Jeff Eastham-Anderson
Epic rants by NBA legends
belittling the importance of practice aside, there is a wealth of evidence
that points to the importance of practice, both quantity and quality, when it
comes to improving athletic performance. Many people have noted that athletes
seem to require at least 10 years from the time they begin a sport until they
are able to reach the top of their game. Others have taken this analysis
further. Malcolm Gladwell observed in his book,
Outliers, that top performers
can only manage to practice effectively for about 1,000 hours every year, thus
arriving with the often quoted “10,000 hour rule” which must be satisfied in
order to master a complex task. Matthew Syed takes this observation a bit
further in his book, Bounce, by pointing out
that those practice hours must be purposeful, and filled with failure; simply
going through the motions and not challenging yourself to the point of failure
does not lead to sustained improvement.
What qualifies as practice is still a bit murky to me, but there are two
numbers to consider which helps put things in perspective. First, a 40-hour
work week equals about 2000 hours a year. To hit the 1,000 hour a year mark,
you need to be putting in about 3 hour days, seven days a week, for a whole
year. Second, some very sketchy calculations suggest that during my 13 years
playing Ultimate, I’ve logged between 5,000 and 6,000 hours on the field. I
think it’s safe to say that a vanishingly small number of Ultimate players
have to worry about practicing too much, or satisfying the 10,000 hour rule.
So, the question of how to get the most out of a practice is extremely valid.
For my part, I’m going to focus on four basic principles to keep in mind when
figuring out how to practice, along an example or two. It’s up to you and your
team to figure out how to apply them.
Get Everyone on the Same Page:
This goes without saying to a certain extent, and comes in a variety of forms;
playbook meetings, moving discs around on the ground, on-field examples, etc.
The team should be presented with concepts in a controlled setting where
questions are easily asked and answers are quickly given. Simply put, the
majority of this explanation should take place before your team warms up, or
at least after any substantial breaks during practice. Further, someone should
have spent enough time thinking about that concept to the point where they
don’t have to think about the answer, or consult the playbook.
Maximize your reps:
In a word, drills. The function of drills is to allow everyone on your team to
cement basic concepts and movements through repetition. Entrusting your team
to learn by just playing games is not sufficient. An entire game may only
present an individual player with a handful of opportunities to implement a
certain concept, while the majority of their time is spent between points,
watching from the sideline, or executing other concepts (hopefully) to
perfection; time which is not spent improving on newly learned concepts. The
drills don’t have to be perfect, but you definitely need to think about both
how best to convey the strategy you are trying to teach, and the logistics of
people moving through a drill in order to maximize the number or repetitions.
Additionally, consider making a substantial portion of your warm-ups for
practices and tournaments a drill your team has run recently.
Take it up a notch:
Once your team has the basics down, your drills and games need to be modified
to make things more difficult in order to push beyond your limits. This is
where the aspect of failure as an important aspect of practice comes into
play. Only by changing the set-up of your drills, or the rules by which you
play your games to make execution more difficult will you be pushed beyond
your limits to the point of failure. At that point, every failure should be
treated as a learning opportunity. Shortening the stall count to force moving
the disc faster, or a designated poacher on defense are just two examples, but
there are lots of creative ways to make things more difficult. Finally, there
should be sufficient downtime incorporated into a drill or game for people to
register mistakes, discuss what happened, and think about alternatives.
Follow it through:
During the course of a season, there are a lot of things to cover, and there
is an innate tendency for coaches and captains to assume that once a concept
is explained and executed successfully once, it is time to move on to the next
one. Remember, it takes 10,000 hours to “master” a sport, and the vast
majority of that is repetition. Concepts should be serially revisited, and
teammates held accountable for not carrying forward past lessons.
