Monday, January 23, 2006

Conditioning for Ultimate

I've received a request to bring up how to condition and train for ultimate. I think that ultimate is especially difficult to train for because of how it requires players to have the speed and explosiveness to play defense and get open when cutting, but also the endurance to last through four games, two days in a row.

I searched rsd a little bit to see if there were any good threads on the topic, and found a couple that had some interesting information. This thread has some links to other resources and some tips, although sadly most of the links were now dead. Another post has a month long work-out regimen detailed that is geared towards building a base.

In my opinion, the most important things to consider when planning a conditioning regimen for yourself or your team are:

  1. Include variety to work multiple muscle groups and both anaerobic and aerobic systems
  2. Design the regimen keeping in mind when you want to peak during the season
  3. Commit to doing the work-out program consistently

Beyond that, the specifics are up to you. I know that UW has focused on core strength as a way to help prevent injuries and increase sprinting speed. Some people also swear by yoga and flexibility as a way to prevent injuries. Fury divides its season into three themes: endurance, strength, and speed to help focus its work-outs. Stanford does weight lifting and longer runs during winter quarter and then moves towards more sprint work-outs and agility come spring. The team has an off-day running assignment each week that everyone has to complete outside of practice time and in addition to lifting/doing plyo work. Some examples of the team's winter running assignments include:

  • Out-and-back run: run in one direction for a given time and then turn around and push yourself to get back to your starting point in less time (14 minutes out and 12 minutes back, for instance)
  • Farleks: alternate between running at a faster, pressed pace and a more moderate pace for timed intervals (i.e. 30 seconds "on," a minute "off")
  • Hill runs: 3 to 4 mile run through hilly terain. If people keep track of their time, they can work to improve on it throughout the season
  • Stadiums/stairs: multiple sets of running the stadium bleachers (~80 steps). Can alternate doing single step or double step sets to work different muscles.

Plyo circuits are also a great way to build a strong base and can help work on jumping skills too. There's also a ridiculous number of work-outs that can be done at the track. Running 400's can be a great way to get your endurance up before moving to shorter distances.

What do other people recommend? Any tips or guidelines that college programs should keep in mind when planning out their work-out plans? What's your favorite work-out?

Then again, perhaps teams have a bigger problem with getting everyone to do the work-outs as opposed to designing the perfect regimen.

4 Comments:

Blogger d said...

I've always gotten kinda obsessed with training; I make these detailed, 8 week plans, do them, then on to the next thing. Some workouts have been more successful than others.

In college (when I seemed to have plenty of time on my hands), I would run 3-4 miles, ending at the gym, then lift, focusing specifically on quick twitch leg muscles. The hockey coach at Tufts, a big burly guy, gave us a bunch of different plyos and other exercises to work on this. I would also lift upper body and core. I did this six days a week, lifting on the legs and upper body on alternate days of the week (and in additional to track workouts and practices, though I scaled back when we started going to tournaments).

In retrospect, this was sort of insane, and now my workouts are more focused on speed than endurance, and also more focused on short recovery time (e.g. 400 repeats with 75 seconds of rest).

However, I definitely feel like college is a different beast than club. In general the best players are on the field a higher percentage of the time, because teams are not as deep as in club. Therefore, endurance is very very important. You have to find a way to build endurance without giving up speed, and that can be quite hard. Hopefully most of the team has been working on endurance over winter break, and can now concentrate on speed.

I have lots to say about this topic in general (and lots of workouts that I could post) but I'll end with just a few that we did back in the day:

- Fast mile (i.e. under 7 minutes at slowest) followed by 10 x 100s.

- 100, 200, 300, 400, 600, 400, 300, 200, 100 pyramid. We used to do this on the indoor track, ugh.

- Speed workout from Michelle Akers: 12 x 20, 12 x 40, 8 x 60, 6 x 80, 3 x 100.

9:17 AM  
Blogger Gambler said...

That Snertz work-out will kick your butt into shape, for sure. Here's another work-out that I did at Team USA track practices that Matt Bruss got from a professional trainer somewhere:

General Physical Progression (GPP)

Set up two cones around 25 yards apart: Cone A and Cone B.

The basic concept behind the work-out is that you do one set of plyo-type exercises for 15 seconds at Cone A, then have 30 seconds to sprint to Cone B and rest, then do another set of exercises for 15 seconds, then get 30 seconds to sprint back to Cone A and rest, and then repeat.

In order, the exercises that you do at Cone A are:
Mountain climbers
Scissor jumps
Squats
Squat jumps
Squats
Scissor jumps
Mountain climbers

In order, the exercises that you do at Cone B are:
Crunches
Push-ups
Leg lifts
Crunches
Push-ups
Leg lifts
Crunches

This all takes 10 minutes and you should do at least two sets with four minutes rest in between.

4:47 PM  
Blogger Gambler said...

FYI, George Cook just posted a blog entry about how he approaches conditioning for ultimate. It's a very detailed system that can be applied to any team for guidelines on what the work-out program should be focusing on and when.

1:37 PM  
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