Elements of a ready stance

Following on from the previous post on the ready stance, I want to look at how to hold the disc.

There are many folks who have commented, discussed and taught grips. I have spouted my 2 cents: use the power grips.

But there is very little understanding of how to hold the disc, relative to the ground or the thrower's body.

In a forehand stance (i.e. facing towards your likely targets, usually with a forehand mark on), you could hold it a number of ways.

In a wide, blade stance like Dan (or Jeff). The disc face is roughly vertical.

Or in a wide, flat stance like Liz. This disc face is horizontal.

Or in front of your body, with two hands like Kristy.

Generally, I think the wide, blade stance is best (the first photo). It is ready to throw in an instant. It is easy to hold with one hand since the thumb and webbing support most of the weight (a horizontal disc needs to be held level by fingers working sideways - this flops around for many players). And it encourages throwing with a short, quick snap of the wrist rather than a big body and arm wind-up, which is preferable for any pass under 20 metres.

For a backhand, the grip is stronger, so the "flop" is less of an issue. Holding it wide is still key, whether it is one hand or two hands.

Let's get the new players ready to throw the first time they are taught ultimate. 

Ready stance

Last weekend, the AFDA hosted a Coaching Development Course.

Idaho, from Sockeye, was the presenter for the weekend, and shared a range of concepts that he uses when coaching in Seattle.

One of them was the ready stance for a thrower - always having the disc ready to be released as soon as needed. This is useful if a cutter suddenly gets open, or the stall count reaches 9, or the marker starts bumping you. You can throw immediately.

Holding the disc with two hands by your waist - generally not good.

Having the disc out from your body in one hand - good.

This ties in with Idris' earlier point about not pivoting, unless there is a specific need to. Always be ready to throw.

Globalisation

I've played ultimate in 10 countries, and I realised I have 5 more lined up to play in this year. So how many countries is it possible to play ultimate in?

WFDF has a list of member countries: basically a shortlist of where you can play ultimate on Earth.

Skimming through it, ultimate is more global than you realise...
 
Find out what turnyrai are on in Latvia Lithuania.
 
See photos of beach ultimate in Busan, South Korea.

Watch a video of Canada winning the World Championships - in a magazine.

Learn whether Gujarat defeated Tamilnadu in the final of India's 6th Senior National Flying Disc Championship. 

 Croatia's first ultimate team back in 2005 (including some Slovenians, Aussie Anita and me).

Wanted: Defenders

Playing and watching games at Worlds, I saw a need for Australian senior teams to improve their defence. While the Junior Women were a defensive machine, due to well-thought out tactics and utilisation of players,  getting stops in the Open division, for instance, depends more heavily on winning one-on-one matchups.

You need to be able to put players on the field who can really pressure a thrower or cutter, or are are really effective at getting blocks. As an example, when the Dingos played their pool game vs USA, we scored regularly thanks to an athletic offence. But we only produce two turnovers from the opposition. That won't win you the game.

This is a call for us to develop the next generation of shutdown defenders and blockgetters.

What does the Australian landscape of defence look like? 

We have a culture of playing sport in this country.

We have good tactics. Many elite teams have a wide repertoire of man-on-man and junk defences.

We have athletes. We continue to recruit some very athletic people, either 6'4" aerial monsters or very speedy runners.

But there are some basic skills that don't appear often enough. Reading the cut of an offensive player. Guarding the dump. Running to the mark to prevent a huck. Not biting on a throwing fake. Spotting both where your man and the disc is, and where other players are. Not being deceived by a simple jab-step fake. Knowing how much or how little to turn your hips.

This is a call for existing coaches to develop these skills. And a call for more coaches.

Get famous online

Have you got video footage of a tournament but aren't sure how to share it with a wider audience?

Shane at Asia Ultimate TV might be able to help. Asia Ultimate TV is online video, in regular episodes (similar to what Josh Seamon has done with audio podcasts at The Ultiverse). The episodes include game footage, interviews and reviews of ultimate from Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, the Phillipines and Singapore.

