Book Review - More of a look at the latest Ultimate book

Hey Folks,

I'm a little slow on reviewing "Essential Ultimate - Teaching, Coaching, Playing" by Michael Baccarini and Tiina Booth, but my girlfriend brought the book over here from North America. I took some time to read the book, and here are a few thoughts.

Pictured above: The book cover and a link to where you can order it.

I feel this book is targeted at beginners and coaches teaching beginners. That doesn't mean that the intermediate or advanced player won't get anything out of the book, but the beginner group will get the greatest benefit.

The book is broken into two sections. The first section goes into describing basic skills and moving into team skills and strategies. The second part of the book talks about developing your Ultimate program. There are many tips and concepts presented in the, and it's clear the authors have taken time on describing the challenging concepts of our game in written form.

When reading Ultimate books, I think back to my early days in basketball. In grade eight, I had a thirst for Basketball knowledge. Living in a town of 4000, I went to the main point of information. No, this was not the internet that existed in a primitive form at that time (that was accessed using strange phone based modems, and lacked a huge web of information). Instead, I went to the library. There in the sports section there were 4 books on basketball. I read all 4 books that day, trying to advance my knowledge of the sport, not realizing the books from the early 50s, 60s and 70s were behind on the basketball times. The underhand free throw popularized by Rick Barry was not cool with the likes of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. I expect Ultimate books will follow a similar path to the shelves of ancient knowledge.

Fortunately, "Essential Ultimate" is a modern Ultimate book (at present), and it is filled with details on how to teach Ultimate. Quite simply, you could take chapters 2 through 7 and have a base for a plan on how to teach the sport to the new inductees. For the beginner or the early coach teaching to beginners you'll find the book to be a valuable resource. The question then is what's in their for the more advanced.

I find lessons and knowledge in many forms, and this book is no exception. For example, my Ph.D. supervisor taught me that nomenclature is one of the key things that a field needs so that those involved can speak at a higher abstraction level. This is true for Ultimate. Imagine how much you convey by the simple words "dump" or "swing". These words convey great meaning to those of us involved in the sport that takes a few minutes to explain to new players or non players.

"Essential Ultimate" adds to this nomenclature meaning we'll be able to talk about the sport with more ease and higher level discussion. For example, early in chapter 2, I found the terms for the various characteristics of a disc - "shoulder", "tailing edge", and "flight rings" are a few examples. With these definitions, we can now talk about the flight of a disc with more ease. Unfortunately, you haven't learned all the terms yet, so I'll have to wait until the knowledge is more well spread.

In all, I can say I learned more than one thing from the book. For anything I do, if I could always claim that, then I would be much smarter than I am today.

PJ

The newest ultimate book

I had a chance to read some of the latest Ultimate book, Ultimate: The Greatest Sport Ever Invented By Man. On my first pass, I quickly scanned the book to see what was in it, and I was happy to see small little lists such as the best tournaments to go to and Ultimate team names. On my second pass, I made an effort to look for tournaments, teams, and players that I've played at or with. Again, I found lots of references that made the book that much more enjoyable. On my third pass through the book, I started to pick out specific topics and read them in a little more depth such as the profile of an Engineer Ultimate player.

Pictured Above: The book cover.

On each pass, I found reading the book very enjoyable, and for that reason I'm considering getting my own copy (instead of borrowing Norm's) . The question I have, is what is the strength of the book and who is it best suited for. Obviously, ultimate players will enjoy the book, but anyone else?

I think you should have the book to:

• have some copies of book for your college team, and pass the copies around to rookies to give them a perspective of the game.
• put a copy in your washroom. The book is well suited to pick up and read in small little stints. Also, I think this is the perfect to introduce the sport to those not familiar with what we do.
• put a copy in your lobby. If you have a lobby in your line of work, then put a copy there to introduce the public to Ultimate (similar to the bathroom concept).
• have a copy for road trips. The book has some trivia and topics that can only enhance an Ultimate trip.

Some of us were pondering whether the book is a good thing to give to parents, significant others, and friends who don't play. The idea being to introduce them to why you don't see them in the summer. We came to the conclusion that even though the book captures many aspects of Ultimate very well, it won't bridge the "why do you play" gap.

Pictured Above: Slow White and Shazam Returns in the UPA co-ed finals (picture courtesy of me).

My only complaint with the book is they list Torontula as a geek team name, and Torontula isn't listed as a legitimate college team when McGill is. This is nothing against McGill (as I think they deserve to make the list), but I feel their inclusion on the list should justify ours.

