Team Pregame Warm-Up Routines

John Sandahl

Team Warm ups should accomplish two goals:

Prepare a team 1) mentally and 2) physically for the game ahead. Most teams perform at their peak if they can use their warm up to feel like they comfortable with their system and their bodies. Any team warm up should include enough things to get the team focused and ready for the task at hand without becoming drudgery.

The “warm up” should generally start an hour before the first pull. That means cleats on ready to run an hour before the first game of the day. Obviously, with tournaments the corresponding meet times may change if games are tighter than an hour between and players are already physically warm. The most important thing to remember is that you will perform how you practice. If you’re casual and laid back in your warm up – that’s how you’ll likely play. Some experienced teams in some situations can flip a switch but don’t count on this unless you don’t care about results.

There are a lot of variables to consider before deciding on an exact warm up:

1. Physical Situation (One game or part of a tournament/)
a. What are the weather conditions?
b. Current physical state. (Hot, Cold, Tired, Fresh, injured etc.)
c. How have you been performing physically to this point vs similar situations in the past.

2. Mental situation
a. What is your teams mental state? (Beaten, over – excited, blasé?)
b. What is your team working on improving?
c. Who are you playing and what do you know about them vs. your teams goals and strength/weak areas?

Assuming that a your team is looking to perform at their peak at it’s the first game of the day here is a basic outline for a standard team:

Space Check in – Meet – and huddle. [2 minutes]

A chance to answer question, How are we? What’s present in this huddle right now? Things that might be present include: excitement, tiredness, resentment, frustration., fear of opponent and many more including things unrelated to the game at hand. You shouldn’t assume as a coach or captain that what’s in the huddle will always be the same and therefore that the warm up will correspondingly need to be the “same.” Address what is present and you will help your team become more prepared mentally to play. Jogging before you’ve addressed the team’s current mental state can impair warm up and therefore focus and performance.

Physical Warm-up (as needed depending on situation). [15-20 minutes]

Jogging, Plyos/active stretching, then Rhythm drill with limited or no defense to get in the flow of moving and executing. The best is usually a simple drill with Running/Throwing/Catching. Working your way up to game speed gently over 20 minutes. If you’re not sweating by then end of the 20 minutes you’re not working hard enough.

Its ok to have several different Rhythm drills but ideally they involve timing and lots of touches. A double box drill (two discs) with in or out cuts can be very effective for this. You can also vary the box in size depending on the wind. Using a very small box to practice short reset passes in the wind and big box for cutter timing and throwing. For those with basketball experience this is similar in function to a layup drill in basketball. Make the simple plays in the flow of the game as you allow your body to ramp upwards in speed.

Mental check in – Situation – where we need to be strong to be successful. [3 minutes]

Things that may factor in:
1. What just happened in the previous game(s)
2. What are the opportunities for us to improve?
3. Who we’re playing in this game – what they like to do.
4. Is the weather dramatically affecting our performance? Is this a field position (Bad weather) or a possession (Good weather) game?

All of these things can be considered by the coach or captains – perhaps even before the day starts.

Most teams shouldn’t focus too much on what the “other team” is doing as this thinking can put a team into worrying instead of preparing. As a coach, however I will often consider the other team (if I know something about them) and tailor our pregame drills towards the skills that are important for us to focus on in order to be successful. Many teams at the highest level will know the skills that they need to focus on each and every game no matter who the opponent and so can easily just look at which skill needs attention and go from there.

Drill for focus areas – 2-3 drills with limited time between each. [20 minutes]

Once you’re decided what needs attetion then simply drill the skills necessary for optimal game time performance for 20 minutes.

Some things that you might want to work on:

  • Short throws and catches in windy games

  • Continuation cutting

  • Resetting practice

  • Long throws in games where that will an important option.

  • Marking against a good throwing team or when marking needs focus

  • Defending against a good cutting team or when person defending needs focus

  • Drill to apply physical pressure on the mark or downfield to prepare for the same in the game.

