Some Flow 2024 year in review
...
Some thoughts on how my past year went (mostly focused on frisbee). I write this for myself as much as I write it for y’all, so feel free to read it if you're curious or skip it if you're not!
Playing—overall, fitness:
(Combined these because how much I played depended to a big extent how my body felt)
I played three organized leagues in 2024:
Winter league (January to April 2024): My team lost by 2 in the finals after finishing 3rd (I think) out of 8 teams during the regular season.
Summer league (May to August 2024): Lost by a lot in semifinals after finishing 2nd out of 16 teams
Winter league (November 2024 to January 2025): Finished 1st out of 8 teams; playoffs start in January.
I also played a few one-day tournaments: Get Ho Ho Ho on Cape Cod in early December, and played part of the day at both Lemony Spring and Lemony Fall in Rhode Island (April and October respectively).
Overall, can't complain about 2024 from the perspective of team results—no championships so far, but my teams have been in contention.
I didn't play club in 2024. As I've written before, I didn't play any organized frisbee in 2023 in an attempt to rest away my injuries. So I came into 2024 feeling that my knees were generally healthier but that I was out of shape. The first few weeks of winter league in January/February were tough, but then I started to feel like I was getting up to speed. However, I also felt like, because my body wasn't used to the wear and tear of actually playing frisbee, I ended up with a lot of very minor injuries. Those injuries didn't keep me from playing once a week but kept me from working out outside of games to the extent that I'd want to.
The start of summer league felt like starting that acclimation process all over again. Playing longer games on a bigger field had my knees feeling extremely worn out during the first half of the summer league season. Winter league didn't prepared me for the longer sprints that are common on a full field. I didn't miss any games, but once again I wasn't really working out (with the exception of easy bike rides) outside of summer league games twice a week.
I started feeling a bit better later in the season and was able to fit a few workouts in between our Wednesday game and the next Monday.
The summer league semifinal, which my team lost badly, convinced me I needed to continue to improve my endurance. Playing in my 4th game of the day (games to 11 but still...), I was too tired to effectively defend the players I was matched up against. Improving that late-in-the-day endurance feels like an obvious goal for next time around.
During September and October I worked out relatively consistently, while also playing pickup 1-2 times per week. In November and December, I've been back in winter league. I've been able to workout *a bit* outside of frisbee, but have also dealt with a few minor injuries. (Not sure if it's just confirmation bias, but I've noticed I tend to get hurt more when the weather gets cold.)
So, fitness-wise, it's been a mixed bag. I've been able to play throughout the year without sustaining any injuries beyond minor tweaks, but I haven't been able to work out outside of frisbee as much as I imagine myself doing. I'll definitely be heading into 2025 in better shape than I was entering 2024, but I haven't improved as much as I might've liked to.
I began running again in 2024 after not doing so in 2023 (resting) or most of 2022 (already injured; playing through it but not able to work out much beyond that). I ran a mile in ~7 minutes when I started running again in January 2024. I got that down to ~6:20 by the start of summer league, but haven't made much progress since then (probably only ran once or twice during in June through the end of August. Have ran more since then but haven't done many timed miles). Post- summer league I've started doing more slow runs, and recently had a ~10 week streak of jogging 5 slow miles per week (2x2.5 miles). I'd like to build that number up slowly, though for now I've generally focused on making my hard workouts harder when I feel able to add more to my workout load.
I've chosen to focus more on "cardio" workouts because I worry a lot about the injury risks of increasing my explosiveness, especially if I do it too quickly (see here). So my short-to-medium-term plan is to continue working on my cardio (with some light lifting) until I get to to a point I'm happier with (sub-6-minute mile), after which I'll transition to slow doing a bit more explosive training.
Playing—skills/frisbee:
I feel pretty comfortable saying my frisbee skills are better than they've ever been. I'm not completely confident whether I'm the best at frisbee that I've ever been, as I was in much better shape in 2021/2022 than I was this past year. It's possible my skill growth made up for that and I was better in 2024 than I've ever been, but it's hard to say for certain. But I think I can say for certain that if I can continue making fitness progress, 2025 will be the best I've been (till now) as an overall frisbee player.