PJ

Book Review - In Pursuit of Excellence - Part III

This is the last part of the review of In Pursuit of Excellence: How to Win in Sport and Life Through Mental Training, Third Edition. I'll look at the last two sections of the book.

Pictured Above: Inian Moorthy laying out in the Flowerbowl final (photo courtesy of Jamie Bishop).

Section III of the book provides a number of methods to prepare yourself to deal with the challenges of a mental game. I'll summarize each section briefly:

• Chapter 7 - The key is getting to know yourself and how you react to situations and when you perform your best/worst. The book provides a method to focus on improving specific skills. This is a preamble for all the following chapters.
  
• Chapter 8 - The focus of the chapter is becoming consistent at performing well. This means focusing and refocusing after setbacks and errors to become a consistent performer. The classic focus challenge is making an error. Many people start to crumble once they make an error. Instead, react to the situation (for Ultimate this usually means play D and forget about the error), relax since it isn't the end of the world, focus on correcting the error, and encourage yourself (plus you'll get team encouragement). Another element of consistency is mood related. We all have different moods depending on a multitude of factors, but it is relatively easy to change your mood.
  
• Chapter 9 - The positive theme continues with the use of positive images in this chapter. This is the classic sports visualization technique where you think about yourself performing an action or task correctly. The book emphasizes what additional steps you need to take to make visualization more worth while.
  
• Chapter 10 - This chapter deals with what appears to be a paradox in the desire of an athlete to be relaxed and intense at the same time. Relaxation is needed both outside and inside Ultimate. You can relax in a number of ways that I won't get into. In the game, breathing, laughing, and smiling are all simple tactics to help the body relax. Intensity is the focus and exertion that you bring to the game. It's easy to have high intensity in big games with proper warm ups. The challenge is when you are tired or something isn't feeling right. In these cases we need to bring our intensity up.
  
• Chapter 11 - This chapter talks about distraction control. The major point is that distractions are only distractions if you let them be distractions. The more focus you have on what you are doing the less distractions there are. I've talked to lots of guys, myself included, who don't even notice a crowd in a big game. We're just focused on the game.
  
• Chapter 12 - One of my favourite chapters of the book and something I've discussed before on my blog (so it wasn't my idea first) is simulation. Simulation allows us to prepare for possibilities. The case study in this chapter talks about the dominant Indonesian badminton team in the 90s that used simulation in all sorts of ways.
• Chapter 13 - This is a fascinating topic that I've enjoyed in the past - the concept of Zen. Zen in relation to athletics is going into what people commonly call the zone where you just perform. There's no thinking about performance it is just being in the moment and doing. There's lots of philosophy in this section, but I think it comes down to letting our reaction or primal mind just get into the game and guide our actions.
  
• Chapter 14 - This is a chapter on self-hypnosis, which is a topic I've not actually looked at or explored in terms of sport. It all sounds interesting, but I'm going to leave a discussion out until I've learned more.
• Chapter 15 - This is a summary of the section. The author emphasizes that even if you are trying to improve your game it's not guaranteed that changes will happen instantly. You need to be persistent and continue to work on all facets of improving before expecting major results. It is possible that some quick techniques will allow for quick improvement.

Section IV is called, "Living Excellence" and it deals with some of the surrounding factors in sport and how they affect the individual.

Pictured Above: Teammate scramble for the disc (photo courtesy of Jamie Bishop).

Chapter 16 talks about how to deal with strategies of improvement that aren't working. It all comes down to making alternative plans and evaluating how things are going.

Pictured Above: Another Inian Moorthy layout with Oscar on his shoulder (photo courtesy of Jamie Bishop).

Chapter 17 - This chapter talks about getting the most from coaches. First they lay out the classic coaching error which is useless feedback (along the lines of "do it right"). All coaches will make this error mainly because some things are beyond our teaching understanding and we don't yet know how to provide useful feedback. If a coach is being too negative without any positive then they need to be dealt with (in a calm and civilized manner).

Also, with people it is some times necessary to tell a coach how you would like to be dealt with for certain things. The coach might not be able to always act in the way you would hope, but similarly you need to take some of their poor performance in stride and not let it affect your game. A coach can be a distraction as much as any other external element in a sporting event.

