? If you are well prepared you can delegate setting up cones to returning players and they can be prepared to demonstrate the activity the way you envision. Spend some time thinking about the most intuitive way for players to rotate through a drill. Decide how many times you want a player to be able to go through the drill and think about how long you expect this to take. With drill explanation and drill design, pay attention to the details. You want to enable your players to focus on the skill being practiced. If players are confused about where to go, standing in line being bored, or getting too tired their learning will be compromised.

3. Focused Scrimmage.

In the early season, it’s important to let your new recruits play.

You want them to have fun and to come back. But avoid the temptation to let practice dissolve into unfocused play with players making the same mistakes over and over. Instead, focus on the same skill you’ve been working on all of practice. Assign a returning player on each team to frequently remind players what they’re working on. Time should be taken between points to briefly note whether the goals are being accomplished. Was the mark broken? Was it because someone got confused and forced the wrong way? Did someone fall for a good fake? What was the result of the mark being broken? Giving frequent and relevant feedback will help your new players to maintain focus and refine their skills. Refrain from giving extraneous advice and allow players to fix one thing at a time. Accept that you will not be able to fix cutting, marking, and downfield positioning all at once. If you can fix their marking, you’re doing well. Communicate this objective to your returning players to minimize extraneous talk between points.

Allow your focus skill to influence the format of your scrimmage. If the focus is on marking, players will only get to practice that skill in the game situation when their player gets the disc. To maximize the practice at this skill, minimize talking between points to get in as many points as possible in the time allotted. Encourage new players to cover handlers so that they can perform more trials. However, if your focus is on cutting technique you want to make sure that players aren’t getting too tired to cut at 100% intensity. If they are tired and only able to cut at 70% speed, then they are learning to cut at 70% speed. This is detrimental to their sense of timing and their muscle memory of what a good cut should feel like.

If you want them to understand that a good cut is done at 100% intensity, you need to allow them to practice cutting at 100% intensity by enforcing more frequent subbing or more time between points. If fatigue affects a player’s ability to perform a skill, they will not learn to do the skill correctly.

Early season practices are challenging but it’s exciting to watch the rookies rapidly improving their skills. Having well thought out, focused practices will enable the learning process and prepare everyone for the more serous work that will come later in the year.

Good luck in your practice planning!

While visiting the University of Illinois last week, I was fortunate enough to have a chat with a former professor of mine and long time motor skills researcher, Les Carleton. We discussed the fact that despite advances in motor skills research, much of coaching in the US is done using the same methods of instruction as those used in the 1930′s. I asked him, “What concepts in motor skills research, if better understood by coaches, would have the greatest impact on performance?” The two themes emerged from our discussion were the role of deliberate practice, (which I have discussed at length on ultimaterob.com) and the importance of variability in practice.

Variability in practice simply means that every practice trial is in some way different. Many teams I have observed begin their practices with an orderly throwing routine in which partners throw ten backhands, ten forehands, ten hammers, etc. This is an example of one of those things that coaches pass down to one another even though this might not be the best way to practice.

Variability in practice is especially important for skills such as throwing a disc because every throw on the field is unique depending on wind conditions, the position of the mark, etc. However, even in a skill such as free throw shooting, which is the same every time, it would be a mistake to stand at the free throw line and repeat the same action over and over again. As professor Carleton explains, when a person is ready to execute a motor skill, the brain creates a plan of action and then executes that plan. The plan includes the order and intensity of muscle activation in the body. If you attempt the same exact skill over and over, you have only asked the brain to create a plan once. Even if you execute ten free throws, you have really only done one true practice trial! This concept is known as contextual interference.

The concept of contextual interference has been examined in a large body of research. The research shows that performance during practice is much worse for those doing randomized rather than repeated trials.

Most likely this is the reason people prefer to practice throws in blocks of the same type. Alternating between types of throws makes all the throws look worse. What coach wants to see that? However, studies show that learning retention is better for those who use randomized practice. Perhaps even more important, performance on transfer tests is better for those who use randomized practice.

