Shane Rubenfeld
Everything that happens at practice should be a building block and not an
isolated event. You need to design practices behind a theme that’s overtly
stated to the whole team and repeated often throughout the day. Never let the
participants lose track of the day’s goal or remain unclear about the lesson
at hand. Emphasizing concrete points of focus over the course of practice as
well as the course of the season gives your players a measure of their
progress, in addition to game-time tools. Here are five points to consider
when drawing up and running practice:
1) When you introduce a concept, tie it to your overarching offensive or
defensive theme. Be clear about the exact actions to be performed, and under
what conditions. Try to maintain consistency and keep clear delineation
between ‘system’ – your team’s rules– and exceptions to them.
2) Avoid switching gears with no transitions. Don’t switch suddenly from
one practice point to another; if your two lessons don’t relate somehow, you
can probably save one for the next practice.
3) Punish for lapses in the lesson of the day, not for every fault. A lot
of teams run sprints or have other repercussions for turnovers, poor choices
or other screw-ups. If your team employs such a system, be judicious about
assigning them when you’re stressing the lesson of the day. Sprints for drops
when you’re focusing on the cutting system or on breaking the mark will
distract and waste minutes. Instead, how about sprints for the wrong cutting
and clearing, or for getting broken?
4) Scrimmage with intent. Don’t just release the hounds after the teaching
drill to go play ultimate. Mix up scrimmage rules in ways that keep the team
focused on the lesson of the day: 7v0, half-field possessions, turnover limits
with repulls, always starting the disc trapped on a sideline are all tweaks
you can work in that will keep players trying to make each other better, and
not just win an insignificant scrimmage. SIDE NOTE: Sprints are boring. Can
you think of ways to ‘condition with intent’ in the same way?
5) Review at end of practice. Challenge the players to mentally go over
the lessons of the day. Again, when reviewing, place the lessons of the day
into the larger strategic concept your team is trying to adopt.
Shane Rubenfeld
Sideline talk should make the players on the field more effective in two ways:
it should help them make different decisions than they might make otherwise,
and it should help them (re)act more quickly to game situations. In other
words, the primary functions of sideline talk are to provide new information,
and to provide reinforcement that cuts down processing time.
‘Provide new information’: tell the player on the field anything they
can’t see that might- or should- change the way they play for the next few
seconds or passes. Generally, this type of sideline call will mostly come on
the defensive end, when your players are primarily focused on their
assignment. The ‘UP!’ call is perhaps the most basic of these, and the absence
of this call as a team habit is a hallmark of inexperience. Does your team use
any of these calls from the sideline: “Broken!” “You’ve got time!” “Who’s
poached?!” ?
‘Reinforcement’: In my experience, it’s more difficult to provide helpful
sideline talk to the players on offense. Most of the time, cutters know their
job and cutting can be incredibly subjective, down to abstractions such as the
number of steps you need to make your move, or the feeling of how close on you
your defender is. Reinforcing talk that helps make decisions faster can cut
down on offensive miscues and the awkward waffling that often happens at the
transition between cutting and clearing. “Clear out” calls can help a cutter
instinctively peel out of a lane instead of taking an extra three steps
wondering if the disc will come. “Look dump”, “swing it!”, “move the ball!” et
cetera can remind a handler of his obligations. Overdone, these can quickly
become overkill, but used judiciously these reinforcing calls can facilitate
your cutting system and keep the disc moving.
On defense, reinforcing calls will largely bolster the willpower of the
defensive player, and thus production. The player knows very well that he
should play the open side of his man, but often he is tired, sore and
unfocused. Staying in his ear when he’s out of position will remind him that
his job is important and appreciated and often provide the needed energy to
finish out the point.
The most effective sidelines will specialize sideline players. Instead of just
watching the game and calling out things that you notice happening, assign
sideline players to different onfield players or to different roles. Here are
two sideline roles that I take most frequently:
*Talk to Deep– Have someone always talking to the deepest player; in
addition to making sure no one sneaks out on him, you can also keep an eye on
whether the thrower is taking notice of a deep cut. If I always know who’s
deepest at a given moment, or which tall fast guy can lend support, I can
scream his name out the instant I see a big thrower start his windup or get
the disc upline. The second that will give before everyone else yells ‘UP!’
can often mean two steps, a full commitment, and the D.
*Behind the Marker– My favorite sideline role is to take a position
directly behind the thrower when the disc is coming in on my sideline. Talking
to the mark, I can see everything the thrower can see. Its generally obvious
from that position who the cutting options are and when the thrower’s faking,
and I can help the mark only shift the force in reaction to real threats. I
use the calls ’left hand’ and ‘right hand’ to cut down processing time, as
opposed to ’no I/O’ etc. A good pair of marker and caller can often take
risks– such as jumping the dump look on a higher count– that would be
foolish without a caller confirming that no one dropped an assignment on an
open side cutter.
Does your team emphasize sideline talk? Do you acknowledge this each point?
How much of your talk provides information or confirmation?