What you don't see

Here's the scenario, the offense catches the pull and immediately advances the disc up the break side.  The defense arrives.  The handlers execute a perfect dump-swing to the force side.  As the disc is swung, the receiver at the front of the stack takes a hard two steps forward toward the break side and then turns and cuts deep along the break side of the stack.  The force side handler catches the swing and makes a beautiful forehand huck to the endzone where the deep cutting receiver catches it for a score.  Everybody celebrates and talks about the great throw and the great cut.

Strangely, nobody celebrates the action that actually caused the score.  Not only is this action not celebrated, it isn't even noticed by most players in the game or on the sidelines.  Truthfully, the player who took the action may not even realize the opportunity he created.  If asked, he might respond that he was just making the cut that "felt right" at the time.

The key man involved in this scoring play and involved in most scoring plays is the man who vacates the position where the disc ends up being caught.  In the scenario above, the last man in the stack was the key to the score.  As the disc was being swung, the last man in the stack took 2 hard steps deep and then cut back in toward the force side handler.  The defender assigned to the last man in the stack never saw the actual deep cutter because he was too worried about his man catching the disc underneath.  By actively clearing the deep space, the last man in the stack created a scoring opportunity without touching the disc.

I'd like you to re-imagine the above scenario, but this time let's make the last man in the stack a more typically unaware receiver.  The offense catches the pull and immediately advances the disc up the break side.  The defense arrives.  The handlers execute a perfect dump-swing to the force side.  As the disc is swung, the receiver at the front of the stack takes a hard two steps forward toward the break side and then turns and cuts deep along the break side of the stack. The force side handler catches the swing and makes a beautiful forehand huck to the endzone where the disc is knocked away by the well positioned "last back" defender.

The "last back" defender will be congratulated by his teammates for superior vision and anticipation.  And, in a way, he deserves this praise.  He was aware enough to recognize an offensive opportunity and thwart it.  He was not, however, forced to make a choice.  The receiver he was marking (Mr. Typically Unaware, last in the stack) did nothing to keep his attention. Because his receiver was no threat, the "last back" defender was free to survey the field and anticipate the offense's movement at his leisure.

The effects of active clearing are not only felt on deep throws.  Any area of the field is susceptible to clogging due to improper clearing.  We have all been told that "you have cut away as hard as you cut in", but few of us have considered why.  A cursory look at any struggling offense will show you a group of receivers who do not create space for one another through active clearing.

Thoughts from Pickup about throwing in the wind

At pickup on Sunday, I was trying to talk Simon into writing a post about throwing in the wind. He has some of the best throws I've ever seen and has a pretty sound understanding of the fundamentals.  While we wait for his thoughts on the topic, I will share my own.

Nothing causes throwers to regress like wind.  I know this because I feel like I step into a time machine set back 1 year whenever I throw in a strong wind.  My forehand really begins to break down.  Then, I start having second thoughts about throwing it in certain situations.  This, in turn, causes me to throw tentatively, which further degrades my fundamentals.  In the end, I'm only faking the forehand into the wind and throwing almost all backhands.

There are two things that throwers (and I) need to remember about throwing in the wind: the physics of the flight of the disc and the adjustments in offensive strategy.  

Physics of throwing in the wind

The key is to understand that the disc will follow its edge nearest to the wind.  By nearest to the wind, I mean nearest to that side of the field that is the source of the wind.  For example, if the edge nearest to the wind is pointed up, the disc will go up.  If the edge nearest to the wind is pointed down, the disc will go down. 

When throwing directly into the wind, the disc will always pop up or balloon.  Good throwers use this to allow their receivers extra time to run onto the disc.  Poor throwers are ambushed by the balloon effect.  It causes their throws to come up short or to go over the head of their intended receivers.  The key to controlling this effect is remember to put a lot of spin on the disc.

When throwing directly with the wind, the disc will always slip or drop down.  Good throwers are careful to put more air under dumps and other short throws while taking more shots down field. Bad throwers make tons of turnovers on short throws that drop in front of their intended receivers.

When throwing (right-handed) with a right to left crosswind, an outside-in forehand will balloon, an inside-out forehand will drop down, an inside-out backhand will balloon, and an outside-in backhand will drop down.

