Diagnosis of a loss - mind, strategy, or skill

I remember one of my recent hockey teams. We were a mid-pack team that would win half our games and lose half our games. For mosts games it would be close and we would have a chance to win or lose. When we did lose, we would assemble in the dressing room after the game, and the guys would come out with their analysis of the loss. Fortunately, in hockey you can blame the refs, but once the ref got a good bad mouthing, we would move on to, "we weren't focused enough".

Crosby, clearly, just doesn't want it enough (sarcasm).

To be honest, I didn't say much during these change room talks. My feeling, which I voiced once, but was quickly dismissed, was that we lost games simply due to the fact that they had better players. On average their three lines were more skilled than our three lines, and our strength (which was usually our defense men and goalie) couldn't hold off the attack long enough for our forwards to score. And yet, we would always blame the ref and our mental toughness, concluding that next time we would do better.

Yesterday, I read an article along these lines prompting this post. We seem to be in a modern era of the blaming the sports/team mind. They/we didn't want it enough. I, myself, have been in team circles emphasizing the importance of focus and desire. Not that mind is not important in sport, but it's time for us to move into the enlightened age where athletes mind, athletes skill, and team strategy are equally responsible for wins and losses.

I would argue that Ultimate is a little different and championships are still won based on personnel (not so much strategy). It's about building a team with enough skilled athletes and shaping their minds. We haven't reached a critical mass point where the difference is small between the best and the stars. Instead, at the top tournaments the difference between a star and a team member can be significant.

For example, in Open clubs you can see that the stronger teams are from larger population centers, and the exceptional teams tend to be from Ultimate meccas that also have reasonably large population base. If the sport continues to grow and stay amateur, then I expect that larger population centers will be the major forces in the sport.

Regardless of where you are, train your team to be skilled, solid in the mind game, and strategise well. Then given a loss or a win, look at the full picture, and ask how each of the three factors could have been improved.

PJ

Improving Your Move Repertoire - Repeat and Expand

This is a topic I've been meaning to delve into for some time now. The idea of "moves" is that in game situations like breaking the mark, cutting to get open, and running a dump cut we have an internal set of moves that we use to succeed. Today I'll look into what to do with your moves, but first an example.


For example, when I cut for a Berkeley (reset from the sideline) against less experienced defenders, I cut up the line until they look away, reverse the cut back with an exaggerated step (maybe an arm shoots out), and then reverse again continueing up the line for an easy lead pass. I've mastered this move and use it regularly in a certain level of game. Defenders can get completely beaten by this move and end up running multiple steps in the opposite direction I'm cutting.

That's a great move to have, but that move only works a few times until the defender adapts. Then I have to adapt and use another move, and so on, and so on. Hopefully, over a game I'll get different defenders so that I don't have to adapt too much, but as teams get better and people learn your moves and play better defense you need to find more.

Note, the move I describes sounds very rigid, but incorporated in a move is options based on reading the situation and working with your teammate. For example, the above described Berkeley cut is only executed based on a more preliminary setup (I'll discuss this in another article).

The three groups of moves that I allude to at the start of this article are related to a start drill I like to run at practice - Lotto. The problem with teams that I've helped coach is this drill becomes repetitive and the players become bored and go through the motions instead of taking advantage of the practice.

However, the approach you should take to make the drills interesting is to run through your moves similar to classic dribbling drills in basketball or the start of Martial arts sessions (where artists go through standard punches and kicks to perfect each skill). Some suggestions for looking at drills you find boring include:

• Use drill repetitions (i.e. one through three) to practice your classic moves, and use later repetitions (four and five) for new experimental moves.
• Use the X repetitions where each repetition builds on the last to set up your defender. For example, on repetition one of three man throw a flick. On repetition two throw a flick again. On repetition three know that the defender will, likely, over play the flick and use that to set up a nice backhand.
• Drill with the same defender or top quality players so you can't get away with your classic moves.
• Try using a move over and over to perfect it questioning how has the defender adapted, and what does that adaption open up in new opportunities.
  

First, you need to identify and establish basic moves (hopefully, your coaches and experienced teammates can help). Next, you need to practice and refine the moves you have learning when to adapt, and finally, you need to creatively, depending on the read, transition between moves. The larger and better your repertoire of moves, the better you'll be on the field.

