Ultimate Handbook

Playspedia Announces Badges… the game is on!

andreliem — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 05:52:18 +0000

Playspedia has just launched an exciting new feature that allows users to earn “badges” by contributing to the site. A lucky few members received the “pioneer” badge as early contributors. This will add a new element to the site which will encourage users to really contribute and share in some healthy competition among the community. Being a beta release, users are encouraged to send any feedback to the blog as this was a major update to the core engine. Users will be primarily rewarded for creating specific types of plays, but there will be more types of badges to add more dimensions to the site.

And we can’t end this post without sharing a classic drill, the Seattle:

4-1-2 German Offense

beebs — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:29:35 +0000

We’ve covered the fabled “German Offense” before in a previous post, but here’s another excellent look at the setup and flow courtesy a play submitted to Playspedia by nathan.

Zone Offense: Two Handler Set

beebs — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:07:56 +0000

The majority of offense strategy in Ultimate places 3 handlers back with the disc, and then typically 4 cutters down field, sometimes split into pairs of two. Traditional zone offense often keeps the 3 handlers back, but then spreads the down field players into 3 mids or “poppers”, and 1 deep. An alternative to this approach, is to play with a 2 handler offensive set. Here’s an overview of how this works.

In the 2 Handler Zone Offense, players are assigned to the following roles:

2 Handlers
2 Wings
2 Mids or “Poppers”
1 Deep

Zone Offense Strategy

The main strategy of the 2 Handler Zone Offense is much the same as any regular zone offense:

Keep the disc moving, look for holes to open up when the zone defense moves to adjust to the new location of the disc
Work together
Be patient, make smart, chilly throws

The difference, and advantage of a 2 Handler Zone Offense, is that in theory it opens up more of the field and creates more opportunities for the offense to be in motion and cutting into open space.

Here’s a play from Playspedia to give you an example of how a 2 Handler Zone Offense in Ultimate can look like.

Sideline Swing – Stuck on the sideline?

andreliem — Tue, 17 May 2011 04:24:34 +0000

One of the most common pitfalls for teams is getting stuck on the sideline. It doesn’t take much for a good defensive team to pin an offensive player on the sideline and start the panic mode. We’ve all been there, you’re a handler who’s received a swing pass, or a lane cutter getting a pass near the side line. The wind is blowing hard against you, it’s freezing cold, and the defensive mark is almost forcing straight up.

In these times, you need to remember you have 10 stall counts, probably 9 by the time you think about it. The important thing is not to panic… if you’re not an experienced handler or don’t have an immediate up the line pass, square up with your handlers and stay committed to them instead of facing up field.

The illustration below shows how two handlers can cut off each other to provide an easy dump swing pass to create break side flow. Watch the play below and keep reading after for some notes.

This play works well because the handler dump cuts are reversed and less expected. Typically, the defensive player 2 will try to stop the up line pass and so has to follow player 2 up the line. This creates a quick opportunity for offensive player 3 to make a dump cut when the defensive player 3 is not in the best position. The key part is this cut, if the offensive player waits too long their defense will adjust and make this cut much harder. The handler (1) might have a hard time making what looks like a simple dump pass. So to help, the handler (1) should fake the throw to (2) so the mark bites on the pass. Once (3) receives the disc, (2) can reverse across the field for a break side pass. This should open up a decent gainer up field.

Zone O against a 1-3-3

andreliem — Thu, 05 May 2011 05:55:51 +0000

One of the biggest struggles for beginner to intermediate teams is playing zone offense. For some reason a combination of change of pace, more throws, and open space can pose a lot of problems. On the other hand, for experienced teams, Zone O can be a easier than standard 1-1 when conditions are not too windy. In reality, it can be really simple to play effective Zone O for any skill level. The passes are usually shorter and easier to catch, but they require all the teammates to be involved. Whether that’s making space, swinging the disc, or crashing the cup, every player plays a role. Too often teams rely solely on handlers to dump and swing then huck. When in reality, it should be dump swing, pass to crashing wing, wing passes to another wing and so on. In particular with 1-3-3, the wings play a very important role as there is a lot of open space to work with.

The play below from playspedia.com illustrates how one crash of the cup can lead to some good flow up field.

