A brief thought about defensive position.

You have been called to hold a high position, but not a safe one; a sublime position, but not a secure one. How terrible, how very terrible is the place you hold!
-St. Bernard of Clairveux to Pope Eugenius III

I know that nobody, with the exception of football d-backs coaches, cares about defensive coverage angles.  And I'm not suggesting that you care deeply about them either.  But, if you decide that you care about shutting your man down every time you are on the field, your coverage angles are going to matter TO YOU.

Angles are hard for everyone.

So, let's talk very simply for a moment about what we mean be defensive coverage angles.  If it's a dead disc and you are 1 of the 6 defenders on the field who is not engaged primarily with the thrower, then you'd like to find a place to stand where you can see your man and the disc in its current position.  The place wherever you choose to stand will determine your defensive angles (IE whether you're likely to move to your right or left and whether you're likely to move in or out).  

At the risk of being overly simplistic, the reason you'd like to see both your man and the current position of the disc is because those two factors determine everything about where you choose to stand.  Taking your eyes off of your man is a great way to get beaten both deep and in.  Taking your eyes off of the disc is a great way either to watch your man very closely as he catches a goal or catch a quick glimpse of the disc just after it flies within an arms length of your head.

Given the choice of watching 1 or the other, you'd choose to watch your man and pray that somebody is calling the "ups".  The thing is, there's no reason to make that choice because you don't have to.  You can figure out a way to spend most of your time watching, IF you make the decision to work 2% harder.  That 2% harder isn't a sprint and it's not a layout.  It may not even be a jog.  At times, it's constantly having your head on a swivel, checking on the thrower and checking on your man repeated ad infinitum.  At times, it's deciding to walk 2 or 3 steps to a slightly different position on the field.  But, those 2 or 3 steps are the difference between you getting beat and you getting your hands on the throw.  That head swivel and those 2 or 3 steps are a big part of your defensive position.

There is no magic formula for defensive positioning in a dynamic game like Ultimate.  And even if there were, each individual match-up you have will be different as far as speed, quickness, cutting ability, and anticipation.  The best thing that I can communicate to you about improving your defensive positioning (and therefore improving your defense) is that you have to constantly make it a priority (it = the location on the field or the body position where you can easily see your mark and the current position of the disc).


A friend suggests that as the game moves to a higher level (elite or nearly elite), you need to become more and more comfortable with the head swivel positioning rather than a complete body positioning shift.  His reasoning is that, at the elite/near elite level, even 1 step farther downfield than your mark (allowing you to more easily see the mark and the disc) makes it too simple for the receiver to punish you with an in-cut.  I agree with this because, at the level he's talking about, it is too much of a disadvantage to move your body away from your mark. 

The glasses you'll need if you DON'T want to get in good defensive position, 

but you DO want to see both your man and the disc.

You will want to rest during points.  You will have every reason why it doesn't matter that you get yourself to that position.  Even if you don't think you will, you will.  In a match-up against a formidable opponent, you will look for spots to rest.  I don't mean rest for a while.  I mean that you will look to get 1/2 a second of rest because you've just controlled your man for 3 hard cuts down the field followed by 3 hard cuts back while you have shadowed his every movement.

And I don't fault you for wanting to rest.  I don't fault you one bit.  In fact, all that I want you to is rest in a slightly different position so that all of your previous hard work isn't wasted because you lose sight of the disc for a moment and your man catches a goal on you.  In that moment where you really want to get 1/2 a second of rest, just take 1 extra second to swivel your head to check on the disc or to finish in a position that allows you to see your man and the disc (you may end up slightly upfield in this position).  Then, rest all want, provided your head is constantly swiveling back and forth.  You'll know exactly what's happening from that spot, at least until the disc moves.  When it moves, you'll take a 1/2 second to adjust your position and then continue resting.

Here's an important point that I've mistaken for finding good position before: do not just assume that by forcing in and taking away the deep, you've put yourself in a good defensive position.  This little shortcut nearly always goes wrong because receivers simply don't cooperate.  They're happy to catch uncontested in-cuts.  And when you least expect it, they fake in, catch you leaning, and cut deep.  