PJ

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

Efficient returns - good economics for improvements?

In a recent article in the New York times, the topic is how the free throw, in basketball, is a statistic that is not improving for the NBA. The experts claim is that:
"Ray Stefani, a professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, is an expert in the statistical analysis of sports. Widespread improvement over time in any sport, he said, depends on a combination of four factors: physiology (the size and fitness of athletes, perhaps aided by performance-enhancing drugs), technology or innovation (things like the advent of rowing machines to train rowers, and the Fosbury Flop in high jumping), coaching (changes in strategy) and equipment (like the clap skate in speedskating or fiberglass poles in pole vaulting)."
That and the free throw is not the main skill to focus on within the sport. I'm sure free throw competitions have better shooters as they focus on this one skill.


This got me thinking about Ultimate. Do we have skills that are maximized? Again, we're in the domain of lack of statistics to even continue the thought experiment, so I won't waste too many words in that direction (4 gone just to finish that sentence).

The question that I thought might be really useful to ask, is there any skill that we are good enough at? Should we be spending time on another skill set? For example, I would argue that many teams spend way too much time on casual throwing, though that's not really a skill.

Another aspect that I think teams spend too much time on is getting faster in terms of top speed. Fitness is important, and fitness should be incorporated in practices. Note, however, that fitness should not be simply sprints; fitness should involve game-used footwork with or without a disc, or sprints with a disc. Speed is one of those areas I feel that you get very little return from in terms of how much you have to put into it.

In terms of what to practice, the best thing you can do is determine what skills to work on will give you the greatest returns in game situations. This isn't a simple problem by any means, but it is something to think about. For example, developing teams love to huck and practice hucking. The reality, in many cases, is that the time spent on hucking will return maybe one or two more deep completions in a game (and that's probably via only one or two players who are good huckers anyway). While developing your endzone and small game skills will result in better team play and more possession for all your players.

PJ

That Guy - Hidden Superstars

I've been quite busy with work and interviews, and sadly my dreams are filled with thoughts of simulated and annealing instead of Ultimate cuts and theory. For this reason, more of my ideas are coming in another field at present, so don't expect too much brilliance from me.

Fortunately, various readers pass on tips and articles that they think others might be interested in. If you're up for a long read, then check out this article on Shane Battier of the Houston Rockets (tip David Sheffield). I've only made it one page into the article, but the mood suggests we're getting into methods of identifying key players without the standard statistical or heroic play.

I've alluded to the other end of this problem in Ultimate. The guy who always gets the flashy D, but is likely poaching or gives away every other easy in cut. More important is identifying the quiet guys who shut down their man or make a key cut to open space. I'm sure we've all felt like we were doing the right things and not being acknowledged for it. The bigger question is how do coaches and teammates recognize these contributions, so the player isn't lost or deemed unworthy.

PJ

Coaching Emulation - Part "A" of the equation

In the past few articles, I've been focusing on emulating coaches that you like to help you become a good coach. That's all good, but the one person you should really breakdown and emulate is - no not yourself - your best teachers. The teacher that inspired you and taught you how to do something so you understood it after working at it for a while uses key skills that you'll need to be a good coach.
The reason that teaching is so important is a huge portion of coaching, at the level we will likely coach, will be teaching. This means, that you need to learn teaching skills to the range of learners out there. You have to motivate them to learn. You have to push them through the tough times. Probably hardest of all, you have to break down skills into teachable parts. It's not easy.

I've had a number of teachers throughout my life. No one in particular comes out as the best teacher to emulate, but collectively I've observed their approaches to teaching ad evaluated how successful they are.

If coaching is your goal, then start observing both the taught and teaching. These free observations can potentially show you how to approach the teaching side to coaching. Talk to teachers and ask them about common problems. How do you motivate? How do you convey difficult subjects? How much preparation do you need to do?

PJ

Statistical Coaches to Emulate - is it for Ultimate?

As much as I look to famous coaches to learn from them, the ones I really get excited about are ones such as Billy Beane of the Oakland A's who was made even more famous with the book "Moneyball". These are the guys who leverage science and mathematics to get an advantage in sport.