Anecdotally, two months is a ballpark amount of time you should allow for a
reasonably complex task, like a particular zone defense, or even a complex set
play. This comes primarily from my observation that of all the concepts
introduced after Regionals, at most one in ten was ever implemented at
Nationals.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
When you find yourself on the sideline, there are two obvious things to do
during a point. You should serve as an extra brain and pair of eyes to help
them execute the team’s strategy, and you need to encourage them to keep
putting in effort. I’ll skip over these two aspects of sideline help (which I
hope others will cover in more detail), and focus on one aspect which takes
place after a point is over, and one aspect which is believed to be helpful,
but is frequently not, and should be discouraged.
A mistake/learning opportunity during the middle of a point is hard for a
player on the field to capitalize on their own because they were thinking
about the 50 other things which happened during that point. However, a
teammate on the sideline is in a much better situation to recognize, remember,
offer perspective, and therefore help teammates improve. If you have trouble
remembering, write it down. If you’re not sure how a mistake might be
corrected, or if a mistake was made at all, talk to a more experienced
teammate. In my opinion it is better to watch one person the entire point, as
opposed to many people. Not only can you help that person in real-time, but
you can also get a feel for what that person was trying to do, instead of
taking one mistake out of context.
Finally, just because the point is over doesn’t mean you need to stop
encouraging the teammate you’ve been watching. If you didn’t notice any
mistakes, praise their effort. In fact, even if you did notice something they
could improve upon, that doesn’t mean you should ignore the rest of the point
where they were playing well. Give praise where praise is due.
The one thing I’ve never been a fan of is a sideline voice that tells me to do
something which is the right play in a vacuum, but is contradictory to the
team’s strategy. Practically speaking, the chain of events which must take
place is often way too slow to be helpful. A person on the sideline needs to
recognize what’s going to happen, figure out the appropriate response,
communicate it to someone on the field, who then needs to recognize and react
in a way they weren’t anticipating. Furthermore, the principle of playing on a
team and having a cohesive strategy is undermined every time someone
freelances, and is made worse when your own teammate is encouraging you to do
so.
Every time a player does something unexpected, there is almost always a trade-
off which weakens the approach a team is taking. A prime example of this is a
strike call on a sideline
trap.
You hear this call quite a bit, but acting on a strike call does two things.
First, the marker is giving up the portion of the field the rest of the team
is expecting them to take away. Second, it helps out a defender who was beat
to a position of the field that was their responsibility to take away, not the
marker’s. So, not only is the marker rewarding that one defender who was beat
by trying to cover for their mistake, but by changing the mark they are
screwing the other five defenders by letting off an easy break mark throw.
This isn’t to say strike calls are bad. But your team needs to decide that
occasionally stopping that throw is worth the mark abandoning the portion of
the field for which they are responsible.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
In framing this discussion, I think it is important to note that some teams
have a static approach to shifting the mark, while others are more dynamic. In
the static case, the mark starts off taking away more of the reset look only
on the sideline, while giving up more of an angle downfield. In the dynamic
case, the marker starts off with a conventional angle, but rotates with the
marker when they turn to hit the dump.
With that said, whatever strategy you choose to adopt to combat this mark,
your task will generally be easier if the thrower and cutters are actively
looking to move the disc off the sideline as early as possible. Instead of
waiting for a lane cut to develop, realize that your primary goal is to get
the disc out of a situation where the defense has an advantage (they have the
sideline to help them, and they have a cohesive defensive strategy to take
advantage of this position).
A static change in the marker’s position on the sideline generally means that
everybody but the thrower needs to adjust their strategy. The downfield
players need to realize that their defenders are not getting as much help from
the mark as they used to, and need to be in a position to take advantage. For
example, players in a stack, especially the one closest to the thrower, need
to generate more opportunities for the thrower. If the mark shifts a great
deal, the person at the front of the stack can basically cut as if they were a
dump, and preferentially try and receive the disc on the break side.
A dynamic change, where the marker is actively denying the thrower’s main
target, be it downfield or to a reset, means the thrower will need to create
and be ready to capitalize on different opportunities as they are presented.
