Pigeon Holing

At various stages in our playing time, we are labelled and sorted and put into little boxes that determine pretty much where we stay. Tiger is a defensive handler, Alex is an offensive receiver.

Confusingly: what box you are put in can vary from team to team. I played mixed nats this year purely as a cutter, which was a pretty confusing departure from the norm for me.

Is this practice of pigeon holing beneficial? For a beginner joining a team for their first Nationals season, it can simplify their role and make what is expected of them much less daunting. What about when a player reaches this awkward ambiguous plateau that is 'intermediate', or even 'advanced'?

It is really only at the elite level where a player in the handler box would be useless trying to fit in the receiver box. And really, what's the point of working on just your strengths? Work your weaknesses, as well- if there's one thing a team will never run out of need for, it's versatile players who can fill more than one box on the field.

Sydney Uni United Front for Alcohol

I recently joined Sydney Unis frisbee club, and finally went along to one of their training sessions run by coach Jimmy, It was a lot of fun, reminding me of the old days of frisbee before we met Phil and had aspirations of Junior worlds and it was just something we did during our lunch times.

Schoolyard frisbee was great, Obstacles like trees, year 7s and teachers. Fouls barely called, stall 7 to make games go faster, huge games with lots of people, endless endzones, uphill and downhill endzones and I remember a lot more foot blocks and hand blocks becuase people didn't really know how to play. Double teaming allowed, no outs unless you threw it onto the road (max lost a few discs being run over by semi trailers because of mark not being able to keep his throws in the school), and even hammers into trees to be caught for scores and the always fun 'Golden Goal' score system that started whenever the bell went.

The best bit of schoolyard frisbee was the amount of crazy and amazing feats occuring so often becuase of the nature of the game, that I've never seen completely repeated. I remember one friend managing a point face block on his thrower only to have it turn into an amazingly mac catch. There was times when the disc travalled about 10m through 3 mistaken macs to end up being a score. The only time i've seen another face block was on max, the thrower had the nerve to call a foul on him after he was bleeding from the mouth from the hit.

The other thing was the no limits on the team sizes, all inclusion style of play having 13 on 13 games on a field that was probably the size of what would fit a 4v4 game on it. There was also the game of soccer or touch running across the middle as well as the year 7s playing soccer or some other sport down in one of the endzones (that was the hard one to score in).

Not only was this great for developing field sense (well I think for me it helped a lot being able to pick out open receviers quickly and throwing complicated throws to dodge obstacles) but more funnily it was really good at showing the people who didnt have it. My friends that had terrible field sense then in the school yard, still have it now, looking off open players and in worse cases not even seeing them. The best thing is now, while people who I thought had good relative field sense (Me, Tiger and particularly Max) still have the good field sense, and those who didn't still make dumb/bad choices at times and had troubles getting over this for a long long time. It was also a good practice area for learning to control the speed of your throws, some people were terrible at catching, if you didn't throw a slow floater to their chest, they would probably miss it, so again this was great for your throwing without pressure.

Back to the present, the past few weeks of training for the Selection Camp were nuts, regionals and the two practice tourneys before that were heaps of hard work. I rested a week after the camp due to an injury and fak training was rained out that monday which saddened me. I finally recovered my broken training spirit and got back into it.

Thats when suufa came along. The trainings were laid back and fun, even had a lay out lesson from jimmy, everyones still learning the dump and stack (we haven't gotten to the swing yet, I expect thats next week) and then came the house party at clares for suufa. It was the first time I had drunk alcohol since new years eve, and Max and Calan were still on the ban since they were still on the team, we were standing around in a group with someone explaining the situation to which he replied:

"What!? Frisbee without drinking? Thats all I asscociate Frisbee with!"
Every week it seems to appear more like a false front for a drinking group rather than a sports club...

A Sad Reality

Two things have made me sad this week.

Firstly the loss of my disc, turning up to Fakulti training hoping that someone had picked it up to return it to me. Turns out some prick picked it up to keep it and not return it. Hopefully I can get a return of my disc like Brett, when we played Gong they made the mistake of using his disc for the game disc (which he lost at Share the Love) and so he was able to get his disc back.

Hopefully this can happen to me as well.