The new coach for the Detroit Lions NFL team, Jim Schwartz (this article) , fits into this category as the guys who study the numbers and its relation to the games they're involved with. This area of sport application fascinates me. I hope to make the field one of my research streams as I become a faculty member at a University.

Does it apply to Ultimate? Well, one challenge, as many have discussed before, is the lack of collected data for our sport. Baseball, the favourite for sabermetric research, is a game with many head to head battles that can be quantized. Football has clear stoppages that also can be quantified. Smooth flowing, lower scoring games such as hockey, football (soccer), and Ultimate are harder to quantize.

Flowing sports tend to place more value on systems and human intuition in analyzing what and how to achieve goals. Is there a way to capture this intuition quantitively? I have some ideas, but the unknown makes this area fascinating. Thoughts? Collaborations?

PJ

Coaching by emulating

Last week I talked about becoming a coach and some simple advice on the process. If you're interested in coaching Ultimate and you do what I do with my interests, then you search out information and people to emulate who have success in the area. For example, when I was in love with basketball, I used to read autobiographies for players and coaches in search of what made them great. I, clearly, remember reading anything I could find on Zen Budhism because of Kareem Abdul Jabbar.


Unfortunately, in Ultimate we don't have a huge range of people to emulate (with the exception of a few such as Tiina Booth, Michael Baccarini, and Matty Tsang) and the few we do, we're not likely to have regular access to. This reminds me of two of the autobiographies I read in my basketball days - Pat Riley's and Phil Jackson's.

My feeling with these autobiographies is they may give you some nuggets on how to manage superstars, but as I previously discussed we're not likely to be coaching in that domain. Instead, we might want to be looking to emulate coaches at lower levels.

One article I read was about Pat Summit. She seems like a great candidate to study. She took over the Tennessee ladies basketball team and has built a program that stands supreme in the world of College sports.

The best quote from the article is:
“This job is all about the relationships,” Summitt said, “so obviously that’s rewarding.”

This fits into the ways to coach. The article is a good starting point into summit, but next, I'll have to see if I can find some information on her program and how it was built. I'll see if I can get my hands on "Reach for the Summit" and "Raise the Roof". These two books were written by summit and will give some insight into her ways. Unfortunately, my time is limmitted.

PJ

I want to be a coach, but how?

I, personally, have had great opportunities to coach Ultimate and basketball over my years in these sports. My next endeavour, which is undecided as yet, will hopefully be my greatest effort into the coaching ranks, but who knows. I've made some comments on becoming a coach or player in this post, but today I'm going to focus on a strategy to becoming a coach.


The simplest route to coaching is to volunteer to an open position. These positions, if they exist in the first place, are good starting points, but tend to deal with learning Ultimate. If you're interested in this, these positions will exist in many forms. Also, if you want to get into high-level Ultimate coaching without taking on teaching jobs, then please tell on how you achieve this. I believe that the "teaching Ultimate" road is the main road into Ultimate coaching.

Next, if you're goal is to build and coach a team that plays at a more competitive level, then you'll need to find a position in which year to year there exists a stable team. This, likely, means high school, college, or club teams are the target. To get a coaching position for these targets, is not plain and simple. There are advertised positions on RSD that pop up from time to time, but these are far (spatially and temporally) and few.

High school coaching tends to be the domain of the high school teacher. Even if you find and build some form of program, school politics can result in you losing the coaching position. I would recommend targeting college or club positions, but even these positions will be hard to maintain. Also, as I've argued before, club positions remain a strange beast in the world of Ultimate. This means a college coaching position should be your first target.

Walking into a college Ultimate program that doesn't have a coach and becoming the head coach for the team is not a likely proposition. Instead, a slow approach is probably the best option. If the college team has a B team (C, D, and E also work), then as a starting point volunteer to coach one of these teams to develop newer players. This approach over a few years and if you're a good coach will give the rapport with players and experience to move into coaching stronger teams and developing a program that you've always dreamed of.

If the Ultimate team is small and doesn't have additional developmental teams, then volunteer to be a team manager that also provides developmental sessions for beginning players. These might be clinics for new players to attend.