You don't have to give anything to the receiver (and you shouldn't).  Getting in good defensive position does not mean you give up the space that you control.  It, in fact, means you give yourself to control all of your mark's field space.  If you're facing a good receiver, good defensive positioning has everything to do with you constantly swiveling your head to check on the disc.

Good defensive position won't make the plays for you.  But, it will give you the chance to make a lot more plays and see how a lot of things setup. 

Thinking about fitness OR Why wasted effort is important

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
-Thomas Edison
We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.
-Eamon de Valera

While I was throwing around with Jim (short for Jimothy) and Al (short for Albert) yesterday, I got to thinking about why Ultimate is tiring.   I wasn't thinking about  it being tiring for players who can't comfortably play pick-up without getting winded.  I was thinking about it being tiring for talented players who are one step down from elite.

This dog has been playing hard man-to-man defense and is taking a point off.

I ended up arriving at the same unsatisfying answer I have in the past: wasted effort.  Wasted effort is defined as hard work that you do on the field that gives your team no advantage.  Even good players spend quite a bit of time on the field working hard for nothing.


And, lest you think I've gone soft in the head, I'm in no way talking about defense.  If you work hard on your mark, never giving him an opening to receive a throw or never giving him a throw to make, then you are not working hard for nothing.  There is no direct statistic that measures that sort of defensive effort (because Ds only come when the opposing team tries to throw it to your mark), but your hard work is succeeding in completely taking away an offensive option.  And, in a lot of ways, that's the best defensive result you can possibly hope for.


The wasted effort I'm referring to comes on offense.

Cutting well (at least cutting well against a defender who is determined to stay with you) is not easy.  Against a determined defender, it takes a fair amount of concentration on setting yourself up correctly and setting your opponent up to be out of proper alignment.  As if that wasn't difficult enough, you also have to time your explosion from the setup process well enough to get separation from the defender just as the thrower is catching the disc and looking your way.  If you are too early, you run out of room to continue your cut before the new thrower has had a chance to throw to you.  If you are too late, the thrower has already looked your way, decided you aren't open, and moved on to another target.

It is this second part of the receiver equation that causes most (if not all) of the wasted effort. The timing of a receiver's setup and cut is rarely talked about or practiced, but it is of vital importance.  A receiver can be a magnificent cutter with great agility and power, but without the correct timing, it is all a waste.  And not only will this waste hurt the team by constantly removing a useful target from a thrower's options, but it will also hurt the receiver's ability to continue playing well as he gets physically and mentally fatigued from so much fruitless cutting.

This shows the amount of wasted effort you find in just one possession.

The lesson that most players unfortunately take away from this is that it is smart to be lazy.  Why should you work really hard to perfectly setup and execute a cut when you don't even get a chance at the disc after all your hard work?  Isn't it better to just make lazy jogging cuts so that you don't have to get tired for no reason?

The lesson that I wish most players took away from the fruitless cutting situation is that it is more important to perfect your timing than it is to perfect your cutting setup.

I'm not suggesting that players shouldn't work on their cuts and setups in isolation.  They should, as that is the only way to make better cuts is to practice the physical skills in a vacuum.  But, to make better cuts in a team scenario (where nobody cares how you got open, they just care that you got open), players need to work on their prediction and anticipation.  Basically, up to the elite level, time is better spent for most players figuring out exactly when/where the next cut should come from.


If you had a group of player who had perfect timing, but minimal conditioning, they would be just fine on offense.  The reason they'd be just fine has little to do with their physical skills.  It has nearly everything to do with their mental skills.  Put bluntly, they'd have 0% wasted effort.  I'm sure you could create a defensive team that would beat this hypothetical, perfect timing team.  But, it would take some really top-notch defenders.

On defense, on the other hand, very little effort is wasted by anyone (great athlete or poor athlete).  As I've written before, the offensive player controls the effort level of a man-to-man defender.  I've never seen a defender waste effort sprinting back and forth while the man he is guarding jogs around.  As players, we simply realize that it makes no sense to "out-work" your opponent when the opponent is no threat to do anything to help his team.  Being 1% better than your mark is just as good as being 75% better in a strictly 1-on-1 match-up.  But, in a 7-on-7 situation, not wasting effort being 75% better than your mark allows you to do many other useful things like poach, help, etc.