The second thing that upset me was I hurt my ankle at Fak training on Monday, I missed Kais ever important sessions of over and under running and was not able to make the Wednesday fitness sessions. I dont think anyone has ever made me work so hard or producively for my fitness.

Boo.

Juniors training camp is coming soon and I'm hinking of changing up my fitness a little bit from Jimmy's exact program, I will follow the cardio runs, but after reading
this http://functionalpathtraining.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-on-aerobic-base.html

I think I will compact my runs into a fartlek session on a soccer field and just keep that heart rate up the whole time using sprints and jogs rather than one long continuous jog. To try and
create a little more game fitness.

The reigonals party was fun, I'm going to try gatorbombs (Jimmy's suggestion for a drinking alternative when everyone is doing jager bombs) 3/4 of a glass of gatorade and drop a shot of red bull into it. I hope it tastes good. And surely the sugar and caffeine can keep me going for hours. Hell I think an even better idea would be to live off these while at the juniors camp.

Another learning encounter

Last night (Wednesday night) we had the Sydney boys Worlds squad run.

It was a learning experience for me, also very painful.

1. 1km is longer on an athletics track than when marked out down in Melbourne by cones.
2. Never eat after an over full meal. I learnt this one by feeling sick when I arrived, and wanting to throw up during the warm up. I know I am unfit, but not that unfit.
3. Eating meat and dairy for 2 days will not make you feel better when you go for a run. I started eating for regionals following a plan of Monday/tuesday - meat wednesday carbo/vitamins, thurs friday carbo POWER LOADING.
4. Just becuase I've improved a lot doesn't mean my relative position to everyone else (the last one) is any better. (I still came last by a lot)
5. The NSW team is very fit.
   

I was happy with my performance and I enjoyed the sprints.

I was a bit disappointed with my own performance, and I think I made it a lot harder on myself than was neccessary due to the food i ate before hand.

I had a meal 30 mins before hand that made me sick during the warm up. I had eaten a lot of dairy and protein the past 2 days for regionals. I spoke to my athlete friend who informed me "Stay away from salts, protein and dairy, the dairy builds up mucus making it harder to breathe. ... I don't eat 2 hours before any training session and I watch what I eat the days before each session."

I guess they're things to focus on.

After the run I'm worrying more and more it will be my fitness that will not let me into the Australian Juniors Team...

I appreciate the consistency award I was given by members of the squad for shaving 12 seconds off my last time after going to the toilet.

This week I'm going to try and get some sprint training as well as the mental preparation of either getting into the team or not getting into it.

What's making the ground shudder beneath me?
THUNDER

Fire up the selection camp is on its way.

Fakulti Training

Wednesday night I went to Fakulti training (despite the wishes of Jimmy... I heard that Barefoot were evil) it was fun, not too intense but hard and I did learn some things.

• I need to time my longer cuts better and start them from closer in rather than further back to make it easier for the thrower to throw into space. (From Tim Gee)
  
• I need to time all my cuts better for the flow, I'm getting open just at the wrong time.
  
• Fatty tried to explain a horizontal stack a little better to me, I think it makes sense now... just cut in and out and off your partner wing/deep.
  
• My new gaia cleats stick to the ground about 3x as well as my old cleats but they ruin my feet.
  

We opened up the evening with some throwing around, then get together warm up stretch and run. We did some longer throwing in pairs as well as left handed throws. Break Mark Drill, throwing to a receiver hucking drill and a warm down.

Felt pretty tired before I started, felt worse when I finished. Need to learn to time cuts better, its a lot harder playing with people who know how to guard properly.

My throwing has been pretty inconsistent recently, backhands doing better than forehands though.

It was fun playing with Fakulti, and I heard they ran better development for new people than Barefoot. But mostly I thought they trained closer than barefoot did.

One thing I noticed between Fak and Barefoot is that Fak don't really have that cult of personality leadership that Abra brings to barefoot and its a shame that Barefoot and Fak don't all love eachother in one superhappy mega team. Fak's leadership seems to just come from respect of a given position and that player being very good at frisbee. But I wonder what advantages someone like Abra could bring? Some fire to the team maybe?