Performance on a transfer test measures how well the person can execute a related but slightly different skill than the one being practiced. Certainly this is applicable to ultimate where an endless variety of throws are needed on the field.

The desire for an orderly throwing routine at practice is understandable. Some players do not do well with unstructured practice and will lose focus without clear instructions. One way to increase the variability is to simply have players rotate through the types of throws in twos or threes rather than ten of each. Three to five repetitions of the cycle will give throwers the same number of overall trials and ensure that they are practicing all of their throws. Another alternative is to instruct players to make something different about each throw. A different release point, a different angle, or a different fake preceding each throw will add variability.

Players can be less motivated to do randomized practice because their throws will not be executed as well as they’re used to. Always remember that the purpose of practice is not to look good in practice, but to perform well in games!

So how do I practice my jumping form?

A compilation of research from the lab of Gabriele Wulf shows that motor skills learning and performance are influenced by what the mind chooses to concentrate on.  She compares the effects of internal vs external focus.  If you are internally focused, you are thinking about your own body parts or movements.  If you are externally focused, you are thinking about an implement outside the body or the effects the movement of your body has on the environment.

To illustrate how this makes a difference in jumping, I’ll use myself as an unfortunate example.  Some background info: I have an above average standing vertical of 22 inches.  However, I suck at jumping off one leg or from a running start.

Internal Focus of Attention

In this video I am trying to practice my 3 step approach.  I am attempting to reach into the air with the same hand that corresponds to the leg that is up (basketball layup style).  This is an example of internal focus because I am actively trying to coordinate my arms and legs.  Some attempts are more successful than others.  My favorite is the last attempt in which I cycle my legs midair in an effort to pretend I did it correctly.  yikes!

External Focus of Attention

Now here is a video of me jumping two days later.  No practice occurred between the first and second video.  The only difference is that I am focused only on trying to hit the next rung on my vert tester rather than trying to do anything with my arm/leg coordination.  This is an example of external focus. In this set I am effortlessly much more coordinated.

Using External Focus of Attention in Training

You may need to spend some time consciously working on your three step approach to groove the right coordination pattern.  However, just as in throwing, you should focus on the effects of your jumping as soon as possible rather than the jumping itself.

The Sport Specific Method

The most sport specific training for working on your vertical would be jumping for discs that are thrown over your head.  This will help your motor skills but it will be difficult to know whether each rep is your maximum effort.  Efforts at 90% of your maw height or above are needed in order increase your maximum vertical jump height.

The Max Effort Method

This is where a vert jump tester comes in handy.  With each jump, the goal is to hit the next rung.  You will also know when you have become too fatigued to gain additional training benefits when the height of your jumps decreases.   This method will work best for those who are already confident in the motor skills and timing of their skying abilities.  This approach is best for purely increasing your inches off the ground.  It also works well for when training partners are not available.

The Competition Method

Competing with a well matched teammate for a disc in the air may be the best way to practice your vertical.  The most difficult part of this method may be finding a skilled thrower who can purposefully and reliably throw high but not overly floaty hucks.  (Playing 500 or going after floaty hanging throws will help your standing vertical more than your three step approch vert) Competition against a partner will ensure that you are actually jumping at your max height assuming your motor skills are already adequate.

 Related Posts:

Vertical Jump Testing at Keystone Classic

What methods of perfecting your vertical jump form have worked for you?  (I’d love to hear from some high jumpers on this one.)

I got a lot of use out of Colin McIntyre’s vertical jump tester during the Spring college season.

Not only is the vertical jump tester a great training tool, but it is also a great party game!

Steakfest

At Steakfest, Savage Ultimate gave away free jerseys to men jumping over 30 inches and women jumping over 22.

Our highest male jumper was Ari from Penn State with a vertical of 33 inches. Our highest jumping woman was Katie Ryan from TCNJ with a jump of 24 inches.

Check out Katie Ryan in action!

Keystone Classic

At Keystone Classic things got even more competitive with Breakmark awarding jerseys to the highest two female competitors. Thanks to Breakmark, we got some impressive results out of our ladies. Not sure what is in the water there, but several women from Ottowa tied for second with jumps of 24 inches.  If there had been a team averagea prize, they would have owned it! Still it wasn’t quite enough to beat our highest jumper of the weekend. Yolanda represented Penn State well with an impressive 25 inch vertical!

