Foot Angle - Cutting

Buttonhook cut… the first cut you ever learn.  Run deep, plant, come back underneath.  Couldn’t be any simpler, right?  Well, I suppose like all skills, there are finer points that are not necessarily intuitive.  One technical flaw I’ve not only noticed players making but have even heard people teaching (so much bad teaching in ultimate!) is planting with the improper foot angle.

I’m not gonna get into all the finer points of cutting, just the deceleration/break.  Imagine on a buttonhook cut, you are initially running deep.  As you decelerate into your break, those steps should be with your foot angled perpendicular to the direction you’re running… NOT facing forward.  If you look at the stud pattern of your cleats, you’ll notice the studs are concentrated along the side edges.  That’s because when you cut you should be cutting off the side of your foot.  Planting with your foot angled sideways will not only allow you to break faster but accelerate faster in the opposite direction as your first step will only involve opening your hips up 90 degrees rather than 180.

Foot Angle

As i mentioned once before, my sporting love before ultimate was volleyball.  Another tip i learned was when preparing to receive serve, you want to stand with your weight forward on the balls of your feet and slightly pigeon toed – that is with your toes slightly pointed in.  The reasoning being that your ankle joint provides optimal force moving forward compared to laterally, and it’s even worse when your pushing backwards.  So by angling your toes in, if you need to step left, the closer your right foot is to pointing to the left, the more force you can generate in that direction.

Try this:  stand facing forward with your feet wider than shoulder width apart.  Point your toes forward and bounce back and forth left to right.  Now try it with your toes pointed slightly in.  And then try it again with your toes pointed out.  You should find that you can push off most forcibly when your toes are pointed in and worst with your toes pointed out.

Now, serve receive is a specific moment where you’re static waiting to burst into motion.  (Out of curiousity, has anyone ever been taught to do this is tennis or baseball?)  Once you’re moving around, it’s not optimal to try maintain a pigeon toed stance.  I apply this to ultimate on the mark.  I’m not advocating bouncing around pigeon toed, but you can start out on the mark like this if it's not in flow.

The more important thing to keep in mind is to not let your toes start to point out.  If you watch a marking drill, you’ll notice that most players will start on the mark with their toes more or less pointed forward (you’ll notice a lot of the worst markers start out with their toes pointed out).  As they bounce/shuffle around on the mark, better markers will keep their toes pointed forward and maintain/recover back to this optimal marking stance.  For myself, I notice as I fatigue my stance gets wider and my toes start to point out.  It is not uncommon to need to lunge to stop a throw, and the further you lunge, the more likely you will open your hips up and that lead foot will turn out.  That’s fine.  The key is recovering to your optimal marking stance with your toes pointed forward.

This principle of foot angle extends to any lateral movements offensive or defensive.  More on that later.

Tripod

Random trivia:  The club team Pike was previously named No Mas (terrible team name that stood for North Mid-Atlantic All Stars).  The name “Pike” won out over other options that included “Marvin” and “Tripod.”

In my *long ultimate career, I’ve gone through a lot of lawn chairs.  I’ve bought cheap ones and nice ones, and I’ve never been able to get one to last more than a year or so.  I’ve recently changed tacks on this and decided to buy a tripod.

My thinking:  I’ve never actually broken one of my own chairs.  I tend not to sit down that much during games, so in the lifespan of one of my chairs, less than 50% its use is in service of holding up my butt.  What I’ve concluded is the cause of my chairs breaking is when one of my fat ass teammates plop their ass into my chair.  Now bear in mind, most of these chairs are able to support over 300lbs.  It's not their weight so much as it's the plopping, out of fatigue or disgust or both, that causes the bolts to bend or the seams to split.  While these chairs can hold up 300+lbs, they’re not designed to have a body violently dropped into them the way one might collapse onto a couch.

With a tripod, you can’t plop.  Since it’s inherently less stable than a chair, you have to gingerly set your backside in.  I smile when i see my teammates pass my tripod on the sideline in favor of someone else's chair or cooler.  I predict I retire before this tripod does.

Land on One Foot - Bailey's Two Step

I played college in what was the Metro East and there was a time when Princeton’s Clockwork Orange was pretty much the cream of the crop thanks in large part to this lanky kid with a visor named, Bailey Russell (some of the best ever Callahan hype on RSD was from the Clockwork PR machine).

I remember one year where their zone offense involved Bailey throwing scoobers over the cup to this ex-basketball player, grad student whose claim to fame was having dunked on Greg Ostertag.  They’d eventually dump it to Bailey again and they’d repeat.  None of that is really relevant to my point (we old folks ramble a bit) but the interesting thing to me was the way Bailey gained yards on the dumps.

Bailey would hop up and slightly forward as he caught the dump, then land on one foot – specifically his right foot.  When his left foot then landed, he was landing in a big forward step, and then he’d take another big step forward with his right leg.  Having long legs, Bailey's two step gained him a good 2 yards easily.

The keys here:

• Having some forward momentum in the air so that first step is not just a blatant travel.
•  Landing on your non-pivot foot (Bailey is right handed).  By landing first with his right foot, his other foot lands in a forward step with his left established his pivot, making the next step a pivot step, which as a pivot step can be in a different direction and/or speed.

Bailey’s stork like legs and floaty-ness make those two steps look natural and legal.

Where is the best application of this move?  When you’re a middle handler in a zone offense that uses a handler crash from in front of the cup, this move will get you deeper into the cup.  Unlike a crash from a popper coming from behind the cup, this type of crash comes at the cup from the front.  Ideally, this crash puts the disc in the handler’s hands with forward momentum, vision of the field, and a cup out of position (likely too close to stop throws through itself).  And it is this last regard – getting deep into the cup to allow throws through– where Bailey’s two step can be most deadly. 

All together:  See your poppers before you move.  Jump into the cup as you receive the disc.  Land on your right foot.  Land on your left with a smooth, big, forward step.  Then take another step/pivot forward to get you right up to the cup and throw through the cup to a popper.  Do this smoothly and quickly before the cup can step back to maintain their spacing.

Land on one foot - part 1

I remember a long time ago reading an article of Parinella’s somewhere where he explained a better way to toe the line is to only keep one foot down to maximize your reach rather than trying to dig both feet in.  Such a simple tip, and it reminded me of my days before ultimate.  Before frisbee, my previous love was volleyball.  I used to subscribe to a volleyball magazine and there were always these quick 1 page articles with a  handy little nugget of wisdom (think Zip's Tips minus the sandwich eating suggestions).

So one of those tips I remember was for playing volleyball doubles.  When you’re the blocker, you have one other teammate behind you in the backcourt covering the entire court on their own and they’re typically backed up to receive a hard driven spike.  Imagine as the blocker who’s jumping in the air, the spike hits off your hands, pops up, and dribbles just behind you.  That’s a hard ball for your teammate to get to if they're positioned fairly deep.  The key to helping your partner out is to land on one foot.  By landing on one foot, you can land already turning toward the court, and hit the ground running giving you a better shot at making the dig.  If you land with both feet, you lose the time it takes your foot to hit the ground and pick it up to take your first step behind you.

Application to frisbee?  On a hanging huck where you mistime your jump.  How often do you see the disc hang, the receiver and defender both jump and miss (or tip the disc) and the disc lands softly just a few steps away?  Try land on one foot and hit the ground running with your other leg to make that second effort grab or D.  By hitting the ground running you’ll also increase your chances of avoiding getting landed on and being taken out in a pile up.