Chapter 18 - This chapter is on team harmony. We are all picked for a team mostly based on skill without a tonne of thought on how we will interact with each other. This means we all need to actively pursue team harmony. Some ways to help team harmony are:

Conflict resolution is also a major activity in team harmony. The classic techniques of listening, involving everyone, deciding to get along, and not putting down each other go a long way to keeping things going.

Chapter 19 is about learning from setbacks. This is a small chapter that states that every setback has something valuable to learn from, even more so than success.

Chapter 20 is also small and discusses the importance of balancing your life. Obviously, an active sport will take up more time on percentage basis, but it's important to give other elements of your life attention and not taking too big a load by saying no to certain activities.

Finally, chapter 21 is about retiring and the challenges for athletes that have dedicated so much to their endeavors but now returning to a world without active competition and training. They key, the book says, is having other interests and relationships that can then take up a larger part of your time when these large time gaps appear.

Pictured Above: A D? by Antz on Graham. Look at the focus on both players faces (photo courtesy of Jamie Bishop).

That's the book in nutshell. I think the book is good with a little bit of repetition and not as much solid methodological description of how to achieve certain things like distraction control and focus. The book, however, includes lots of case examples and analogies that help convey the message.

PJ

Book Review - In Pursuit of Excellence - Part II

This is the next part of the review of In Pursuit of Excellence: How to Win in Sport and Life Through Mental Training, Third Edition. In this posting I'll review part I of the book called Visions of excellence.

In chapter 1 we are introduced to the wheel of excellence:

1. Commitment - sort of what we are doing with the team and ultimate at different levels. Summed up as do everything required to excel.
2. Focused Connection - mind on the task at hand. means let go of everything else while you are in the activity.
3. Confidence - to some degree belief that you will succeed and overcome obstacles. On a team you fear no opponent since you know we are or will be prepared for the challenge.
4. Positive Image - speeds up achievement of your goals. Like a video game images and visualization allow you to perform without actually performing.
5. Mental Readiness - getting the most out of your experiences.
6. Distraction Control - maintaining a positive focus in while confronted with distractions
7. Ongoing Learning - evaluating each experience and seeking more information to improve from.

Imagine a wheel where 1,2, and 3 are in the middle and are surrounded by 4,5,6, and 7. Why is there this arrangement? I'm not sure yet, but I'm sure they do it for a reason. These main parts of the wheel are included throughout the book.

Chapter 2 talks about why sport is such a popular activity and how it fits in to the meaning of life. Yes, I said meaning of life. Then in chapter 2 the author interviews Kerrin Lee Gartner on how she achieved success through the author's mental training. They talk about each part of the wheel and how it applies to her skiing and life in general. It's supposed to be a motivator and a practical view of the wheel and how it fits into an athletes life.

Pictured Above: The sequence on a Chris Lee catch (Goat) that two small passes later resulted in the win for Flowerbowl 2007 (sweet sequence of Photos Courtesy of Kirsten Taylor).

Section II is called commitment to excellence, and the main idea is that you need a reason to pursue excellence and you need to decide how committed you are to achieving the level that you want to attain.

Chapter 3 focuses on the commitment level you have to your goals. It talks about how two equal athletes in terms of potential can end up at very different levels mostly due to the commitment levels they are willing to give to the pursuit. A major part of this chapter discusses how NHL scouts and coaches look to pick players and what characteristics those players have.

Chapter 4 talks about focus. The chapter starts off using a cat chasing a mouse analogy where the cats focuses on the goal to the point of not noticing a car approaching. The cat and the mouse also don't worry about how they look or what will happen and instead are focused on achieving their goal. Similarly, in sport this focus is key (though not life and death). Focus, however, does not just happen and needs to be practiced. They provide a few guidelines on how to focus.

Chapter 5 reviews the concept of goals. First off you need a meaningful long term goal. Next, is how to achieve that goal. The book reinforces the concept of taking small steps to achieve big things. They state that everyday you should have some small goal that you try to achieve to build towards the bigger goals.

Finally, chapter 6 is about a positive mindset. This is a small chapter that claims that a positive mindset that means relaxed, content, and excited is better to achieve goals and perform well compared to one that is anxious, worried, and angry.

So, that concludes a brief review of section I and II. There are lots of good points that are connected to specific real world cases. I'll review section III and IV next week.

PJ

Book Review - In Pursuit of Excellence

I'm pretty excited since I just recently received, In Pursuit of Excellence: How to Win in Sport and Life Through Mental Training, Third Edition. As I normally do, I thought I would break down the book and do a book review ala grade 4.

