Video analysis

After 10 years of pondering why some people struggle to throw forehands, watching video gave me numerous new insights.

Every ultimate player who wants to play at an elite level needs to watch some basic footage of themselves. Start with throwing. Then you can move onto game footage, and footage of other skills like marking, guarding, positioning for high discs, cutting and laying out.

Even better: organise a videographer for your team for a training or tournament.

Replay and slow-motion give you a chance to see what you only glimpse in real time.

There's a reason dozens of people around the world get paid to edit footage of sports for coaches: video helps you learn how you and your opponents play. And feedback is critical to improvement.

We must be cool

Look what image is being used to sell Apple computers these days...

 

I guess their marketing department thinks we're not PC. And that we play in jeans.

Who can make next week's training?

Ultimate teams are far easier to manage when you have simple ways to communicate. How did we do anything before email and mobiles?

Its worth thinking about a website for your team - not necessarily a public place for outsiders to see a few photos and your roster, but a private hub for organising trainings and attendance, sharing tactics, discussing uniforms and upload photos.

The simplest comparison is Facebook (uh-oh, half my readers just went to play Scrabulous or throw a zombie...) Facebook is a starting point for a user: your friends' details, photos, news and latest actions all come to you. And are easily found with one search box.

Here are some ready-to-go team website tools on offer:

Google Sites
Only been out for 2 weeks. We Dingos are using it. The pages are editable by anyone, and you can put in many widgets, tables, videos and photos. Limited integration with all the other useful google tools (calendar, groups, docs, gmail).

Teamtastic
Used Tested by the Firetails, used by Iceni and even UK Ultimate. Free, but ad-supported and there are limits on photos and pages. Designed for sports teams. You can manage news, photos, polls, roster, schedules, and more.

TeamSnap
Looks slick, but I can't find any ultimate teams using it yet, unsurprisingly. Free for now, but down the track they will have free and paid options. You can manage pretty much the same things as Teamtastic, plus team stats, who has paid and even the roster for who is bringing the esky. Who wants to test-drive this one?

FreeTeams
Looks outdated.

MyTeamCaptain
Ditto

Online learning

This is the first in a short series of posts on technology.

Dan Cogan-Drew has set up a new online tool.

It is openultimate.com

Check it out. You can enrol in a "course", which is a collection of photos, videos, blog posts and expositions built by the public. I believe you pass a course by contributing to the course discussion online.

You can create an online space for your team, where you can structure a course with the content you want. The US Junior teams have their own courses on there.

Viewing plays online

Freisey prompted me to search for online videos/animations on ultimate tactics, plays and drills. Here is what I found.

• The videopapers I have spoken about before
  
• Java animations of 85 plays/drills, plus the ability to make your own.
  
• Flash animations of a few plays, with the ability to drawn your own "coming soon"
  

Got any others?

Crikey, ultimate can be played by 100 000 people world wide for several decades with elite teams dedicating small fortunes to this sport... but we don't have focussed programs to share and distribute plays and tactics. The textbooks and online tools are only just emerging, taking baby steps. I guess this is usually driven by the dollar in most sports.

Goals and accessing them

So I have wandered through ideas about goals and goal setting over the years. Some is here. I haven't found recommendations on clear cut best practice - seems more like a swirling soup of different people's opinions.

But making goals measurable is a recurring point.

Part of that is making them easily recordable and accessible. If you have to log onto your computer, open a spreadsheet, and tab over to a certain column, it is easy to lose the habit of recording your progress. Likewise if you record your progress on page 23 of a folder that disappears under bills, postcards and newspapers - the habit is hard to hold.

You want the goals and your progress to be staring you in your face.

So if online seems accessible, this could be useful: Joe's goals. A website with nothing to learn - just dive in and log your goals.

And for those not regularly online, the paper equivalent is to blu-tac a large paper chart on the wall next to your bed.

I will continue my quest for accessible, practical, easy methods for goal setting and measuring...

Videopapers

Check out these videopapers on Ultimate.

It is reassuring to see Dan recommends a power forehand, though I would debate exactly where the forefinger and index finger should be in that photo.

And good to see an Aussie in there: Clip 12