What’s a good vertical for an ultimate player?

Many players wanted to know what their results meant. How do you stack up against the average ultimate player? Unfortunately, we don’t yet have enough data to answer that question. If you ever see myself or Tim Morrill doing fitness testing at a tournaments, please help us gather more data!

I lieu of ultimate specific data, you can check out this vertical jump calculator.  I don’t know how accurate this thing is, but it is sure fun to play with!  (I am excellent compared to normal people and average for an elite athlete!) Insert your gender, weight, and vertical jump and it will tell you how you compare to elite athletes or average humans in your age range.

So what can I do to jump higher?

If you are not already in the weight room, getting yourself on a strength training program should be your first priority.

If you already have a good strength base, plyometrics may be appropriate. Tim’s posts on SSPPTV are a good place to start your search for information.  At Melissa’s Ultimate Fitness, I’m currently writing about my own plyometric training and you can see how I incorporate plyometric exercises into my workouts.

If you are not sure what you need to work on, then I recommend working on your one legged strength and balance. Doing squats with heavy weights may look and feel more impressive, but one legged strength is far more applicable to sports in which changes of direction and explosive action occur from one leg.

If it has been awhile since you’ve been to the gym, start by doing less weight than you think you should. These one legged exercises may be perceived as easier than squats, and deadlifts. However, the stabilizing muscles in the leg are much more active in controlling the movement of a lunge than a squat. Strengthening your stabilizing muscles will increase the grace and control of your movements on the ultimate field. Additionally, forward lunges require eccentric strength to decelerate the body. This is a characteristic that is not trained by squats or a leg press but is important when using your legs to decelerate and change direction in cutting.

Consider mixing some of the following exercises into your current weight room routine.

Squat/lunge variations:

Types of squats/lunges (listed from from less to more difficult)

Messiah College player, Rhino, demonstrating the squat and touch

• split squat
• backward lunge
• step up
• diagonal lunge
• forward lunge
• squat and touch
• one legged squat

Single leg exercises:

• Cook hip lifts
• dumbbell single legged SLDL
• calf raises
• one legged standing cable row
• one legged split squat/row

Alternatively, pick 2-3 exercises from the squat/lunge list. Add the hip lifts and single leg straight legged deadlifts for a workout that will increase your balance, strength, and coordination.

Simple single leg strength progression:

Start with 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions. Increase 2 reps each week until you get to 12 or 14. Then change the type of squat to add variety and difficulty. Start by doing these exercises with no weight. Dumbbells can be used to add resistance to many of these exercises as you become more proficient. Always keep in mind that form is far more important than the amount of weight used.

can your teammates read minds?

The stall count is getting high and the defense is tight. You’re starting to get nervous when your eyes lock with your old college roommate. You both know what to do and you let the disc fly with no hesitation. It’s an unorthodox decision but the pass is complete as if you drew it up that way. How many times has something like this happened to you? Do you and your teammates share some sort of extrasensory perception?

We’ve all seen that certain teammates develop special chemistry. And off the field camaraderie often translates into on the field success. Both of these phenomena have their basis in how we make decisions when confronted with a complex problem. Looking downfield with the disc in hand, there are many variables to think about. How close is the defender to the receiver? How fast are they moving? What is the angle of the mark? What is the angle of the cut? How is the wind going to affect the disc? If we had to consciously sort through all of these factors, we would never be able to get a throw off in time. Even given enough time to think, the conscious, analytical part of the brain can only keep track of a very limited number of variables at one time.

