"How do I improve my field sense?"

A thorough answer to a common question

The question of how to improve "field sense"/"game sense"/"awareness"/"Frisbee IQ” is often asked on the r/ultimate subreddit. It's come up at least three times in the past year—here, here, and here (the last link was deleted, but I knew to find it because I had myself commented on it). A quick search found a few other times it's come up (here and here).

Since this question comes up so much, it makes sense to write up the best answer we can. It always seems odd to me that people ask the same questions over and over again, and each time commenters will re-type advice that's been typed up before. Now the next time it comes up I'll just need to post a link to this essay.

This article may be less interesting to super-experienced players who already have fully developed frisbee instincts. As I said, this post is meant for people wanting to know the best way to build their field sense. If that's not you, don't feel like you have to read this article! (Though you can still read it to help me make sure it’s as good as it possibly can be.)

Let's get to it.

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Be patient, work hard, let time pass

Many of the posts asking this question come from young players. Perhaps the most important advice for a young player is keep working hard, keep being patient, and don't give up. Learning a new skill is a slow process, and there are no real shortcuts. You'll just need to keep working at it, over a number of years.

The players who have elite field sense when they're 30 years old got that way by not giving up when they felt frustrated at 20 years old...or 23...or 25...etc.

Yes, there are a few players who have elite field sense when they're 18-22, but almost all of them either started playing frisbee extremely young or played other sports at a high level before picking up frisbee. You can't go back in time and start playing frisbee younger, but you can control the future—keep playing a lot and as the years pass you'll continue to improve.

Young players especially should try to be patient because their brain still hasn't finished developing. Specifically, impulse control and inhibiting automatic responses is one of the last skills that develops in the brains of teenagers/young adults (See Inventing Ourselves, by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Chapter 6). I think field sense has a lot to do with self-control and impulse control: we have to resist the temptation to stare at one thing (a flying disc) and constantly scan the field without ever getting too distracted.

It may feel overwhelming now, but field sense will naturally get easier as your brain develops. (The idea that the brain finishes maturing at age 25 is as much myth as it is fact, but the general concept is true—we continue developing through our 20s).

So keep working hard and be patient when you feel frustrated. You'll be surprised how far a few years of patient practice can take you.

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Play frisbee

Obviously one of your biggest sources of growth is just playing frisbee. In my opinion, playing 3 times a week is a great amount for a player who's looking to improve. It allows you to have low-intensity days mixed in with your high-intensity frisbee sessions. If you're young, athletic, and feel up for it, (or if one of the groups you play with isn't very intense) perhaps playing a bit more than that is possible, but do it with care.

I'll have more to say below about how to play in a way that helps you learn as quickly as possible.

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Study frisbee

There are lots of resources online to help you learn more about frisbee technique and strategy. Book learning will never transfer cleanly to on-field skills. It'll be a slow and bumpy process. But I'm a big believer that being aware of the skills that great players have will make it easier to integrate those skills into your own game.

Here are some sources I listed in a previous article:

• My blog

• The Huddle

• Zip's Tips

• Understanding Ultimate

• Ultimate Rob (~2015 and earlier is when most of the technique/strategy tips were posted)

• Joe Mama Ultimate.

• Ultiworld posts tagged: defense, analysis, film room, Tuesday Tips, and video breakdown.

• There are also a number of paid sites like flik, RISE UP Ultimate, and Rowan McDonnell's Excel Ultimate. But personally I prefer the free stuff :)

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A number of YouTube channels discuss ultimate strategy, including:

• Hive Ultimate

• Jack Williams

• Rowan McDonnell

• Jonny Malks

• Kurt Gibson

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I'd like to think my blog is especially good at putting words to some of the subtle concepts involved in field sense. Here are a few articles that I think are especially relevant to someone looking to develop their field sense:

• Oodles of OODAs

• Be good at frisbee, not just frisbee-like things

• Defense is for stopping the other *team*

• Think about what your opponent is thinking

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Aside from strategy videos, watching film of full games can help you develop your frisbee mind as well. (If you don't know where to start, here's Ultiworld's YouTube channel and Ulti.tv's YouTube channel). Remember that watching film doesn't just mean pressing play and sitting back. Here's what I've written previously about watching film:

Watch the game and really try to understand what happened. You should be making liberal use of the ability to Pause, Rewind (hot tip: hitting the left arrow on YouTube will take you back five seconds) and go Slo-Mo (hot tip: the < and > buttons change the playback speed).

If someone catches an open pass, do you know how they got open? Rewind and find out—what were they looking at? How did they time their cut? How did they change their positioning before the cut started? Do you know what type of offense (and defense) is being played on the point you're currently watching? Do you notice open players who the thrower didn't see?

Ian at bettereveryday coaching also wrote an article on field sense this week (perhaps inspired by the same Reddit post?). While I suggested going back in time, he suggests thinking about the future—pause the video and try to figure out what will happen next. He also links to this older Ultiworld article on how to get the most out of watching film.