Frisbee Training Log - Alex's

I've only ever done hard training once before in my life. It was many times a week, with 4 organised sessions. 2 Just normal waterpolo trainings, one ground fitness and one pool fitness. It was pretty painful, the guy who ran the ground trainings was an ex boxer and extremely crazy, I dont think I've been put through that much pain in a long time, but his sessions were a lot of fun with part of his fitness sessions being games like theres a big ball in the middle of the room you ahve to put it in your box, team build ups etc, pretty good for increasing pain tolerance, speed and strength. Since then I've been pretty lazy.

I've haven't been challenged for a position in any sporting team.
In year 3 I tried out for a school cricket team and failed.
I tried out for a softball team in year 4, made it, I played pitcher and was pretty damn good at it. We won a lot of games.
In year 5 I tried out for a softball team at a new school, I didn't make it this time.
In year 6, I tried out for a school cricket team, we won our zone comp, carried by Jack Ritchie (our state player) that was a fun season, I remember the last game we lost for the Elders Cup. There was a lot of crying when we lost. We had 3 balls to go, they needed 3 runs, 1 wicket left. Ball is bowled, hit up in the air, a guy drops a sitter and starts crying. In the time he cried he missed any chance of a run out. We lost and a lot of people cried.

In year 7, I tried out for a volley ball team, got in, but was too scared to travel out west on trains to play games.
In year 8 I started playing waterpolo for school, a semi-obscure sport.
We had an awesome team, carried by our solid team work and our state player Tyler. Year 8/9 there was homebush, we lost to them in the finals. Year 9/10 we played opens and got dominated as the smallest team. I did manage to score a goal against homebush one game who at the time were a monster sized team with a lot of skill and aggression.
Year 10/11 was an annoying season, our state player t-mac was poached by the 2nds (we were the firsts), had a semi decent season, but came from 4th position to take the zone title. We won Crawford shield, but got Kincumbered in the regionals of state knockout.
Year 11/12 was a lame/average season. Worst final ever.

The point is, I've never been challenged for a position in a team for 6 years.
This will be something new.
I've started training since then.
Started a log as suggested by Piers a few weeks ago.
Here we go:

Training Log

10/12/07

25 mins Run – About 2 kms + sprints

50 Passes

15 Completions of Wing/Deep Drill

11/12/07

Leage Game: Friskee against No Dice – Lose - Experiment with 2 handler zone - works surprisingly well.

12/12/07

Barefoot Training – 4 Laps of Field (New Experience)

30 mins of game

20 mins of Plyometrics

15 Mins of strength

Run Through Drill x10

Power Play Drill x10

13/12/07

Manly League Finals (worst final ever, except the one against homebush) - Lost by a point 45 mins of running.

14/12/07

1 full lap of Park

Half Circuit of park – Indian File

100 Passes Drill

10 Mins Plyometrics

Injury: Ankle

16/12/07

Longest Day Beach Tournament – 14^th/20

Injury: Needle to Foot

Weight: 84 kgs

24/12/07

Finally started again.

25 mins of running, interval runs.

2x 100 throw sets

Plyometrics 10-15 mins

5 reps of throw/receiver drills with dump.

28/12/07

83kg

100 Throws short with teaching beginner.

25 minute run.

10 minute plyometrics.

Noticing fitness increase.

NB - have been working 8-9 hours every day since 24th standing/walking the whole time.

Juniors training camp here we go.

Some Beach Fitness

28\12

Throwing with Max - no wind at the beach today, unfortunate, forehands are giving me trouble but there's signs of improvement in both accuracy and distance. 4km beach run after, competent pace, although I had to stop after 2kms to swim as I am almost fanatically unfit. Need to work on that, a lot.

Played some sweet 3v3 beach ultimate with a guy from Boulder, Colorado (College Champions 06, anyone?) and an English dude he was travelling with, as well as a few of my mates. My toe got extremely injured in the first point but I still played okay.

T.

A Tiny Bit More Training

23/12: I forgot about this one. I dragged Clare down to the beach and practiced throwing for about half an hour in extreme wind. Got my backhand flat, able to travel a reasonable distance. It floated too much and had a tendency to 'catch the wind' and get carried away, but I was fairly happy with it. Forehands I had much more trouble with. I had no idea how sloppy my technique was and I use way too much much outside in curve. Easily rectifiable, will attempt to adjust. Clare was throwing really well, too - and she was drunk, which I didn't even realise until later. The Womens team have a pretty good receiver in her, although from everyone I know in it they probably are already inundated with receivers.