Vertical Offense – first featured play from playspedia.com

andreliem — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:02:11 +0000

I thought it would be suiting that the first features play be the most basic offensive play in Ultimate Frisbee, the vertical stack. Check this out and see what you think, I want to hear what you guys need in these animations. Now that this is not using Flash, you’ll be glad to hear you can view this on your iPad or iPhone. It’s not optimized for the iPhone yet, but expect this in future releases.

Playspedia.com – Our New Tool for sharing ultimate plays

andreliem — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 06:36:49 +0000

It’s with great pleasure that I can announce the official “beta” launch of www.playspedia.com! This is a web based tool we developed to allow Ultimate players to create and share plays.

After creating several plays for the Ultimatehandbook using Flash, we realized that there was quite the demand from users to contribute. Unfortunately, the Flash plays were not that easy to share or allow others to use, so the decision was made to create a separate web site that would allow players to do this with basic web technologies (HTML/JS). Also, following the trends of the web, we wanted to make this “social” so that players could learn from each other, and also keep some private plays among teammates.

This is a beta launch and will likely have a few bugs as we tweak things. Expect the site to change a lot over the coming weeks. The ultimate plan (no pun intended) is to funnel the best plays onto the Ultimatehandbook.com as showcase plays. While we get off the ground, please be patient as we make more updates and fixes to the site. We hope you’re as excited as we are.

Cheers,

Andre Liem

Overhaul of site in the works

andreliem — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 06:49:30 +0000

Hi everybody,

As you may have noticed (or not), this site has been updated and tweaked over the past few days. It has been mostly functional things, but it’s all in preparation to properly rejuvenate this site and get fresh content and community contribution. A few major things you may notice are the new “DISQUS” commenting. We really want users to drive the site more, so this new system of commenting should encourage a broader reach for discussion. Also, the discussion forum has been cleaned up of spam posting and should be under control now.

I can fully explain the future updates, but I will say that sometime in the near future you can expect a much fancier site and playbook system. Stay tuned!

Call for contributors

andreliem — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:02:09 +0000

Hi everybody, I know it’s been quiet on the site for a long time. As it goes our time is limited and this site is primarily a hobby for us. We are looking to make some more updates now but if anybody likes to write and has at least 5 years of experience playing Ultimate, we would appreciate guest writers.

We are looking for any type of content that fits into the general mold of this site. So that would be primarily general basic knowledge and strategies. In addition, video content would be really great to enhance the experience on the site.

Please let me know if you are interested by contacting me at andre.liem+uh@gmail.com

German Offense – In the endzone

andreliem — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:49:17 +0000

While vertical and horizontal offense are the primary styles of strategies teams have adopted, there is still the “mythical” German offense that you hear about. It was a lot more common to hear people talk about German offense a few years ago but we thought it would be interesting to post an article about how your team could use this strategy to confuse opponents. That being said, this article is just our interpretation of what German offense can look like.

The idea behind German offense is to isolate players and throw to space. If you take this as the foundation, it is not far off from any offensive strategy. Any good team will strive to isolate one player in an one on one situation and throw to open space to lead the receiver. So what makes German offense a strategy is that you can apply this to every single pass, and really “isolate” each player. Instead of having players in a stack, consider having every player except for the receiver flood out. The next step is that the handler should throw to a space they want the receiver to go to. The example below shows how you could use this strategy in the endzone.

In this play, you start from a vertical stack and each of the lane cutters flood out of the way hopefully drawing in their defenders. The remaining offensive player has the entire center field to move around. They should cut in any direction and the handler can then throw a nice hammer, or any type of throw, to open space for the receiver to run onto. This should be very easy for the receiver as they have both the break and open side to work with.

While this example illustrates one strategy for the endzone it would likely be a different setup for the rest of the field. For example, instead of having the lane cutters flood out, they could all be in horizontal formation. The only difference is that the lane cutters must keep to the side lines to really isolate the one lane cutter. Once the lane cutter receives the disc, they could repeat this strategy with the next lane cutter.

Key Points:

Other lane cutters must keep their defenders out of the throwing lanes.
The handlers must be very strong and be able to break force and throw over the top throws to space. This would include hammers, scoobers, high release backhand/forehands etc…