Your dream program, in any case, will take years to establish. Team culture evolves slowly, but this is the advantage of working with newer players. These players over the years will become the leaders, and leaders in many cases define team culture for a college Ultimate team. Keen new players are your most important allies in developing a program and becoming a coach.

This, of course, is my imagined plan - September/August being the starting date.

PJ

Bball coaching tips ... for the up and coming Ultimate Coach

Here are some great coaching tips from Coach Silver. I've highlighted tips for highschool coaches in blue and all coaches in red.

------------------------------------
"THINGS TO THINK ABOUT DOING THIS SEASON"
By Duane Silver

1. Have a teacher of the week and have him/her come to the game and introduce them to the crowd before the game. If you have two home games in a week you will need to pick two teachers. (You might pick teachers that are not crazy about hoops.)

2. Always have the Principal in the team picture. After you get the picture back put it in a frame an give it to him/her. This is the greatest political move you can possibly make. (Billy Gillispie taught me this.) This has been our top email we have sent out in the eight years of doing this.

5. Coach your best players the hardest! If you don't, the other players will turn against you.

6. Write down your philosophy and stick with it all season. Don't change. If is not written it cannot be done this year.

7. This may sound a little crazy, but you need to lose a game to make point to your team. (John Chaney who was at Temple University did this throughout his career.) Who cares if you lose a game. I bet no team will go undefeated this year in Texas.

8. Tell the parents in advance you will not talk to them about their daughter or son's playing time. If they bring it up say "I'm sorry, but we are not going to talk about this! Be Strong!

10. "You can't run off a good player by being too hard on him or her." (Bear Bryant)

11. You have to bring it every day in practice and so does your best player.
------------------------------------

These tips, though targeted, at high school basketball might help out an Ultimate coach as the job becomes more and more common in our sport.

PJ

Football without Playbooks

There must be something in training quarterbacks and how that relates to training throwers in Ultimate. Other than learning the throws, the throwing situation comes down to reading a play and deciding the best option before looking for a reset. Quarterbacks have a similar situation where they're under pressure, are looking for the best option, and can reset by throwing the ball away. One question is how can you practice these reads given both the defence and offence know the plays for practice.

Pictured Above: Doug Flutie.

I found this article on Quarterbacks coming into the Texas Tech Program in 2005. The coach ran a system where there's no preset play book, and at each practice plays are drawn up and run through repeatedly. Over time the quarterbacks and offensive players learn the plays based on experience as opposed to attempting the transition.

This approach could be applied to Ultimate, and instead of the preset playbook, which most of the teams I coached and played on used, plays could be designed by both halves of the practice squad and run over the practice. Some of the benefits to this approach are:

• Players learn to internalize plays very quickly
• Field flow will be less mechanic, and hopefully, there will be more creativity
• The errors in running a play will better simulate the general flow of Ultimate
• As described earlier, throwers will need to read different situations from one practice to the next
• The defense will always be on its toes, not knowing what comes next
• Team repetoir for plays will expand instead of relying on the old standbyes
  

Also, as the article suggests, trying different plays suggested by all walks on the team might lead to some great new ideas. I think Idris wrote this once (but I could be paraphrasing or citing wrongly), "an offence is usually most suited to the person who created it". A per practice offence will avoid this pitfall if all ideas are taken.

Finally, the best quote in the article that rings true in my head is, "There's that Don Henley line about why the Eagles were good: They had a great capacity for boredom". If you can take that advice to heart then you're teams headed in the right direction.

PJ

Giving More Football Options a Chance

I always enjoy a good Bowl game and the NFL play-offs this time of year. In some ways, I wish Ultimate had the per play element of football where strategy would become even more emphasized. Instead, the continuous flow of Ultimate means that we need to look to basketball, hockey, and the other football for ideas for continuous offensive plays (though the similarities tend to be limited).

The button hook, passing lanes, and the long bomb are similar in both Ultimate and football. The main difference between the sports is the hang time for the pass, the flight path, and the release point of the throw. In Ultimate, the thrower has more control over these differences than a quarterback; however, the overhead release, straight running path, and short hang time throw is the least used pass in Ultimate. This is the case since the throw needs to be very accurate, and the receiver needs to be well trained in catching blades and sharp angled, fast moving discs.