26/12: About 15-20 minutes of swimming, nothing huge, just an attempt to make my muscles ease up a bit. I did some rockrunning, though. What's rockrunning, and how does it translate to Ultimate? Well, I started doing it to see if there was a pool on the other side of my local beach, but I started thinking about focus and balance halfway along the way, and I sped up. While I wouldn't call it training as such, there's a lot of things at work during a run over rocks - it's not actually 'running' as such, but jumping, so you get some sweet vertical/horizontal workouts. There's the rapid start/stop action you get in Ultimate (and in netball) as well as a heightened acknowledgment of how important balance and subtle adjustments of the body are - a point I find often overlooked, even though it seems pretty important (to me) in terms of cutting and throwing: a lethal fake, the kind I see people much better than me doing (and I constantly fail to defend against) involves lightning-quick change of direction, usually achieved by planting a foot and turning. There's balance at work! - likewise in throwing, where lazy folks don't pivot, or pivot extremely slowly, allowing the mark to shut down the break throw before the offence even reaches it.

So yeah, balance is important and rockrunning helps you balance. Go out and try it. It's really dangerous though so be careful, pace yourself to begin with.

T.

Training with Tiger

From now I'm going to use this weblog as my training diary: an idea that makes sense to me because this way other people can see what I'm doing, give me advice/help if I need/they want and most important of all I probably won't lose it. Highly likely if I attempted it on paper.

So, it's time for a State of Le Tigre address:

In the cooldown period after my Tuesday and Thursday night League games (as well as Wednesday night training with Fakulfoot) stopped - my ideal time to start training - I got very sick. I wasn't quite all right (the usual, coughing fits late at night which led to vomiting, leading to no sleep or energy, so the cycle began anew) until Christmas Eve. Here we go.

24/12: First Big Training Session: Joined by my main man Semfel, we started off with 100 throws, which led to a 1k? (not sure of the distance) jog which I varied with some sprinting to challenge myself. Then a water break. Plyo's Semfel and I stole from Barefoot - we looked very silly but I could definitely feel the plyometrics stimulating muscles I use while jumping. 100 throws, again. Interval running ('Let's sprint to this cone, walk to the next, two cones length of jogging after that then sprint for two!') for a very long time. Water break.

As far as I can recall, the next and last thing we did was a modified shuttle run/kill drill: five cones, three in a stack about ten metres away from the two 'throwing cones' (the cone on the left for righty backhand/lefty forehand, the cone on the right for righty forehand/lefty backhand). It was the receiver's job to start in the middle of the three cones, which were about 5m away from one another. Starting at cone 2 (middle) he would sprint out to cone 3 (furthest away from thrower) as a deep fake, turn and sprint to cone 1, get the disc from the thrower, dump it immediately, sprint to cone 2, fake open-side cut then sprint to the breakside for a dump, then jog to cone 2 and bust deep past cone 3 for a huck/score. Repeat with the thrower on the other side.

We did that drill with about six lots of two reps each, and later made the thrower have to cut to the first cone instead of staying stationary.

Then to finish it off we did a modified 100 throws: two 'throwing lanes' erected with cones, every throw has to be caught within the lanes otherwise both people's set of 10 throws starts again, and you have to do pushups as punishment. Pushups work on an increment system - first mistake = 1, second = 2, etc etc, all the way up to 10 whereby they go back down: 9, then 8, then 7 for every mistake. The idea was that if one managed to make 20 mistakes (travel the whole way up to ten then back to zero) then you start the entirety of 100 throws all over again.

That drill sucked, and my arms still hurt. Although it led (on my side, Semfel was understandably more tired than I from a 9 hour shift and too much noodles the hour previous) to a much greater appreciation of the disc, and made me really concentrate on catching the disc with two hands wherever possible (because I am weak and hate push ups). Despite doing it while physically exhausted, this drill made me extremely mentally focused.

Cooled down with a bit of a run and lots of stretching. I'm going to notch that one into the 'highly successful' column. I learnt a lot.

T.