It is for the reasons listed above that I think what separates average players from great players mostly has to do with wasted effort or the consequences of fearing wasted effort.

A moderately interesting return to posting.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. 
-Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

Gentle Reader(s):

It has been quite a long time since I have had any thoughts worth recording.  Given that the last time I recorded any thoughts on this blog was November of 2009, I figure that it's time to get back in the habit of writing out my thoughts on a specific subject.

The main difference you will notice about this blog now is that I'm not as sure as I used to be about anything.  Of course, if you speak generally enough and aren't looking to have semantic arguments, you can be sure of a few things.  But, these things aren't really worthy of anyone's attention.  This is why these new posts will be a collection of opinions and ideas only.  I make no claim of superior wisdom in these matters.

My concentration at this point will be focused, once again, on cultivating a GENUINE understanding of the fundamentals of the sport.  This genuine understanding is something that players can use to improve in their personal problem areas (IE defense, hucking, cutting, etc.).  I fear that, with Ultimate being such a young sport designed almost as a more reasonable response to traditional sports, the fundamentals taught in other sports are assumed to be unnecessary.  The vast majority of people pick up the game piecemeal from watching others play and by playing themselves.  Their thinking on the game never really goes beyond what they picked up in the very beginning because they never really received any instruction on how to play it well.

I don't mean to say that the skills of the vast majority of players don't improve.  They do.  It's just that the conceptual framework within which they place those skills doesn't seem to improve much.  This is because, they did NOT receive any traditional instruction on how to play the game well.  Their understanding of the game remains fixed in time.  It's like finally getting some wonderful furniture, but placing it inside your dilapidated house.

This house has bad spirit.

And so, without further ado, I present to you my first viable thought regarding Ultimate in the last 10 months: the disc is faster than the man.

Actually, even that "insight" is a blatant ripoff of one of my grade-school basketball coaches, who used to remind us that "the ball is faster than the man" when we were practicing playing offense against a zone defense.  Although I made my courageous attempts to prove him wrong and dribble through the zone, even I had to admit that passing the ball (and passing it quickly) was a much more effective way to offensively operate against a zone.  In basketball (as in many sports) it's easy for defenders to make you look foolish, if you insist that you moving is the most efficient way an offense can possibly move.  It gets much harder for defenders, however, when you realize that the ball moving quickly and purposefully is far superior to your movement as far as efficiency goes.

The fastest players cannot, even in top gear, move faster than a disc can be thrown.

I can visualize you thinking to yourself right now, "but, why does this perfectly obvious point matter?  I mean, doesn't everybody know this?  This whole line of 'reasoning' is a waste of my time."
I understand your boredom and your loathing for a supposed insight that is just common sense.  Please allow me to have just one more moment of your attention.

Q: If we know that the disc is faster than the man, then why are all of us still playing like we're not sure?  (Most throwers in competition hold the disc as though it were their job to give everyone on the field time to calm down before they throw it).

A: It must be because in order to have anything positive happen on offense, the thrower needs the disc to be caught by his receiver.  And sadly, we've learned (through our own observation and experience) that moving quickly on offense leads to poor throws and shocked receivers.  In short, we've learned that only painfully deliberate offense can be trusted to win and not to cause us to make embarrassing turnovers.

I suggest that, if you practice and get in rhythm with your teammates, an offense that moves the disc quickly is a much more difficult offense to defend than a deliberate, plodding offense and will have much more success.  And, most importantly, an offense that moves the disc quickly does not automatically result in more embarrassing turnovers.  This offense does NOT require wildly gifted throwers and receivers, but it does require people willing to play and practice for more than an hour a week as a team.
.

Nobody wants to use this as a thrower.  But, nobody wants to turn the disc either.

As potential receivers of the disc, shouldn't we coordinate our offensive efforts so that we are (and we appear to be) 100% open just as the disc is being caught by new thrower?  The thrower doesn't need to see us working hard to get open.  The thrower just needs to see us actually be open.

Therefore, 2 basic ideas spring forth from the thought "the disc is faster than the man".

1. Trust that, with practice, you and your teammates can move the disc quickly WITHOUT making more embarrassing turnovers.
2. Look to appear open (because you are open) just as the new thrower is catching the disc.