When throwing (right-handed) with a left to right crosswind, an outside-in forehand will drop down, an inside-out forehand will balloon, an inside-out backhand will drop down, and an outside-in backhand will balloon.

 

Adjustments in offensive strategy for wind

Simply put, the receivers must start their cuts nearer to the thrower. By moving the stack nearer to the thrower, the offense is able to threaten the space short and deep.  Remember, deep is a relative term.  If the stack sets up 10 yards from the thrower, then a 20 yard throw can be a "deep" throw.  The key is to force the defense to respect the area behind and in front of them.

When offenses fail in wind it is usually because the stack sets up too deep and the defense is able to poach on the short throws.  The thrower can't make a viable deep throw and the defense knows it.  This situation would be desperate even on a calm day.  Given that the wind is already affecting throws, however, setting the stack too deep is the kiss of death.

The other important strategic consideration is that field position can be more important than yardage.  Getting the disc to the high side (the upwind side) is as important as getting the disc down the field.  The high side allows a mediocre thrower to have several comfortable throwing lanes.  A mediocre thrower is almost guaranteed to turn the disc when on the very edge of the low side (the downwind side) simply because all of the throwing lanes available to him are both obvious and difficult.

Thoughts about Zone

There is a certain amount of effort that can be put out by any player for a given length of time. After this effort threshold is reached, the exhausted defensive player is no longer able to successfully defend his man while the exhausted offensive player just walks around. How long it takes a player to reach this threshold is a matter of technique and fitness, but in the end everybody craps out.

In man-to-man defense, the effort of each individual defender is (or should be) constrained by his match-up. The mechanism of this constraint is the effort of the offensive player. This concept is simple (and yet I've managed to convolute it). No man-to-man defender makes a 70 yard sprint, unless the offensive player he's covering makes a nearly identical 70-yard sprint a moment before. Similarly, no throw marker is constantly adjusting and readjusting his defensive position unless the thrower is also constantly pivoting and faking. In this way, defensive effort is almost completely determined by offensive effort.  This symmetry of offensive and defensive efforts has a certain beauty when you consider it.

However, I'd be a fool not to concede that this symmetry is the main reason why the offense has such an enormous advantage in Ultimate. Since even an ideal defender has to work at least as hard as his offensive counterpart, but the defender never knows exactly when or how the offensive player will move, the offensive player holds all the cards. Put another way, a great defender must prepare and commit to defending all likely offensive tactics and then actually defend the chosen tactic, while his offensive counterpart must merely select one and execute it.

In my opinion, the baseline goal of zone defense is to alter this dynamic between offense and defense (in a man-to-man defensive scheme). The goal of any zone should be to change the dynamic of the energy exchange (IE make the offensive player work harder than the defensive player). If a zone is not able to flip this dynamic to (at least slightly) benefit the defense, then there would seem to be little point in playing it.

How does a zone accomplish this goal?

The idea is to position field defenders and markers in such a way as to severely limit the options of a given thrower. This positioning should allow the zone field defenders to remain in relatively fixed positions while the offensive players scramble around trying to find the open spaces between/among the zone defenders. Obviously, the zone's ability to control the field space is inverse proportional to the offenses ability to move the disc. In other words, the more the disc moves, the less effective any zone can be and vice versa. In this way, we can see that the principle of defense (when the disc is at rest, the defense is able to hold the advantage over the offense; when the disc is in motion, the defense cannot hold the advantage over the offense) must be the guiding force behind a zone (as well as behind a man-to-man defense).

The positioning of defenders varies wildly from zone to zone, but most seem to boil down to this basic idea: offensive players far from the disc deserve less defensive personnel/attention than offensive players near the disc. This makes perfect sense as any long throw should give an attentive deep defender time to move toward toward the intended receiver. The ability to neutralize two offensive players with only one defender (in a given space) is crucial to the success of a zone. It gives the defense an extra man to play with. Typically this man is used as a supplementary marker.

A zone defense's success compared to man-to-man defense's success is directly attributed to this "extra" marker. The extent to which this "extra" marker is able to limit a thrower's options (IE increase a thrower's turn potential) is the extent to which the zone, as a whole, will be successful.