For these reasons, I believe that we've passed over these options within our offences. The tendency towards possession and risk reduction mean we don't consider these as reasonable parts of our offensive plays. I'm wondering if these assumptions should be reviewed.

Consider trying a drill like "Routes on Air". Five throwers start with discs in roughly the same position on the field. Five receivers (covered or not) in a horizontal stack (one receiver is a back field handler) run predetermined routes. The five throwers throw to a pre assigned cutter using the overhead release, fast moving throw. Everyone throws and everyone cuts, so figure out some sort of rotation (5 throws, 5 receives, rotate...).

You might find that some of the routes you make in this drill become options for certain throwers. You might find that wind conditions make these plays very difficult. The worse case is your receivers become better at running routes and catching.

PJ

Breaking news - Study shows warmups are important

It's one of those days when two posts have to go out, and you will all find it hard to believe, but finally, it has been proven that warmups are important. Check out the article here.

Pictured Above: A warmup plan used in the study.

Okay, so maybe this isn't so shocking, but what the article does provide that might be useful is an actual warmup plan. The article describes the warmup program as a combination of:

• The PREP system - Table 1 below shows the exercises if you can't read the pdf
  
• The +11 program (pictured above)
• And some running drills
  

These ideas maybe useful for developing your own team warmup, but note that the results have caveats in that the studied group was female footballers aged 13-17 and it is unclear that these results apply to other sexes, age groups, or sports. Still, based on what I learned at last years UCPC injury prevention talk by Jamie Nuwer and June Srisethnil, these ideas seem to have merit.

PJ

TABLE 1
Prevent Injury and Enhance Performance Program
Repetitions/
Exercise Distance Time
1. Warm-up
Jog line to line 50 yd 1
Shuttle run 50 yd 1
Backward running 50 yd 1
2. Stretching
Calf stretch NA 2 × 30 s
Quadriceps stretch NA 2 × 30 s
Hamstring stretch NA 2 × 30 s
Inner thigh stretch NA 2 × 30 s
Hip flexor stretch NA 2 × 30 s
3. Strengthening
Walking lunges 20 yd 2 passes
Russian hamstring NA 30 s
Single-toe raises NA 30, bilaterally
4. Plyometrics
Lateral hops 2- to 6-in cone 30 s
Forward hops 2- to 6-in cone 30 s
Single-legged hops 2- to 6-in cone 30 s
Vertical jumps NA 30 s
Scissors jumps NA 30 s
5. Agilities
Shuttle run 40 yd 1
Diagonal run 40 yd 1
Bounding run 45-50 yd 1

NA, not applicable.

We don't need psychiatrists, but do we need coaches?

A few posts back I showed an article on Great Britain's cycling psychiatrist. I suggested that our sport probably doesn't need psychiatrists in its present state. This week I thought I would punch myself where it hurts, and as the question - do we need coaches in this sport?

Pictured Above: Cito Gaston and the brain trust.

My thoughts on this topic came up from this article. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the original studies, but the basic premise (without the study) of the article is questioning the benefit of managers vs. the superstar in baseball. The results from the article suggest that managers can have a greater impact on a baseball team than stars.

Unfortunately, we don't have a huge range of statistics on Ultimate to do a similar study, but we can ask the question (how useful is a coach). As in all our discussions, we need to consider some variables such as the level that the coach is working at, and what the coach brings to the table compared to the player/captains, and the experience of the coach.

First off, I believe the player/captain can do all the activities of the coach except when they are on the field playing. While on the field the captains can't watch the bigger picture game, and I argue, that the big picture game is a process that is hard to do while playing. The nature of the game means that players get tired, have to worry about there own game, and focus on details such as the last play. So, from a simple argument, I believe the coach can provide a benefit over captains doing the various organizational jobs.

Still, how important are coaches/managers in Ultimate? Here are a list of activities that coaches can do, and my opinion if a coach will change the game result regardless of playing level:

• Call lines - slight advantage
  
• Make team strategy adjustments - slight advantage
  
• Deal with player adjustments - advantage
• Identify opponent plans - slight advantage

I'm sure there's more items on this list, but that's a starter list for now.

