Ultimate Players & Coaches Conference Notes

I went to the Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference with my Dad yesterday, and it was fun and informative. I just wanted to share a few notes from the presentations I attended:

Keynote: Ultimate Mental Toughness by Dr. Alan Goldberg

Dr. Goldberg is a nationally known sport psychologist, and well worth catching if you ever have the opportunity. Very entertaining and informative talk, with lots of nice examples that physically underscored his points for the whole audience (one of his central ideas—no doubt correct—is that what goes on in your mind creates actual physiological changes in your body that directly affect performance). I was particularly struck by the Mark Spitz quote he invoked early on, which I'll paraphrase:

Going fast in practice is 90% physical and 10% mental. You have to put in the work to be great. But in competition the ratio inverts. Competition is 90% mental and 10% physical.

Unfortunately I can say from experience that Dr. Goldberg did a really nice job putting into words what it feels like—and what goes through your head—when you choke. It's all about focusing on the right things. Along those lines, he stressed that everybody loses focus. The trick, and the thing to train, is immediately recognizing when the loss of focus occurs and bringing yourself back. He then illustrated how hard this can be by making us do something seemingly easy. Close your eyes, breath regularly, focusing on your diaphram on the inhale, and the word "one" on the exhale. Every time you lose focus, increment the number. So the first time you are distracted you bump up to "two". We got started, no problem at the start, but then he started talking, drumming, etc. and I got up to like 25 before I was too distracted to bring my focus back at all. He then suggested a simple drill. Do the same thing with a disc in front of you, concentrate on your diaphram on the inhale, and some word on the exhale ("now", perhaps). Get the hang of that. Then put the disc on top of your TV and turn the TV on. Learn the feeling of losing focus, and retrieving it.

Anyway, I have improved two things over the past few years: my conditioning and my focus. But I've put much more effort into the conditioning. Can it really be something as simple as this could help me continue to improve?

Perhaps. It all reminded me of Sectionals last year: I was tapped to help call subs, something I find mentally and emotionally draining. My play went completely to pieces. Multiple multi-turnover points. Fortunately our captain recognized this, and relieved me after one game. But that game was agonizing. The mind feeds the body, for sure.

Marking Techniques & Strategies by Ben Wiggins

Good stuff. Lots of individual and team tactics and strategies. From my notes:

• Get in shape. You can't mark if you're not in shape.
• Instead of marking in the typical feet-parallel crouch, he suggested marking with your feet a bit staggered so you can more quickly change the distance from the thrower. Helps against throwers skilled at drawing the foul. I imagine this will be even more important when the 11th edition goes live.
• Keep your head up instead of leaning in looking down at the disc. Better vision, harder for the thrower to draw the foul.
• Discussed the concept of "blocking back". When you go for the hand block, instead of up (since your hands should always be under the disc) and in towards the throwers hand, block up and away to minimize the chance of fouling. Ben emphasized not fouling, both for pragmatic and ethical reasons.
• Oftentime emphasize "winning the first second", even on the live side. So mark to stop the continuation before settling into the force.
• His diagrams belied (thankfully) something you hear commonly: namely that the mark takes away a third (or a half!) of the field. Against good throwers it's really a pretty narrow band.
• I liked his description of a team defense you might employ against a team that relies on the huck. He called it "rising pressure" and the basic idea is that the marker sets up with his butt pointed towards the back cone on the closed side. When the O is far away from the endzone (or the disc is close to the closed side), this will make the mark flatter. As the disc gets closer to the endzone (and the huck thus disappears), the mark angles more sharply (but still flattens when the disc is on the closed site). So simple. Can't believe this is the first I'd heard of it.
• In terms of substitutions, Ben noted as tourneys progress D teams tend to put more of their guys who are getting blocks on the field, until eventually they are fielding D lines with all blockers, and no markers. A mistake, he says.

Fitness and Training for Ultimate by Bryan Doo & Dan Cogan-Drew

Also good stuff. Bryan Doo did most of the talking, with Dan Cogan-Drew jumping in from time to time. Even though readers of this weblog are likely to be most interested in this presentation, I don't have too much to say, largely 'cause I agree with it all. Nice emphasis on the hamstrings, glutes, and hips, and rotational power/stability. From Bryan's examples and build, he's clearly a very fit guy with fantastic body control. A couple small but important things I took away though:

• I really liked the look of the "spiderman stretch", where you get into a pushup position, then bring your left foot to the outside of your left hand (you can drop your right knee down if it helps you get into this position, then try to straighten it out to activate the stretch). It seems to hit just about everything.
• Bryan also discussed the importance of glute activation in exercises where you don't necessarily think it's going to matter. As an example, he had a volunteer come to the stage and perform a bodyweight squat. Then he had the volunteer put one of these mini-bands around his knees which tended to pull them together. He had the volunteer resume a shoulder-width stance (thus stretching the band) and squat, and his form improved! The effect persisted after the band was removed. Funny, just a few days ago I was reading this interview with Pavel Tsatsouline where he had the interviewer do a hand-squeeze test normally, and then again with glutes activated. I recently discovered that it makes a difference when you're trying dragon flags as well (oh, as long as we're on the subject, two more T-Nation articles: Get Your Butt In Gear! (and Part II)

I wish this presentation had been a day rather than an hour. There are simply too many fitness attributes, exercises, and routines applicable to Ultimate to cover in an hour. I could've asked a million questions. Oh well, next time.

Real-Time Decision Making in Ultimate by Jim Parinella

Yet again, good stuff. Sadly my coverage is getting spottier the further I go. In this case it was because Jim's talk was the most "had to be there" of the bunch. I would probably also argue that of the presentations I saw, his was the most ambitious topic. Really what it boiled down to was an attempt to put into words all the decisions that good Ultimate players make unconsciously. As such, I think he wanted to give folks in the room an idea of the types of situations and experiences they need to accumulate and internalize. It actually tied in quite nicely with the keynote. Where the keynote talked about how your play needs to happen in the hind brain rather than the forebrain, Jim's talk focused on what, exactly, your hind brain needs to know. It can only come with experience, but it was interesting to have the types of experience needed articulated. Jim's own weblog post includes links to his PowerPoint slides and handout.

Kudos

My Dad and I left early, so unfortunately I didn't catch the last round of presentations or the panel discussion, but I had a great time nonetheless. Thanks and congratulations to Tiina Booth, George Cooke, and everyone involved for making this happen! This was a very impressive event, and I never would have guessed it was the first one of its kind!