Pictured Above: Back at coed tryouts a photo of Toronto's Riverdale East hill run (photo courtesy of Jason Moy)

This book is divided into four parts:

• Visions of excellence
  
• Committing to excellence
• Mental Preparation for excellence
• Living excellence

Based on those four sections titles I'm a little skeptical on the value of the book, but we'll see if there are any gems to help our Ultimate games get to the next level. I'll review each section over some of the next posts. I'll mix it in with other topics, so don't expect to see the book review in a contiguous set of posts.

Like I said, I'm a little nervous about the quality of this book since it my basic preview gives me the sense that the book is fluffy and will say things such as, "you need to visualize what you are doing" without any concrete steps on how to do visualization.

PJ

Book Review - Successful Coaching - Part VI of the Story

The last section of Successful Coaching; America's Best Selling Coaching Book gives a brief overview of sport management for coaches.

Pictured Above: Sideline focused on the action.

Sports management involves:

• Planning - what you will do
  
• Organizing - team structure
  
• Staffing - who will be part of the organization
  
• Directing - guiding others
  
• Controlling - guiding the team

The book doesn't cover all the possible elements of team management and focuses on team management, risk management, and self-management.

Team management is broken up into pre-season, in-season, and post-season. The book provides a good set of steps that you need to consider during each of the three parts. The end of the chapter briefly touches on managing relationships with all the people you interact with during a season including administrators, other coaches, parents, and officials.

The next chapter, risk management, is about how to have a safe learning environment. The main audience for this chapter is youth coaches, but I think the chapter makes a few good points about keeping any aged athlete safe.

Finally, the last chapter is about managing yourself as a coach. This is a stay healthy and time management section that consists of common sense items like eat well and get proper rest.

In this section, I really liked the team management chapter, but the other two chapters were unnecessary. Fortunately, they are short chapters.

Overall, I liked the book. Not everything was new, but the material is presented in a linear form with good set of steps to figure out how you should be preparing. I'm not going to call this a must book for Ultimate coaches and captains; however, I do think you'll have a better season by just following some of the advice from the book.

PJ

Book Review - Successful Coaching - Part V of the Story

In the 4th part of Successful Coaching; America's Best Selling Coaching Book the book deals with sport physiology. Each of the five chapters in this section are written by two guest authors. The focus is on how to train the body for athletic performance. This is probably the weakest part of the book since the information is a little dated.

The first four chapters in this section describe how to train over the season. This is a good introduction on the topic, but I don't think this is the best place for Ultimate players to plan out their training schedule and nutrition. It is, however, a good starting point to think about workouts and what to pass on to your players. Also, they give a good overview of what youth athletes should be doing in terms of training as they mature.

Pictured Above: Another great shot from our scrimmage last weekend. Mike List gets off a throw by Cam Malcolm (photo courtesy of Jaleel).

The last chapter talks about is about drugs and sports performance. At UCPC this year, Charles Reznicoff did a presentation on drugs and Ultimate (you can download his presentation here). This chapter deals with a few things that weren't covered in Charles' presentation on how to deal with youth athletes and drug problems.

I'm not going into much more detail about this section. The points are valid, I just don't think this is the best place to get this information.

PJ

Book Review - Successful Coaching - Part IV of the Story

In the next section of Successful Coaching; America's Best Selling Coaching Book, the focus is on sport pedagogy - the science and art of teaching sport skills to your athletes.

Pictured Above: A really nice shot from this weekends scrimmage (photo courtesy of Jaleel). Mark Agius is throwing past Steve Tam in the background and Tim Chapman-Smith (in black) is covering Kyle unknown in the foreground.

Chapter 7 talks about planning out your season including upcoming competition, practices, and non-sport related events. The reason for making this plan is to come across as organized and to be organized alleviating stresses during the season. The book provides steps on how to plan out your season. Also in this chapter there is a sample practice for a general team. I'm not sure if the sample practice plan applies to Ultimate, but at least it provides a framework to build from, and it's similar to what I currently run.

Chapter 8 looks into how athletes learn. The first part of the chapter teaches you the way people learn motor skills based on current research models of what the mind. The second part shows the progression of an athlete learning a skill and what role a coach should take as they progress.

With a season plan in place and an understanding of how athletes learn, chapter 9 finally describes how to teach a new skill. The book breaks teaching a skill into 4 steps with lots of tips for each step, and an example of juggling as a skill to teach.