  • Zone applications

Situational scrimmaging [10-15 minutes]

Simple half-field scrimmage practice to warm up to game speed and practice communication. Situational scrimmaging ( Endzone, fastbreaks or getting the disc off the sideline. ) No more than 10-15 minutes of this.

Final throwing/Personal time [5-10 minutes]

Leave the last 5-10 minutes for players to work on private time stuff - adjust cleats, stretch, Practice pulling and getting lots of throws in the last few minutes.

Final huddle [2 minutes]

In the final huddle there should be no new information. Players should know who is playing and what they have to do to be successful. If you get to this huddle and find yourself adding ideas – you didn’t do a good job preparing for your warm up.

Things to avoid in structuring your warm up:

A lot of people standing in line waiting to do something.

  • Unless the drill is specifically because you’re trying to avoid running too much (a la – masters team before third game of the day) while also getting some game speed action in.

  • Rule of thumb – more throws is better. Two people doing a circle drill and getting 40-60 throws in is far more productive that 20 people each getting 5 throws in.

  • Even three person marking with a little running and marking but a lot of throwing is better than standing a lot.

Over warm-up.

  • Especially true in “big game” and “late in tournament times” Matt Tsang (coach of Fury) was quoted recently as saying, “Ultimate teams warm up too much.” I believe this is a function of warming up that goes beyond mental and physical focus and leads to tiredness and drudgery. Be looking for this with players. Also recognize that if the weather is warm or you’ve already played a game or two then a long jog to ‘warm cold muscles’ is probably unnecessary. Similarly – if you’re well into a tournament day – drills with lots of running may be unnecessary and actually impair performance.

Under warm-up.

  • Easy to do if you feel like you’re “supposed to win” a game. This can lead to injuries and bad habits.

  • Introducing new skills/learning/Drills into pre-game warmups.

  • Any drill that you want to do to warm up for a game should be introduced and explained at practice. Spending warm up time trying to explain how to do a drill is wasteful.

Key Team Culture Moments

John Sandahl

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” — Father Theodore Hesburgh

If team culture is simply a set commonly held attitudes and beliefs about a team, then the reason for wanting to encourage helpful culture is straightforward: it helps performance.

As evidence, here’s an example of a “team culture” situation that you may have seen or been a party to. Primary receiver catches an underneath pass, turns to see his partner going deep and rips a pass deep. His teammate, though a good receiver with a decently timed cut, is both double covered and running into the wind, so the decision is questionable at best. Despite the poor choice of throw, his teammate plucks it from the heap and scores a point for his team. How the thrower (who is a team captain and leader both on the field and off) responds to this situation is a key team culture moment.

Many throwers in this situation would walk to the sidelines and congratulate themselves, or certainly accept congrats from their teammates – thus hiding their mistake – and thereby encouraging a team culture of questionable decisions.

Others might shrug their shoulders and walk away thinking, “Well that was dumb, but at least it didn’t cost us. I’ll be sure to ‘tell on myself’ by pointing this out in the huddle post game or tomorrow night on the drive home so that people know that’s not what we want.” Whether or not this conversation happens and how soon will directly affect the message that newer players take from this moment.

But what if the thrower sprinted towards his teammate, pointing at him as if to say, ‘Great catch,’ while shouting to his high-fiving teammates on the sidelines, “I will play better!” It’s not hard to imagine that this radical way of reacting could have an enormously positive impact on newer players, given the proper context and team culture ahead of time. The message here is potentially so much stronger. Imagine the impact on newer players: “That guy, (already a vocal and trusted leader), is willing to walk the talk. He just called himself out when he didn’t have to.”