One suggestion that comes up a lot in regards to watching film is to "stop watching the disc" (it's in the Ultiworld article and in some of the Reddit posts I've linked above). Pay attention to what's happening in other parts of the field, because you won't always be directly involved in the action. Fittingly "stop watching the disc" is good advice both for watching film and for having better field sense on the field.

There's a lot to "field sense" and I don't think any one article or website will tell you everything you need to know. Keep reading and you'll slowly pick up more and more useful nuggets of information.

Don't just consume content without reflecting on it. Take notes on new ideas you've learned. Later you can use that list of new concepts to decide what to work on when you're on the frisbee field. And that brings us to...

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Feedback and intention

So we've got our plan to play frisbee, and we've got our plan to study frisbee, but how do we turn skills we read about online into skills we can use in a game? As I said above, this skill transfer is never going to be as smooth as we'd like. It'll take time and frustration.

One key method in learning anything is feedback. Ask your coach for feedback. Ask your teammates for feedback. And of course, give yourself feedback. I've touched on self-feedback and developing new skills in a previous article, Playing pickup with intention. The main idea of that article is:

before getting on the field, choose a skill that you'd like to work on....Once you've chosen that skill, play pickup with the intention of looking for opportunities to use that skill.

Once you've chosen your intention, give yourself feedback on how it's going:

In between points, check in with yourself:

• Did you use the skill?

• If you used it, how did it go? (And what does that say about how you've been practicing this skill? Do you need to practice differently based on how it actually gets used in games?)

• Was there an opportunity in retrospect to use the skill but you didn't think to try it?

Spend a while to work on a new skill, and then once it's become automatic, choose a new skill from your list. Over time, your bag of tricks will slowly expand.

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Improve your skills

Improve your skills? Isn't this an article about improving your field sense? Yes, but the better you are at technical skills, the more brainpower you can devote to other tasks on the field. For example:

• The less active brainpower you need to use when catching, the more brainpower you can devote to thinking ahead about what you'll do with the disc once you catch it.

• The less you need to actively focus on just throwing an accurate pass, the more brainpower you can use figuring out who to throw to and where you want to go afterwards.

• The less you need to consciously think about your cutting footwork, the more brainpower you'll have available to figure where and when to cut.

• The more athletic you are, the more time you can spend thinking before you need to act.

One skill I'd especially like to single out for helping your field sense is footwork. Field sense requires you to see the field, and that's so much easier when your body and eyes are facing as much of the field as possible, as often as possible. Being skilled at running backwards and sideways makes it easier to move around the field without losing track of everything happening around you.

Playing frisbee will be a main source of your skill growth, but drills and throwing a whole lot will help you get there even faster.

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Learn how to learn

One tip I'd suggest to anyone trying to learn something new—whether on the frisbee field or in any other area of life—is to learn how to learn. There's been lots of research into how learning works, and using the most effective skill-acquisition methods will ease our learning journey.

I've previously written An introduction to the science of learning, for frisbee throwers to provide an introductory lesson on the topic. If you're interested in learning even more, I mention a few books about learning in that article.

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Play other sports and games

Getting good at other sports can help build up both your physical skills and your sports intuitions. Of course, there may not be time for this depending on how much you're playing frisbee—you still don't want to overload your body. Find a balance that works for you.

I've only been playing frisbee for ~6 years, but my experience in other sports has helped me quickly develop better field sense than most. One of the best woman-matching players in my local league has been playing for only 3-ish years, but likewise came from a strong background of basketball and soccer.

Even other types of gaming—board games, video games, etc—can be helpful. They will help you understand how "systems" work. There's a reason we have the phrase "gaming the system". Get good at understanding how to win, at whatever game you're playing. Then use those same mental skills on the frisbee field.

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Final thoughts

"Field sense" or "Frisbee IQ" is a hard concept to pin down. And in this article, I've avoided the question of "what is field sense?" and focused only on "how do I build field sense?" It’s hard to pin down, but it’s not impossible—some of the other articles and Reddit posts I've linked to will hopefully help answer that first question in the process of your research.

In summary:

• Work hard and be patient. It takes years

• Play frisbee, and study frisbee

• Play with intention, and constantly get feedback from yourself and others

• Improve your skills

• Learn how to learn

• Play other sports and games to develop your general "gaming sense"

Good luck on your journey!

(PS —if there’s anything that needs to be added to this article, feedback is always appreciated.)

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Update (2024-01-05):

There’s some good ideas in the comments below. I’d like to highlight Felix’s suggestion, which I’ll call:

Find ‘field-sense friendly frisbee’

It’ll be much harder to develop field sense if you only play frisbee with groups that have very rigid structure—e.g., always cutting from the back of the stack. Find frisbee communities where you’re encouraged to play with your brain. Playing mini instead of full-field 7-on-7 is usually great for this because teams won’t default to vertical stack quite so much. And if you can, encourage the structure-heavy teams you’re already playing for to move towards a style that better rewards field sense.