I think vert stack guides us away from developing field sense by trying to predetermine where active/open space and inactive/dead space is on the field. For players who have never played another field sport before this can be a useful shortcut, but in order to develop a skill it must be tested often, and while vert / side stack tries to remove these tests for the player, spread offences throw players in at the deep end - asking them to constantly assess the field situation to determine which areas they should move towards/away from (meaning they are constantly developing their field sense).
One thing that helped me develop field awareness and wasn't (I think) mentioned (at least not specifically) is to learn what's good (and more importantly) what's BETTER on the field, kind of - what's the priority?
For example, for offense, an obvious goal is to score (I think about it as a "1-time goal"), but the underlying condition is to retain possession (a "constant goal").
So we need to retain possession and advance on the field to make a score. Understanding what's behind "advancing" is kind of like a "frisbee iq" for me and "frisbee iq" translates to just making better decisions (while playing).
A decision to advance a disc must first satisfy our constant goal - retaining possesion (we do so by measuring the risk, which is an important skill as well).
So, a specific tip I'd give someone who wants to develop field awareness is to focus on seeing the priorities and to judge the decisions they (and other people) do - knowing which action is the best (gives us the best outcome) =(imo)= game IQ.
That's a good point. You say 'not mentioned specifically' and I'd agree with that. I think technically I do mention it because I encourage people to read my other articles. But maybe it's important enough to explicitly mention in this article. hmmm
Nice. The question in the title is a crucially important one (for players and coaches) and I think everything you said about it makes sense. It did make me think, though, about more concrete/specific ways that players can be working on improving their field sense while playing. Not just, for example, "keep playing and you'll get better" (though that is certainly true and important), but "what exactly to be thinking about and trying to do while playing that will help improve field sense". Maybe this could be a topic for a future post? I'll share some half-baked preliminary ideas:
* On offense, focus on throwing the disc sooner (at lower stall count, ideally zero) because this requires you to have better vision and awareness of potential next throwing options before catching it.
* Again on offense, when you don't have the disc, pick a teammate and anticipate when/where they will receive it and make sure to be open for an immediate next throw from them when they do. This means you're committing to *not* getting open right now yourself (which maybe isn't the best thing in general) but I think for this purpose it'd be helpful because you'll be in a more observant (but still purposeful) mindset: watching what's happening and anticipating when your designated teammate will get the disc and setting up to already be getting open for them when they do.
* On defense, the thing I see most often that gets in the way of field awareness is people being too close to, and too narrowly focused on, the one person they are guarding. So while it is of course sometimes necessary to be close to the person you're defending, a good way to work on improving field awareness is to just deliberately be further away from your person. And to have some concrete goal (that being further away from your person and hence having better big-picture vision will help you achieve) you could be looking to call for and make switches with teammates when situations occur where that would be mutually beneficial (which generally is way more often than people actually do it).
Anyway, those were the first 3 things that jumped to mind...
Thanks for writing all that up! I agree it's worth thinking about more. I may make a post focused on that someday, but I also feel like I've written about similar topics so much that it might feel too repetitive to talk about the same things from the slightly new angle you're suggesting (this post itself already felt a bit repetitive).
I didn't mention it in this post but some of your ideas are similar to one of the comments I left on the linked Reddit posts. See here:
"Don't just "play more ultimate", but play more ultimate while challenging yourself and giving yourself feedback in ways that would develop your vision.
Don't just play frisbee with no particular purpose. Set yourself some mental challenges each point you play. On offense, you could challenge yourself when you have the disc to look at three different options before the mark gets to stall 5. On defense, challenge yourself to look more often at the cutters you aren't guarding without losing your own matchup. On O or on D, challenge yourself to make eye contact w/ your teammates more often.
Then after the point, grade yourself on how you did. Bring a notebook and leave it on the sideline if you need to. Be intentional and give yourself feedback."
Your descriptions are a little more detailed than mine were, which I appreciate :) But we're once again thinking along the same lines...
Yes, shocking. =) I definitely like and agree with what you said in the reddit thread.
BTW, another thing that will not be shocking, I 100% agree with Felix's comment. Probably the simplest and best way to get people working on their field sense and awareness and "IQ" is to remove the pre-scripted structure and instead just give a big-picture instruction like "spread out, get open when you can, but also don't get in other people's way"...