When the brain is faced with complex multivariable problems, the analytical part of the brain is easily overwhelmed. Decisions about where to throw a disc on a crowded field are better handled by an older part of the brain that makes decisions based on pattern recognition. This part of the brain learns through trial and error rather than by analysis. In making a decision, all of the player’s previous experiences get distilled into a conclusion about the current situation. The conclusions surface in the mind as a feeling. When you look at a receiver you get a good feeling or a bad feeling. A bad feeling might be caused by previous experiences where the disc was thrown and D’ed by a defender too close. A good feeling is caused by the previous cutting patterns you may have seen from this person that turned out successfully. They may, in part, also be made of good feelings you’ve experienced with a particular player off the field. So you might look back on your throwing decision and not be able to explain why you thought it was a good idea. Decisions can defy analysis because they were never made from analysis to begin with. (Lehrer, 2009, ch.1)

This is what the elusive “flow” is made of. Flow is more likely between players who like each other. Flow is facilitated by experience. Both factors contribute to solidifying the positive feelings that are experienced when cutters and throwers execute successful decisions.

References:

Lehrer, J. (2009). How We Decide. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

1. Cook Hip Lifts

Hip lifts help to train proper firing of the glutes and also act to stretch the psoas muscle and hip flexor.  Both of these actions will help to increase the range of motion in your hip.  Hip lifts can easily be incorporated into your dynamic warm up or your core strength training time.  To perform the hip lift, lie on your back with your knees bent and feet on flat on the ground.  Bring one leg up to your chest and hold it there.  The purpose of holding your leg is to prevent you from arching your back, forcing you to use your glutes.  Now lift your hips up with the leg that remains on the ground.  It may be helpful to think of making a fist with your buttocks.  The first time you try this you may be surprised to find that you can only move your hips only 2-3 inches off the ground.  That’s normal until your glutes learn to fire properly.  Hold this position for 2 counts and return your hips to the floor.  Start with 6 reps on each leg 2-3 times per week.  Add 2 reps per week until you can do 12 reps on each leg.  You will find that you’ll eventually be able to form a straight line with your body from knee to shoulder.

2.Stop Jogging!

Most players already understand that long distance running is counterproductive when trying to develop speed because of conflicting physiological adaptations.  Jogging, especially slow jogging, also uses a very limited range of motion in the hip when compared to sprinting or even walking.  Therefore I recommend avoiding repetitions of restricted range of motion by avoiding jogging whenever possible.  Use a dynamic warmup instead of taking a lap around the field.  Use walking instead of jogging when doing interval training.  Many runners always have tight hamstrings because your hamstrings adapt to operating in the range of motion you use most frequently.  If you want to be a sprinter, do the majority of your training at 70% of your sprinting speed or above.

3.Work the core muscles that keep you upright.

Crunches are the most common of core exercises, but crunches work muscles that help you to bend in half.  For good sprinting form you want to work the inner core muscles that help to keep your body upright and give your diaphragm and lungs space to move.  Planks and dead bug exercises are a good place to start.

What’s the difference between a nerd and a jock?

Admittedly, these terms are not mutually exclusive.  In stereotypical usage, a nerd is someone who is good at academic subjects, especially math and science.  They are supposedly not very adept at throwing footballs.  A jock is the kid with an abundance of physical skills.  Jocks are often portrayed as thugs who are not too bright.  Stereotypes are limiting of course, but it is helpful to think of the gifts of nerds and jocks as separate types of intelligences. Being a nerd does not mean you can’t be a jock.  Being a jock does not mean you can’t do well in school. What is true is that much of academic learning (the type in which nerds excel) requires a different area of the brain and uses different techniques than motor skills learning (what jocks are good at).

For people who are academically inclined in math and science, the pathways to learning are logical, straightforward, reproducible, and predictable.  Academic knowledge is easily passed on by words or diagrams.  Clear sentence structure and well labeled graphs are helpful.  Tangential information is ignored.  And once a problem is solved, the answer can be communicated in a straightforward manner.

Learning athletic skills requires a different approach entirely. Your ability to solve quadratic equations is irrelevant to your ability to figure out how to throw a forehand.  In fact, attempting to use the same tactics for learning motor skills as for math will actually inhibit the learning process!  Motor skills learning takes place in completely different parts of the brain.  This part of the brain communicates best by innuendo, analogy, and poetry.  It is reticent to focus, hard to control, and learns by trial and error.  Knowledge gained may or may not be well understood or able to be communicated.