You can see highlights of the Hong Kong Pan Asian Tournament in Episode 3.

And Episode 5 includes a look at the venue for ultimate at the 2009 World Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan: the newly built National Stadium.

Asia Ultimate TV is a part-time, one-man effort, but you can see a lot of potential there, and it is handy to get an insight into current Asian Ultimate from a central source.

100 strong

I'd like to celebrate a little milestone.

This blog is 100 posts old.

(Cue streamers and fireworks.)

What has been your favourite idea, issue or post raised on Thinkulti?

Photo by plindberg

The history of your sport

The AFDA held a Gala Dinner back in July.

It was a fantastic event, where past Australian representative teams were celebrated and the current ones were introduced. As an amateur sport, recording the history of the ultimate community in Australia has been sporadic.

The speakers at the Gala Dinner were videotaped, so hopefully members of our community who weren't present will be able to learn about our sport. Where is that footage?

As someone who has worked in public institutions like museums, I am aware these days of how you need to consider not just having a record of history, but sharing it with the wider community, and have them contribute, comment and evaluate it.

With the world, and especially ultimate players, moving online for more and more of their life, sharing history has got easier.

AFDA.com has a list of Australian representative teams and a history page. We acknowledge contributors through the AFDA awards and the Rob Hancock award.

UPA.org has a Hall of Fame.

But the most valuable things are the stories - humans are storytellers, and story-listeners.

The book Ultimate: The First Four Decades is an example of a great collection of stories and characters.

More collections like this would be awesome. And if the Americans barely mention the existence of non-North American ultimate, it is up to those countries to share their history.

One project I have on my Someday/Maybe list is to interview and record the veterans of our sport about ultimate when they were younger. These chats could be published as podcasts. Give Greenie and Garvey a couple of beers and you'd get some great stories coming out.

The 1988 Australian Open team. Notice Michelle in the front row, right.

Way to represent

I keep discovering ultimate players who have played other sports at elite levels.

Here's my list:

• Liz - lacrosse for Australia
• Alex - ice hockey for Australia
• Sian - fencing for Australia
• Brendan - junior volleyball for Australia
  
• Aaron - water polo for Australia
• Jane - Australian Netball League
• Tom - NSW junior AFL
• Jack - Victorian junior AFL
• Ian - National Orienteering League

Any others?

Pathways

The key to getting more people playing your sport is creating and publicising pathways. You want every player to start playing, and then move up to the next level of competition that suits their playing ability.

Some questions to spark your thinking on this:

In our region, how do players enter the sport?

How do we identify all talented beginners, offer them a taste of higher level ultimate, and ensure they can access the next level if they want to?

How does a player move from one team to another?

Are there pathways for both men and women? For 12 year olds? For those who start playing at age 30?

Do the coaches and administrators know what the existing pathways are?

Are there pathways within local clubs? Or leagues? 

What is the best way to communicate with coaches and players?

On a related topic, designing pathways for administrators and coaches will help the organisation and coaching of ultimate. But we have even more work to do in that area.

Looking wider

Its good to see ultimate communities getting new ideas from outside. Four examples:

For the upcoming Australian Juniors camp in January, the AFDA is flying in a US coach.

Ra from Singapore is planning to bring in foreign coaches to train up his coaches and participate in a junior camp in 2009.

I hear Colombians are flying in top coaches from the US Northwest.

The proliferation of blogs connects local communities to foreign ones.

So the clear message is that plane flights are more affordable in the twenty-first century? Well, that and the point that ultimate communities are learning from expertise outside their postcode, and outside their country. Drawing on foreign expertise is no longer just about playing foreign teams - there is more than that now.

The Australian Sports Commission is pushing sports organisations to use the resources and existing courses of other sports in their coaching programs - part of becoming a football coach can involve attending a cricket coaching course and doing an online ASC course. So ultimate may continue the trend of looking beyond conventional boundaries, in the field of coaching development.