I think vert stack guides us away from developing field sense by trying to predetermine where active/open space and inactive/dead space is on the field. For players who have never played another field sport before this can be a useful shortcut, but in order to develop a skill it must be tested often, and while vert / side stack tries to remove these tests for the player, spread offences throw players in at the deep end - asking them to constantly assess the field situation to determine which areas they should move towards/away from (meaning they are constantly developing their field sense).
That's a good point, thanks Felix. I'll think about how I want to work it in to the article.
One thing that helped me develop field awareness and wasn't (I think) mentioned (at least not specifically) is to learn what's good (and more importantly) what's BETTER on the field, kind of - what's the priority?
For example, for offense, an obvious goal is to score (I think about it as a "1-time goal"), but the underlying condition is to retain possession (a "constant goal").
So we need to retain possession and advance on the field to make a score. Understanding what's behind "advancing" is kind of like a "frisbee iq" for me and "frisbee iq" translates to just making better decisions (while playing).
A decision to advance a disc must first satisfy our constant goal - retaining possesion (we do so by measuring the risk, which is an important skill as well).
So, a specific tip I'd give someone who wants to develop field awareness is to focus on seeing the priorities and to judge the decisions they (and other people) do - knowing which action is the best (gives us the best outcome) =(imo)= game IQ.
(sounds like OODLES of OODA's a bit hahah)
That's a good point. You say 'not mentioned specifically' and I'd agree with that. I think technically I do mention it because I encourage people to read my other articles. But maybe it's important enough to explicitly mention in this article. hmmm
Nice. The question in the title is a crucially important one (for players and coaches) and I think everything you said about it makes sense. It did make me think, though, about more concrete/specific ways that players can be working on improving their field sense while playing. Not just, for example, "keep playing and you'll get better" (though that is certainly true and important), but "what exactly to be thinking about and trying to do while playing that will help improve field sense". Maybe this could be a topic for a future post? I'll share some half-baked preliminary ideas:
* On offense, focus on throwing the disc sooner (at lower stall count, ideally zero) because this requires you to have better vision and awareness of potential next throwing options before catching it.
* Again on offense, when you don't have the disc, pick a teammate and anticipate when/where they will receive it and make sure to be open for an immediate next throw from them when they do. This means you're committing to *not* getting open right now yourself (which maybe isn't the best thing in general) but I think for this purpose it'd be helpful because you'll be in a more observant (but still purposeful) mindset: watching what's happening and anticipating when your designated teammate will get the disc and setting up to already be getting open for them when they do.
* On defense, the thing I see most often that gets in the way of field awareness is people being too close to, and too narrowly focused on, the one person they are guarding. So while it is of course sometimes necessary to be close to the person you're defending, a good way to work on improving field awareness is to just deliberately be further away from your person. And to have some concrete goal (that being further away from your person and hence having better big-picture vision will help you achieve) you could be looking to call for and make switches with teammates when situations occur where that would be mutually beneficial (which generally is way more often than people actually do it).
Anyway, those were the first 3 things that jumped to mind...
Thanks for writing all that up! I agree it's worth thinking about more. I may make a post focused on that someday, but I also feel like I've written about similar topics so much that it might feel too repetitive to talk about the same things from the slightly new angle you're suggesting (this post itself already felt a bit repetitive).
I didn't mention it in this post but some of your ideas are similar to one of the comments I left on the linked Reddit posts. See here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ultimate/comments/11m9yau/deleted_by_user/jbgws91/
I wrote:
"Don't just "play more ultimate", but play more ultimate while challenging yourself and giving yourself feedback in ways that would develop your vision.
Don't just play frisbee with no particular purpose. Set yourself some mental challenges each point you play. On offense, you could challenge yourself when you have the disc to look at three different options before the mark gets to stall 5. On defense, challenge yourself to look more often at the cutters you aren't guarding without losing your own matchup. On O or on D, challenge yourself to make eye contact w/ your teammates more often.
Then after the point, grade yourself on how you did. Bring a notebook and leave it on the sideline if you need to. Be intentional and give yourself feedback."
Your descriptions are a little more detailed than mine were, which I appreciate :) But we're once again thinking along the same lines...
Yes, shocking. =) I definitely like and agree with what you said in the reddit thread.
BTW, another thing that will not be shocking, I 100% agree with Felix's comment. Probably the simplest and best way to get people working on their field sense and awareness and "IQ" is to remove the pre-scripted structure and instead just give a big-picture instruction like "spread out, get open when you can, but also don't get in other people's way"...
OK I might have changed my mind about not writing a post about it...