Most ultimate players I know have a healthy mix of nerd and jock components in their personalities.  In coaching and practicing, it’s important to understand which part of the brain you are talking to and what methods work best.

Here are a few tips for communicating with the inner jock:

1.  Focus on the movement effect. Extensive research by Gabriele Wulf shows that directing attention to the effects of the body’s motion rather than trying to consciously control the body’s motion greatly enhances the learning process (Wulf, 2007).  Oddly, attentional focus farther from the body proves more effective than focus at points closer to the body or within the body.  A tennis player does better by focusing on the movement produced in the ball rather than in the racket. An ultimate player will be better served by focusing on the angle and speed of the disc midway through a throw rather than at release.  Focusing on the resulting disc movement is better than thinking about movement of the body such as snapping the wrist, for example.
2.  Use analogy and imagery.  Current research suggests that imagery or verbal cues can serve as shorthand for eliciting desired motor programs (movement patterns).  In throwing instruction telling a player to pretend that they are snapping a towel can help them to understand and reproduce the wrist snapping motion required for a forehand. Instructing players to pretend that they are balancing a glass of water on the disc as they release it can help them to keep it level and parallel to the ground at release.

3.  Understand the importance of error in trial and error.  When learning a new motor skill there will be a lot of variation between trials.  When providing feedback to players it is important to understand whether an error you see is a natural variation or a consistent flaw.  Providing detailed feedback for each trail of a throw will be an information overload.  Providing feedback for consistent flaws after watching many trials will be more effective.  Using the technique of overcompensation can also free the our motor skills brain from the grips of the analytical, perfectionist part of the brain.  Overcompensation is simply the permission to err in the opposite direction.  For example, a thrower having difficulty getting a good inside out angle can be encouraged to throw an inside out blade.  Erring on both sides of the desired flight path enables the motor skills program to find the middle ground.

References:

Wulf, G. (2007).  Attention and motor skill learning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics

Millman, D. (1999).  Body mind mastery: creating success in sport and life.  Navato, CA: New World Library

Related Posts:

Do Some Players Use ESP?

The Supernatural Powers of Elite Athletes

Curses!

In this study three players from Southpaw (open team, Philly) were recorded during a pool play game at Bell Crack 2010. Their motions were then categorized and timed. The categories of motion were walking/standing, jogging, running, shuffling, and sprinting. Only motions exceeding about 2 seconds were recorded.

To think about how these studies might inform our training we’ll ignore standing, walking, and jogging and assume we don’t need to train for those. That leaves us with sprinting, running, and shuffling. If we classify sprinting and running as forward motion and shuffling as lateral motion here is how the player movements break down:

Handler 1: This player, described as a very active handler, was watched for six points which lasted 16 minutes 38 seconds. He spent 1 minute 53 seconds in forward motion and a remarkable 6 minutes 5 seconds in lateral motion. Ratio of lateral/forward = 3.27/1

Handler 2: This handler was watched for five points which lasted 16 minutes and 32 seconds. During this time he spent 2 minutes 37 seconds in forward motion and 48 seconds in lateral motion. Ratio of lateral/forward = 0.3/1

Cutter/defender: A cutter was watched for five points that lasted 9 minutes and 6 seconds. He spent 2 minutes 4 seconds in forward motion and 1 minute 47 seconds in lateral motion. Ratio of lateral/forward = 0.9/1

 
What do the results mean?
Admittedly these results are not consistent and this is a very tiny sample size. There is a lot of variety between players. With more data forthcoming we might also expect to see differences for handlers v. cutters and offense v. defense. Nevertheless it is safe to conclude that to be properly prepared for the demands of ultimate, a significant amount of lateral motion should be included in any ultimate player’s training program. Even the player who spent the least amount of time shuffling spent a full third of his time in lateral motion.

 
Application
I highly recommend incorporating one or two days of lateral motion per week into your training program. Planning lateral motion days between forward motion days has the added benefit of working slightly different muscle groups on different days.

 
Related Posts
Researching Movement Patterns in Ultimate