I think the coach helps in Ultimate, but like all positions the coach needs experience on the job, and will make mistakes. The benefit for the captain can be significant (minus the pain of letting go of control), and if this person is your star or stars, then the impact is even more significant. If an Ultimate coach make more significant an impact than a star-player is still questionable. Ultimate sits in between baseball and basketball in terms of individuals impact on the game (arguing stars in basketball can takeover a game), so I'm not sure how the coach impacts Ultimate. Something to think about.

PJ

Teaching Zones - More ideas needed

It was a little cold this weekend in London, and I didn't get a chance to go through my entire progression for teaching a zone. For the number of times I've taught zones, I still don't have a great progression on how to teach the concepts of zone in a bottom up progression of drills and concepts.

Pictured Above: A zone break in action for Limited Release playing Brighton.

It's not the case that I don't have good points to teach about zones. It's more an issue of how do you take a team go from square one to team knows how to play zone.

I have two thoughts on this situation. One, zone is just one of those things that is a top down concept, where you learn some very simple guidelines, and then, you have to experience the zone from both an offensive and defensive player to get a feel for what to do. With repetitions and some steering, a team will learn the philosophies of a particular zone and over time things improve. The alternative, two, is that I just haven't thought about a progression enough, to establish a series of bottom up drills to progress through teaching a zone.

Thoughts? I'm looking for ideas to put into writing.

PJ

Three years of practice to learn an offense...

Some snippets from an interview with an author I've always enjoyed:

"THE MAG: Based on this book, if I'm an owner, I should be the most patient one in sports, right? After all, the Beatles, as you write, played a ridiculous 1,200 gigs—a lifetime—before they became any good.
GLADWELL: It's interesting. Andy Reid has said that with the offense he runs in Philadelphia, it takes a receiver three years to be comfortable in it. A receiver! I don't think we take this into account. We create offenses of such stunning complexity in the NFL, that it's impossible to truly judge anyone in their rookie season. It's ludicrous. How can you, if you're Detroit, draft all these wide receivers and then give up on anything after a couple years, or call 'em busts, when it's far more about executing a system that takes years to master? You have to give them their work.

Or if the Lions offensive players were calc majors…
Yeah, you can't go into a math class and pronounce who the great students are after two weeks. No one can master calculus in two weeks. So we need to be consistent. If you hire a coach that has offensive schemes as complicated as calculus, then you better have the patience you'd have with those students. Let's stop and acknowledge that football is not a sport for dumb jocks. It's a highly complex cognitive activity."

What I find most interesting with this analysis is how long it takes for players to fit in a system. Ultimate, a far simpler sport, is practiced less by non-professionals. How long should we expect experienced players to become accustomed with a system?

I, also, wonder if the reason our sport is so simple is we're not willing to make long term progressions of offenses and defenses. Buzz Bullets stay together longer, and maybe this is how they come up with their defenses. I would suggest that teams continue with their short term offenses, but maybe introduce one aspect of the game that they look to make into a complicated offense. This could pay big dividends in two years time.

PJ

Sports Psychiatry?

In the Sunday times this week, I read more coverage about the GB cycling. This time they were looking at another piece of the team that helped the athletes - the psychiatrist. Here's the article.


In terms of our sport, it's hard to imagine the need for team psychiatrists. Other than volunteers, we can barely, get team physiotherapists and tend to share with everyone at a tournament. Even though there are pressures in Ultimate, I'm not certain if they're severe enough to warrant a psychiatrist. Then again, I think back to my confidence drought in 2004 and similar confidence falls in players I've seen, and I wonder if the psychiatric route might have been a faster route to playing confidence recovery (it took me about a year).

The problem is I have no clue what psychiatry means other than watching Fraser in both Cheers and his own show. The article says, "The psychiatrist will lift the bonnet [hood], show you how the engine works, then teach you to drive. When there’s a breakdown, the psychiatrist’s pupil may be in the better position."

It seems in the cases when your mind game has gone beyond refocusing, positive thought, and visualization, is when psychiatry could be brought into your game.

