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.