Passive Barriers in Ultimate

Another morning where my daily reading hits on a topic that I think might be interesting to the community. The concept is passive barriers, and I read about it with respect to money in this article.


First, definitions for those of you who aren't interested in the article:

• Barriers: "There are dramatic differences in what we say versus what we do. Often, the reason is so simple that we can’t believe it would affect us. I call these barriers".
• Active Barriers: "Active barriers are physical things like the plastic wrap on my food, or someone telling me that it’ll never work, etc."
• Passive Barriers: " Passive barriers are things that don’t exist, so they make your job harder."

Now to Ultimate - Barriers will affect goals whether they are team goals or individual goals, so we should look into some barriers that may be troubling your goals.

Goal 1, in my case, is an individual effort to warm up properly before games and practice. This is the type of thing I promise to myself every year so that I can last longer into the season. The main barriers to this goal are waking up early after lack of sleep, and focusing on proper warm ups after byes during tournament days. Both of these barriers seem to be passive in that I don't have enough time, and I'm trading off that time for fun. I'm not sure how to deal with these barriers, but we all face it in Ultimate.

A team barrier, for example, is the tendency for the O-line to huck the disc too often and not play a small game. Barriers that cause this can include:

• Individual throwers and team opting for the easy way out via a fast score.
• Individual throwers and team over using one weapon.
• Lack of team confidence in the short game.

The same is true for the opposite where a team never hucks, but we tend to see this less.

Not sure how you solve these, but at least being aware that even though we say we're going to do something it doesn't mean we are. Action should be post evaluated and barriers identified to rectify, if that is the true goal, the situation.

PJ