The main weakness of an active mark is the relative inability of the mark to
tell where the real threat is located. For example, if a cut to the break side
is a little tight, the thrower can move the mark and create a larger window by
faking a throw to the dump.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
Two key factors of getting a block are:
- Being able to recognize mistakes by the offense
- Being in a good position to capitalize upon them
Being faster than the person you’re guarding helps, but paying attention to
these two aspects will help your team defensively.
When it comes to positioning, as a defender I rarely bait throws in
anticipation of a layout block, especially when it comes to cuts that are
close to the disc. There is so little time to react, that my defensive goal is
to deny the throw. It just happens that the position to deny those kinds of
throws (even with or trailing the offensive player slightly, on the side
closest to the thrower), also allows for the occasional layout attempt. If you
are directly behind, or on the wrong side of the receiver, layout bids become
more difficult, and can be very dangerous to everyone involved.
Recognizing when the offense makes a mistake is the other key factor that
determines whether or not you should make a layout attempt. For the majority
of layout blocks I get, I knew when and where the disc was going to be thrown
at the same time as, or earlier than, the receiver. Being able to look
directly at the thrower, and keep the receiver in my peripheral vision gives
me equal footing when it comes to making a play on the disc. Alternatively, if
the receiver is making a one dimensional cut (i.e. the disc will be thrown to
them at point X, or not all), this also lets me get into a good defensive
position, and ready to make a bid.
Once the disc is in the air and I’ve decided I’m going attempt a block, if my
positioning is good I can choose the best line to take to get to the disc
without having to worry about what the receiver is doing. Whatever line the
receiver chooses, the defender has a bit of an advantage here as they do not
have to actually catch the disc. The slightest tip with a finger, or the mere
presence of your body, is sometimes good enough. The only real insight I have
on execution is that I try to drive off of the last step I take, just as I
would if I was jumping in the air. Just because you’re running as fast as you
can doesn’t mean you should stop running and fall forward in the hope of
getting a block.
I’m not really sure how you learn the body motions to successfully make a
block. Certainly there is timing involved, and landing in a controlled manner
is a plus. A high-jump mat, or sand pit would reduce the wear and tear, but at
some point you’re going to have to graduate to the hard stuff. As I mentioned
above, drive off the last step you take. The primary impact should be taken by
your abdomen hitting the ground as flatly as possible. After every practice
attempt, get up as quickly as possible and set an imaginary mark. Not every
bid is successful, and you will have set the mark if you miss.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
The easiest way to simulate bad-weather conditions in a drill or a game is to
simply tell your players to not throw the throws you can’t realistically
complete in those conditions. The idea is to gain confidence in beating a zone
with flat, crisp, high percentage throws. And if for some reason they decide
to throw a cross-field hammer, or 10 yard push pass, stop the drill and reset,
or just call it a turnover and continue playing from there. This will help
with throw selection, but executing a throw in inclement weather requires
practice in those conditions.
In an ideal situation, I prefer a two-handler set that works together to
create windows of opportunity to move the disc upfield. Two main options in
this set are to go over the cup, or through the cup. A third option that is
less frequently utilized option with two handlers is to go around the cup.
Any time an offensive set is not working, the main responsibility to recognize
this lies with the handlers. They should be in a position to see the entire
field, and also to realize when the go-to look has been shut down five times
in a row. If your zone offense is built around swinging the disc from one
sideline to the other, and it gets stopped in the middle, that handler stuck
with the disc is probably the person that will realize this first. At that
point they can adjust their own spacing, or that of a teammate. If that fails
to produce results, a timeout wouldn’t be a bad call.
Deep players in a zone offense are in a pretty unique position. If they do
their job well, they rarely touch the disc, but are able to create space for
the other players to gain yardage. If they don’t do their job well by crowding
closer to the disc, they’ll end up touching the disc more. However, the
offense will have a harder time overall moving the disc as the defense will be
able to move in with the deep. Ideally, a deep player will touch the disc zero
times or once on any offensive sequence, and will totally occupy one person’s
capacity (or more) to defend. Put another way, the offense is able to score
with short, easy throws, because the deep defender is positioned so that no
single defender is able to help defend other offensive players.