This is not an imaginary situation – I’ve seen it happen at Club Open Nationals. What this thrower knew was that his vision for the team’s play was different than the play he’d just made. He took that opportunity to reassure his teammates that he wasn’t going to let the successful outcome of this play affect his vision for how the team continued to play. It was a small gesture, and though I can’t speak to the effectiveness of this comment in the moment, I know that this comment stood in stark contrast to how some of my teammates at the time would have handled the same situation, and that was telling about our own team culture. It also shows us what it means to “practice” ownership over the team culture as a player.

Using your imagination, it’s not hard to come up with a dozen other such situations in or out of games. For example, your team is facing universe point after losing the last three close games; a person on your team makes a bad call; players complain about playing time after a close game, etc. In the end there is an ethical, inclusive way to handle all of these situations, and the teams that do the best at handling them will have the most success in the long run. The trouble is, how to do you identify what these common successful beliefs are, and make them common if they’re not?

Simply put, in a democratic/player run sport like ultimate, you talk about it. In general, the more people you can get involved in this conversation, the better. Teams who buy into a collective vision of hard work will be most successful on the field, and the same is true of team culture. In fact, one should feed the other.

What does that conversation look like? Think of the above, or your own more recent examples, and ask your teammates: how/who do you want to be when we’re faced with this stuff? It can really be as simple as that. What is the value(s) that are important to all of us as we put together this team? Other examples would be: How do captains need to be when we’re in tight game situations? What makes us most successful as a team? How about as individuals? What does it take to ensure that we’re following through on this stuff?

Then – and this is the trick – you need leadership players that are willing to live out those beliefs and you need people to keep calling attention to them (“I will do better!”). It’s called accountability in the business world, and the same is true here.
How do you encourage all this outside of merely telling on yourself?

Some ideas:

  • Consider having a “team chemistry” captain or group of people who has an intuitive sense of the harmony of the team (or lack thereof), he/they can be in charge of hearing concerns from players that need to be addressed. Not all of us are equally adept at handling these kinds of people issues. Finding the right person/people can mean the difference between resonance or dissonance.

  • Encourage dialogue on the team values throughout the season, not just at the beginning. Though this is especially important during and after the ‘tough spots’ that occur throughout a tournament or game, scheduling regular conversations like this can ensure that these talks happen. Just as you must establish team values and beliefs before the troubled moments, you must also continue to check in when those beliefs are challenged.

For example:

* We are a team that plays hard to the final point – how did we do this game? I feel like we didn’t really follow through as we’d all like. What kept us from achieving here?
* We support each other through the game, and I didn’t feel supported when I made that mistake. What do we have to do to get better?

  • Consider spending time outside of scheduled team time to allow semi-organic conversations to happen around team growth in a particular area. This can have the danger of feeling forced, but when done right can really add to the collectivity and buy-in of teammates.

  • Address moments that are conflicting with team values as soon as possible, and even at the expense of short term success. When you drop an issue or let it linger because you’re focusing on the game, you also run the risk of losing both your positive team culture AND the game.

  • Find a way to address the “bad apples” early and often. As captains and coaches, we’re often treading the line between talented but worth/not worth the trouble. What is true is that your team over the course of a season can’t survive more than a couple prima donnas. All-star teams that are together for even less time generally can’t survive with any.

  • Finding ways to encourage cross-clique pollination is key to building relationships, whether the roster is school based and in flux, or club based and solid. Being a little forced here can pay huge dividends later. Having teams within teams, buddies, intra-team cross-workouts, etc. can be a great way to make this happen. Never doubt the value of a little “meaningless” competition to bring people together.

  • As ultimate is a team sport, an essential step to achieving team chemistry is that everyone knows and values their role in the team’s success. If individuals feel valued and have a sense of purpose, they will be more likely to support the goals of the team, and thus create a healthy team culture.

Obviously every team will be different, and so the specifics of team culture can’t be reduced to a few simple steps. With a bit of concentrated effort and team leaders’ committed to a common vision, a positive, successful team culture should be attainable. Keeping it is the trick and the challenge of long term success.

(Note from author: thanks to Sarah Weeks for Inspirational and editorial assistance.)