Overall, section III provides a lot of valuable information for teaching your players new skills. For those of us who aren't teachers by trade there is a huge amount of information in this section. Even for the teachers, there is a good perspective on how to teach physically learned skills.

PJ

Book Review - Successful Coaching - Part III of the Story

Section II of Successful Coaching; America's Best Selling Coaching Book introduces the coach to some simple principles of sports psychology. The books defines sports psychology as "...understanding why athletes and coaches behave as they do...".

In chapter 3, the topic is on how to evaluate your communication skills. Although not what I would traditionally consider sports psychology the chapter captures a basic model for communication, the importance of observing your nonverbal communication, and eight poor communication styles that coaches should avoid.

Pictured Above: The end of women's tryouts last weekend finished with a hill run (photo courtesy of Jaleel)

Next, chapter 4 provides some ideas on how to improve your communication skills. The emphasis is on positive communication, but even more important is the content of the message. I think this is a great point for all coaches and players; if you're going to be critical then provide specific feedback on improving the performance.

The next chapter deals with reinforcement principles to push your athletes to a desired behaviour. The two choices of reinforcement styles are rewards for good behaviour and consequences for bad. Sticking with the positive theme of the book, rewards are the preferred reinforcement approach and are to be given early and often in developing skills and reduced as a skill is developed by the athlete. The chapter also gives specific examples of appropriate times to reinforce behaviour, and a set of guide lines to deal with misbehavior.

Chapter 6 discusses motivation all based on the premise, "People are motivated to fulfill their needs". This is the best chapter in this section with a good introduction to how athletes are motivated and what are some of the conditions needed to get into the "flow" or "zone".

All four of these chapters are a good introduction for an Ultimate coach or captain on how to understand the athletes on your team and a successful approach on how to communicate the right things to them. I found reading the four chapters reminded me of the importance of my own skills and its impact on pushing a team forward.

PJ

Book Review - Successful Coaching - Part II of the Story

Today I'll take a quick look at the first section of the book Successful Coaching; America's Best Selling Coaching Book. I think this book is a good introduction to coaching even though many of the discussions are more focused on coaching younger athletes.

Section I of the book is called "Developing a Coaching Philosophy", and this section is split into two chapters. The intention is to think a little bit about yourself and how and why your coaching.

Pictured Above: One of my favourite team photos from a Halloween tournament - Goosebowl, and our team - BEAT (Bacon Eggs and Toast).

Chapter 1 takes a look at the coaches objectives. A significant part of the chapter is dedicated to a coaches perspective on winning, but with more of a discussion of winning with respect to young athletes. The question is still valid for Ultimate at both the College and Club level. How important is winning to you and to the team? Is striving to win just as important as actually coming out on top?

Chapter 2 talks about your coaching style. Three common types of coaching styles are introduced - the commander, the laid back, and the cooperative. These are pretty simple explanations of a type of coach, and I didn't get any real benefit from these styles. The idea is that coaches should be cooperative coaches meaning you run things, but also allow the athletes to contribute. Along with the and three types, additional qualities are listed that the author believes makes for a successful coach.

The first section is pretty simple. The main take home idea is that a coach needs to think a little bit about themselves and their motivation - both altruistic and selfish. Like the team plan, it's much better to get your coaching philosophy written down to get something precise and even remind you why you're doing this later.

PJ

Book Review - Successful Coaching - Part I of the Story

Hey Folks,

We had a beautiful weekend of Ultimate here in Toronto. Our co-ed and women's teams had mass tryouts, and the master's and open teams had some minor runs. I played a few points this weekend on my leg, which seems all right, and the sun made me feel good.

My main Ultimate thoughts are still on the upcoming season and my coaching plans for the team. My preparation for the season includes organization and research, and one of the books I've been reading for research is Successful Coaching; America's Best Selling Coaching Book.

Pictured Above: A picture from Montreal Jazz Tournament in 2005 of Giles Deshon looking for an open cut.

The goal of the book is to provide insight into the science and art of coaching irrespective of a specific sport. Instead of an emphasis on techniques and tactics, a full range of coaching topics is covered that the author believes are key to becoming a successful coach.

The books broken up into five parts:

1. Developing a coaching philosophy
2. Sport psychology
3. Sport pedagogy
4. Sport physiology
5. Sport management

Over the next few posts I'll review each of these sections and contemplate how they apply to Ultimate.

PJ