The easiest way I know of to deal with a trap zone is to simply not throw it
to somebody on the sideline. If you have a zone offense that depends on moving
the disc across the field to get around the cup, think about learning another
offensive set. If you must move the disc to a sideline, you want to impress
upon the players on that sideline that their job is not to hold the disc, but
to hit the first open player they see, even if that person just threw them the
disc. Furthermore, everybody else on the field needs to provide a sideline
thrower with immediate targets. The longer you hold the disc, the longer a
defense can recognize and lock down on the available targets.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
Apart from specific match-ups on defense that require certain roles (being
tall and fast, or short and quick), there are lots of roles in zone defenses
and in some offensive sets. The best example I can think of is the marker on a
trap-side zone defense. This is the position that anchors the zone when it is
within 5 yards of the sideline, and can make or break the scheme. This person
has the opportunity to take away more options that any other defensive player
on the field. As the mark applies more pressure, there is a cascade behind
them that allows the defense to take away other opportunities. For example, if
the mark is able to remove cross-field hammers, the far-side defender(s) can
play more to the middle of the field, allowing the players in the middle of
the field to push closer to the open side threats.
Should players train to be more versatile? I don’t think there is an absolute
answer here. In a vacuum of information I would argue that as a player looking
to make a team, you should invest in improving at all aspects of the game.
Simply put; offensive lines still need to play defense, and defensive lines
need to score after they get a turn in order to be successful. The world’s
best thrower would be hard pressed to make the roster of an elite team if they
couldn’t play decent match-up defense. You can argue that offensive lines
don’t need to be great at defense, especially if they don’t turn the disc
over, but you’d have to seriously question the wisdom of a defensive line with
seven people unable to throw the disc.
If you are a player trying to make it onto a team that generally lacks a
skill, or you are in charge of recruiting for a team that lacks a certain
skill, by all means, train or recruit to address that weakness. As a team this
means figuring out, before you pick your team, how you want to play the game.
As a player this means trying to figure out, or asking the team leaders, what
the team needs in a player.
Regarding important roles, I don’t really know if any trends will emerge.
However, I think there is a real opportunity for teams to improve by
recruiting or training players to be smarter about their decisions, and to
recognize opportunities earlier. There are some pretty significant hurdles to
training athletes to make better decisions, but it is even harder to recruit
smart players. For example, teaching the concept of creating space for a
teammate to take advantage of is a fundamentally good thing. However, it is
very hard to teach, is rarely recognized on a team as being important, and
even more rarely rewarded when a teams is picking their roster.
I think the newly instituted roster limits gives increased hope for all-around
players, especially if the limit drops much further. With fewer spots on the
roster, the argument for filling those spots with players that are proficient
at both offense and defense becomes stronger. In an extreme example, if the
roster limit was 14 and your roster was evenly split between defensive and
offensive specialists, you’d be pretty hosed if somebody got hurt, or was off
their game that day. A roster with a couple people that could fit into any
hole would be more desirable.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
One of my favorite fakes is really quite quick (maybe a quarter of a second of
motion), and from the waist up looks exactly like I am going to move my pivot
foot for an around break, but I immediately step out for an inside break. My
head and torso kind of lunge to one side, and I move the disc quite quickly in
the same direction, but my lower body remains stationary. Essentially, I move
just enough for the defender to commit to the big around, giving me a quick
and easy inside break.
What is most important in teaching young players to break the mark?
Practice. Good mechanics and confidence should be the result of endless
practice. Various studies and sources I’ve run across throw around some pretty
large numbers when in comes to how many times you need to repeat a task before
becoming truly proficient, and ten thousand is on the low side. If a young
player thinks they’ve thrown enough, they haven’t.
Which do you feel is more important: Having a lot of players that can break
the mark, or having some players on the field that can break the mark very
well?
