How do you "get open"?

On Fridays, I teach physical education to my 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students.  When the weather is nice (in early fall and late spring), we go to the park to either play baseball, football, basketball, or Ultimate.  When the weather is not conducive to outdoor sports, we go to a gym and play basketball exclusively.  I also do a little bit of phys ed every day during recess with my 7th grade students.  We play a variety of games (soccer, team handball, 500, and tag) in the back yard of the school.

The funny thing about working with junior high boys is the disparity in athletic ability among them. Some of my 8th graders are bigger than I am.  Some of my 6th graders are well under 5ft and 100 lbs. Most are in between. When these differently sized boys play together, it is almost like there are several games going on.  Each sport is radically different, depending each participant's level of physical maturity.  It is certainly odd to watch a 4'6" 80 lb kid contest the shot of a 6' 170 lb kid.

The experience of trying to teach the fundamentals of sport to these boys has forced me to really consider how sports work.  Most of us are trapped by our own talents when we try to explain certain skills.  We tend to take a certain level of athleticism for granted.  Imagine, though, trying to teach shooting fundamentals in basketball to a kid who does not yet have the strength to get the ball up to the rim.  You have to start from square 1.

Beyond the strength threshold required for shooting a basketball, there are more fundamental issues that the less physically mature kids have to deal with.  The main one, the one that cuts across almost every sport and game played by children (and by adults, for that matter), is how to get open.  How do you actually get away from somebody who is trying to stay close to you?

The flip side of this issue is the other fundamental question.  How do you stay close to someone who is trying to get away from you?

93% of Ultimate comes down to these twin issues.  And yet, it is almost assumed that everybody is proficient in getting open when covered and staying close to a man who is trying to get away from you.  The collective wisdom seems to be that you can be good at these twin skills if you "just try harder" or "concentrate".  This is, of course, nonsense.  What's worse, it is damaging nonsense born of ignorance.  The collective wisdom, as is often the case, only stifles questions and makes players feel bad about their game.  Think about it: what if when you were learning to drive a car and had no idea what you were doing, your instructor helpfully advised you to "concentrate" and to "just try harder".  Depending on your temperament, you either would have tried to end the lesson as quickly as possible or put on your seat belt and aimed the car at the nearest wall.  

When you boil it down there are only two components to getting open: strength and balance. These are basically the same for staying close.  In order to get open, you must be able to get to a spot on the field before your defender can get there.  The strength component comes from needing to push off the ground with more force than your defender is able to push off the ground.

Strength is speed.  If you can generate more force when pushing off the ground, you are faster.

But, being stronger by itself will not get you open. Obviously, you need the coordination to harness that strength and getting moving in whatever direction you choose in order for the strength to be useful.  This is where balance comes in.  A 175 lb man can generate about 1000 lbs of force when making a hard cut (if my physics is bad, somebody please correct me. I fear that 1000lbs may be too low).  This massive amount of force needs to be steered correctly or the man will simply fall over.  Balance allows the force created by strength to be directed properly.

So, how do you get better at getting open?  The easy answer is to work on your balance.  I call this the easy answer not because it doesn't take time and effort, but because you can work on your balance in the confines of Ultimate practice.  Playing games and doing drills that force you to accelerate, then stop, then change direction, then accelerate again will allow your body to learn how to get open more efficiently.  You will learn to better utilize whatever strength you have.  And although you won't really get much stronger, you will appear to get much faster because your same old strength will be harnessed better.

The harder answer is to work on your strength.  This cannot really be done during Ultimate practice.  Thus, it is "harder".  Strength work doesn't necessarily have to happen at the gym. Manual labor does an excellent job of making you stronger.  The trouble is that manual labor isn't available whenever we want it and for whatever duration we want it the way the gym is. Sadly, however, most people's gym habits are so poor that they would be better served doing 15 minutes of manual labor per week than spending 2 hours at the gym.

To work on the kind of strength that will help you "get open", you need to stay away from the machines.  They are a waste of your time.  Machines are too easy.  They control the weight for you.  They isolate muscles.  "Getting open", however, does not happen in isolation.  It requires you to use your whole body, specifically your lower body (more specifically, your posterior chain, but that is a detail beyond the scope of this blog).  Therefore, we look to lifts that also require us to use our whole body, specifically our lower body.  These lifts are: squats, lunges, deadlifts, and cleans.

These 4 lifts will make you stronger.  They will help you generate more force as you push off the ground.  Squats and lunges are incredibly useful in getting all of the muscles of your legs to work together.  I advise both because, although the movement is similar, lunges tax each leg individually while squats tax both legs at the same time.  Deadlifts are another full body exercise that will add strength and coordination to your legs, but also cause massive strength gains in your torso (core).  Cleans are probably the only full body lift that effectively mimics the explosiveness of getting open.  

Of these 4, cleans are the most technical with lunges being the least.  I recommend, however, working with somebody who knows what they are doing whenever you strength train.  The one advantage of machines is that because they unlikely to help you, they are also unlikely to hurt you.  Full-body lifts, on the other hand, can cause serious problems if they are done with poor form.  Find somebody who knows what they are doing, become a maniac about your form, keep the weight light, and get lifting.