The GB cycling team's success is a fascinating model of sport organization study. This is just one other piece that helped lead to their success (though I'm convinced it was the technology). A thought for your Ultimate endeavors.

PJ

Split development or all together and other challenges

We've been working in London with something we're calling the Ultimate Academy. Every Saturday, college teams (Kings and Imperial) come together to get some Ultimate theory. The goal is to impart some theory of the game of Ultimate to up and coming College Ultimate players.

I've really enjoyed the process, and I'm documenting the sessions in hope of developing an e-book some time in the future. The goal being to provide drills and a progression of drills on ways to teach Ultimate. Of course, as much as this is meant to teach new comers, I think the progression is a good approach to reviewing Ultimate technique and team concepts.

You'll have to wait for the e-book, but in the meantime, much like the lessons I talk about with tournaments, I've started to learn a few things in this process. In particular, there are a few challenges that are making things tough. The are:

1. How do you develop sessions that are good for beginners and intermediates?
2. How do you deal with irregular attendance?
3. How do you keep people interested?
4. What size of group is reasonable to coach?
   

In terms of teaching beginners and intermediates, I've found it hard to keep on introducing concepts. The pace of progression will either lose the beginners or bore the intermediates. I don't know if there's a perfect solution in this case, unless you have the teaching personnel to divide the group into smaller sections and ensure that each group is getting what they need.

This problem is even more difficult with irregular attendance. The major problem is the Academy is based on progression. When people don't make it to every session then their are holes in knowledge. These holes cause more variance across the group as a whole, and the result is nobody gets the full benefit of these sessions. The solutions are to demand commitment (if that's possible), have multiple progressions built over shorter session spans, or just push on and accept the inefficiencies of ongoing progression.

The next two challenges are classic coaching decisions. Both problems are highly dependent on the audience. The more keen the audience, the easier it is to keep people interested and have a large group. As keenness drops, a coach needs to introduce techniques like limited talking periods, competitions, and fun elements. These solutions help, but in the end you can only do so much, and the boring important stuff has to be presented and worked on for the benefits of the minority who care.

PJ

Defensive brilliance - is it a show?

Baseball statistical analysis has made out Jeter to be a great defensive player (under certain systems). Some commentary, including this analysis, makes out that his statistical defensive strength is mainly because he can't get to the ball to make the big plays.

Pictured Above: Jeter gets to this one.

I would argue that the opposite happens in Ultimate. First off, we don't take many statistics, and those that we do are primitive (due to resources among other factors). Instead, I find we make some defenders greater than they are because of the big plays they make; however, some of these big play makers can be weak on general defense, and the big play results from not being able to shut down their man.

I'm not saying that this is the case if a player tends to make big defensive plays, but it's something to watch for on your team. Pay special attention if these plays are off poaches, and then question how many times does your team get burnt on bad poaches versus the number of big defensive plays.

One of the challenges with playing strong team defense is that the big defensive play rewards an individual with glory (one of those motivators I mentioned in an earlier post). For those who are glory hungry, this feedback can result in a hunger for big Ds over good team defense. Meanwhile, the unsung defensive heroes can be displaced from starting lines because they don't have the big reputation.

Finally, don't give up on these players. They can make the big play, which is valuable, but push their development towards strong shutdown defense that picks the right times to go for the big play.

PJ

Read and react

It's the new Ultimate offense! Actually, it seems to be all the rage in basketball these days for developing teams. I don't own the DVDs yet, but I'm considering the purchase. Still, the concept seems to lie around the fact that the majority of plays don't work and players who learn to be robots aren't useful in the game flow.

Pictured Above: More Goaltimate action in the scramble.

I've known this for years, but knowing it and developing Ultimate systems around the concept of developing reactive players is not easy. This doesn't mean I haven't made attempts at it, but I don't have a great system yet, and this tempts me to look into the basketball system more to get some ideas from more experienced coaches, even if it's in another sport.

From what I've been able to piece together, "Read and React" is about seeing the ball carrier's action and reacting to it with a reasonable options. This means we need to break apart our game into reactive moments around the disc, received discs, and cuts. The trick is how do we initialize actions and what are the right responses.

Well, back to the drawing board, and if anyone has more ideas and want to discuss this one, I'd be interested.

PJ