Both situations have their advantages, but if I had my choice I would prefer
everybody on my team be able to break the mark, as opposed to have a couple
people break the mark well. Apart from the complications the latter situation
might produce in trying to create an offensive scheme, any time you have a
predictable situation presented to the defense, if it can be stopped, it will
eventually be stopped. If every time player X gets the disc they look to break
the mark (because nobody else on the field can), the defense will eventually
key in and plug that hole.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
Zone Basics
I’ve always been a fan of a good trapping zone, but in unpredictable winds
even a very conservative and basic zone would produce turns. There are way too
many specifics and permutations to cover in this forum, but below are three
principles of a trapping zone.
Basically, a trapping zone consists of three things. First, how are you going
to allow the disc to move to a sideline. This is a combination of making it
hard to move the disc in the middle, and making a lateral throw an easy pass
without giving up too many yards.
Second, how are you going to apply pressure once you are on the sideline. This
typically involves shifting the cup to take away easy dumps, and shifting the
remaining downfield defenders to the strong side so that the only remaining
options are a short pass that looses yardage, or a long throw over many
defenders to the weak side.
Finally, how are you going to contain when the disc moves off sideline or
downfield. A lateral throw can often be contained, but everyone needs to react
and take away the next throw, and not the one that was just thrown. For
downfield throws, the deep and wings can often be most effective by just
covering a person, instead of an area. The primary goal is to prevent other
downfield passes, then re-establish containment with zone coverage.
Adjustments
One adjustment would be to have a zone-to-man transition, or just run man a
couple points. Once a team starts to figure a zone out, they will gain
confidence through repetition. The easiest way to counter this is to give them
and entirely different look for a few points. Unless you have an entirely
different zone set, this usually means a zone to man transition, or just man
for the entire point.
If you had only enough time in one time-out to talk to a single player in
your zone D, which position would that be? What might you tell them to
adjust?
The best person to talk to would be the short deep, or whoever the defender is
that is right behind the cup. Most zones get hosed when the disc moves to the
place you least want it to move. For a trapping zone this is upfield when it
is in the middle, or across the entire field when it is trapped. The former is
really the short deep’s responsibility, as he is in the best position to
joystick the cup defenders whose main objective is to make a wall and deny the
middle of the field. Again, there are so many permutations, but essentially
you will need to adjust your positioning to take away more of the middle,
while giving the offense more of an opportunity to move laterally.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
My first impression of this situation would be to not over-react. There have
been close calls, and one turn on handler cuts. If you are getting close to,
or are already at the half, this is a pretty good tally to have, and I
wouldn’t make major changes.
Some small things to consider:
-
If the other team is counting the stall quickly (most likely the case), the thrower should make the fast-count call as he turns to the dump, or earlier.
-
A typical adjustment would be for the throwers to look to the dumps earlier. However, since the downfield flow is “good,” if you start trying to get a short reset at 5 instead of 6, you’ll end up throwing more throws per point, as dumps will be thrown instead of downfield cuts that show up from stall 5 to 6. Typically, more throws is not a good thing, and may or may not be balanced by an increased completion percentage.
-
If you have some other offensive set, give it a try for a point or two to keep the defense from continuing to zero in on your primary set.
If this sequence of events has happened in the first few points of the game,
and it has entered the team’s psyche, then you should start thinking about
making major changes:
-
If you don’t have an alternative offensive set, think about getting a couple players who work well together to run a dominator or trimanator for a set number of throws or to a call where you enter your normal offensive set.
-
If the defense is overplaying one or more aspects of your scheme, change the position/timing so your players will have another option. For example, if a team is camping on the inside-out break to the front of the stack, have that cutter fake to the break side, and then go back to the open side.
-
Emphasize looking for and hitting the first open receiver, even if it is outside of your offensive set. The overall goal being to keep the disc moving, and prevent the defense from settling into whatever set the have worked out.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
As I am already behind, my priority is to catch up. It’s harder to run fast
with your head turned, so I will sometimes let the intended receiver read the
disc for me and take the hit, in terms of speed. At this point, help from the
sideline, in terms of which direction to go, is very helpful.