Getting ultimate into schools

On Wednesday I had lunch with Ra Resad, who plays ultimate in Singapore. Ra flew out here for the ASC conference.

Four years ago, Singapore had a few high school students playing ultimate.

Next year they will have 4000.

That's some awesome growth. How did they get there? I mean doesn't ultimate in Australia have more players, a bigger sporting culture, more keen volunteers to help?

Well...

Ra worked with the Singapore Sports Council and Singapore Ministry of Education to work out how he could get ultimate into schools. And he quit his previous job to be an ultimate coach.

He became an AFDA accredited coach. He set up SG Frisbeesports. He offered a coaching service that was better than other sports - "frisbee isn't a sport" isn't an excuse a teacher can use when ultimate has quality coaches, quality equipment, uniforms, a structured program, pathways for players and more.

Respect. One person can make a big difference.

Developing coaches

I just got back from the National Coaching, Officiating and Club Development Conference run by the Australian Sports Commission (ASC). Nothing like two days of workshops, networking and discussion to get your mind buzzing about possibilities...

After speaking to AFDA's ASC liaison, and participating in a couple of the workshops, I really like the direction of coaching accreditation in Australia. Flexibility and recognition of current competencies are two key issues the ASC is supporting, so they are encouraging most sports to be innovative as opposed to restricting how they grow coaching.

There are lots of possibilities in how we design our new versions of Australian coaching programs. What would you like to see?

More thoughts sparked by the conference coming soon...

The Hat

Each year at the start of December, the Melbourne Hat rolls around.

There is the Friday night disc golf, the Hat draw, unpredictable weather, hats (I remember Jim Garvey bringing a horrible hat each year), an inevitable stacked team, foreigners flying in from the distant corners of the world, the crowd cheering for a role player who wins their hearts, and a couple of Normands commentating the final.

There is always someone complaining about the uniform colour that their team chose, although these days black, white, green, red and blue get fewer complaints than than some of the beige, pink, brown and lime combinations of the past.

My first Hat had Simon Gorr as the TD. I played on a white team with Dave Mac, I believe. We were winless, in part because the team wasn't very deep (I was a teenager and was unfortunately our second best player).

Were you playing that year?

 

 Photo by Laineys Repertoire

Never clear again

If I was to play a game of word association with you, and I offered the word "clear" (in the context of ultimate), I wouldn't be surprised to get some of the following replies:

"jog"

"unsighted"

"not open"

"finished"

The habits that players learn as beginners persist as players move into elite ultimate.

The slow jog back to the stack after not receiving the disc on a cut may be useful in beginner ultimate. But it is a big handicap in elite ultimate.

The offensive player who is clearing is generally not moving fast enough to pull away from their defender. They are not looking at the thrower. They have no body language that says "you can throw the disc to me now, and I want it".

Personally as a defender, I will regularly interfere with the offence when my player decides to "clear". I will float off them and look to get an intercept, or help shut down the cuts of others. Sometimes I will use this as a chance to take a shortcut to where they are heading, and take a rest on the way.

And as a thrower, I like to throw to teammates who think they are "clearing". You may have finished a cut and are jogging away from me, not looking back. But I may still throw to you, and then let you know the disc is coming.

To summarise: always be a receiving option. Cut in, cut out, cut left, cut right or wait in position. Cut slow or fast. But never clear again.

Starting a season

Last weekend, Heads of State had their first event of the season, a training camp out at Halls Gap.

Our season will culminate in Nationals at the end of April: about 5 months long in total.

Having a camp to start the season is great because you can set your team up for a successful campaign. You've got a whole weekend to work with, and a chance to be with your team without the daily distractions of life.

We set goals for the team, we planned, we did skill and fitness benchmarking, we welcomed and introduced new players, we set expectations for training commitment, and we got excited about what we're gonna do.

If your team doesn't start the season with a plan and expectations that the team knows, you are playing blind.

Ro and Dan atop the mountain we climbed