As soon as I know that I can catch up, or I hear from the sideline that the
throw is short, I will turn my head. If I turn my head and am close to the
offensive player, I will also raise my off arm (head turned right means left
arm is up) about chest level with my forearm bent and parallel with the
ground. This arm is especially important with floaty discs, but is not used
with any significant force. It is more of a warning system to prevent tangled
legs or knocked heads, which is easy when there are two people not looking
where they are going.
All thing being equal, I will work to get between the path the disc will take
to the receiver. I only have to get a tip of a finger to get a block, but they
need a whole hand, which means I can make a more aggressive bid. Making a
defensive bid from the backside can be dangerous, and rarely results in a
clean block. Taking a position behind the receiver relative to the path of the
disc should be reserved for gross misreads by the receiver.
As the disc makes its final approach, I focus on making an aggressive bid.
This means coordinating my movements so that when the time comes to jump or
layout, I am ready to do so. This means chopping my steps to take off on the
correct foot (if there is time to do so), and driving my arms (like a high-
jumper).
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
It’s too bad you can’t put the World’s Greatest Defender on this person,
because they sound like they are the World’s Best Offensive Player.
I would probably get two defenders to alternate defensive points with the
intention of solely guarding this person. Ideally, one defender would be the
quick/squirrelly type with a good mark to challenge him around the disc and
apply pressure on the mark. The second defender would be fast and preferably
able to out-jump this person, with the intention of continuing to push him
deep (but maybe not quite as much as in the first half). The idea behind two
defenders with two different objectives is to keep this offensive person off
balance. Requiring a person to constantly switch roles in order to be
effective is preferable to letting them stay in whatever zone they are in.
Starting the second half, have the quick marker start out (because the
offender is already in a groove going deep), and unless they are wildly
successful (i.e. handblock), switch defenders the next O point. If a couple
cycles of that doesn’t work, there’s always zone until half-field.
Jeff Eastham-Anderson
I would say that the absolute talents of your team will likely favor one
offense over the other. If you cannot consistently complete passes greater
than forty yards, a stack offense is more favorable than a horizontal. Any
situation where the defense no longer has to defend the deep pass puts the
horizontal stack offense at a significant disadvantage. This generality can be
extrapolated to any situation, not just wind condition. For example, when the
disc is on the goal-line, defenders can front the people in the stack, thus
using their position to take away the in cut, and the back of the endzone to
take away the deep cut. At any point in time your team finds itself unable to
throw deep passes, a different offense is called for. Taking this example
further, a stack offense, which favors lateral movement of the disc often with
break-mark throws, would be more effective on the goal line than a horizontal
stack. Conversely, as deep shots become more viable, the horizontal stack
would be favored over a vertical one.
Everybody knows that strong winds make throwing and catching more difficult.
This fact is often exploited by defenses by running some sort of zone defense
that forces the offense to execute many throws in the hope that somewhere
along the line a mistake will be made (see the math section below). But what
should be done if a team runs an effective man defense in windy conditions?
Every situation is different, but there are a few generalities that can be
helpful.
First, the stack must change its position on the field to facilitate the
offense’s goals. A deep cut from the back of a vertical stack with a stiff
upwind may not be viable if the back of the stack is 30 yards away. By the
time the thrower recognizes a deep cut from that position is open, the
receiver is likely too far way to complete a pass that is uncontested. On the
other hand, if the back of the stack is 15 yards away, the thrower has more
room to deliver a pass. Alternatively if you are on the downwind side of a
stiff crosswind, not only does the stack need to be shallow, but also should
move away from that sideline to facilitate line throws, or toward the sideline
to facilitate break-mark throws.
Second, in windy situations the ratio of risk to reward can be different than
when it is calm. Let’s say that if it is calm your team can complete 20 short
throws at a 100% completion rate to score, or 1 deep throw at a 70% completion
rate, then you should take the short throws. However, if you need 30 short
throws at a 90% completion rate or 2 deep throws at a 30% completion rate, the
math favors deep throws. These numbers are exaggerated to make a point;
sometimes a couple big risks are more favorable to a lot of little ones.