Some notes on my frisbee skills in 2024:
One frustration was that I dropped a lot of easy catches, especially in summer league. I think this was the result of a few factors:
Out of practice playing in games where I actually needed to focus, especially in conditions where I was hot & tired.
Trying to get better at "playing faster" has lead to more mistakes where I play too fast and don't actually take the time to catch the disc.
It would especially be a problem after nights where I hadn't slept well
I responded to this frustration by spending more time working on my catching skills (both the physical skills and re-training my brain to stay focused through the catch). I think this has mostly paid off, and I made less catching mistakes as the year went on. Having better stamina should also help me next year, as there'll be less situations where I'm impacted by fatigue. I also started consistently using chalk, mostly for throwing reasons but it might help marginally with catching as well.
I threw more pulls in summer league than ever before. I've improved a lot in this area. But there's also clear room for improvement—my good pulls are great but my bad pulls can be especially bad, with a few this year going way out of bounds when I didn't quite find the right edge. I'm happy with my improvement but also look forward to continuing to improve both my accuracy/consistency and continuing to slowly add distance.
This was the first year where I really started to feel comfortable throwing hammers. I could still use a little more precision on the longest hammers, which sometimes come out a little wobbly and end up turning over a little too much. But for short to intermediate distances, they're starting to feel like a real, consistent weapon.
I wrote about my forehand struggles earlier this year. I've continued to make progress with it, but also continue to generally favor lefty backhands when I'm playing 'for real'.
My other throws (e.g. lefty scoober, lefty backhand, righty backhand) have made slow and steady progress. I expect my throwing accuracy to continue to improve slowly as I continue to work on them. One thing I've noticed a few times lately is that I've been able to not just throw the disc to someone but to aim for, and successfully hit, a particular spot (e.g: I need to throw it a step outside their shoulder so the defender won't have a play on it). That's been a recent development that's made me feel optimistic about my progress. (Which is not to say that I haven't also thrown a few bad ones here and there!)
I threw more backhand hucks in summer league than I had in previous years. A few of them were quite nice, but there were also a few that were not that great. In 2025, I'd like to continue making progress towards improving that ratio. Using chalk (as mentioned above) should also help here.
I've noticed that perhaps one reason I don't huck as much is that I tend not to wait around for a deep cut to start if there's another open receiver available quickly. I think I play an effective offensive style, but perhaps holding on to the disc a bit longer would give me more opportunities to work on my deep throws.
For cutting/defense/field awareness, mentally I was as good in 2024 as I've ever been, but my (relative) lack of fitness meant that I maybe had a little more trouble getting D's / getting open than I'd like.
Overall, it feels like I've been practicing throwing less than I have in previous years. I think there are a few reasons that's happened:
It's easy to have somewhat less drive to improve now that I'm actually "pretty good"
I had some injuries, most notably some annoying elbow tendonitis in the first half of the year. Thankfully it's totally gone at this point.
I moved apartments in late 2023, and I'm now a bit further away from the nearest field, making it marginally harder to fit throwing sessions in.
I hope I'll be able to not let good be the enemy of great and continue putting the hours in to get to the next level.
Writing
I continued writing pretty consistently in 2024. If I'm counting right, this is my 50th post in 2024. It was easily my best year so far in terms of pageviews, with something like 35,000 pageviews (compared to ~20K in 2023). Interestingly, my best-ever single month was still November 2023—a post I shared on Reddit then did especially well.
My subscriber count more than doubled, and is slowly approaching 400. A big thanks to bettereveryday coaching and The Breakside—they both "recommend" me on Substack which is the source of a fair number of my new subscribers (I recommend them back!). I felt proud of myself when I noticed that the men's national championship game had someone on each team who's subscribed to my blog :)
I feel pretty good about the progress I've made, though at the same time it feels pretty small compared to, say Ultiworld having nearly 150,000 subscribers on YouTube. The good part of being small is I can give away all my secrets for free without worrying that everyone I play against will know all my tricks!
As I've said before, I try not to care too much about subscriber/view numbers, but they do serve as a proxy for what I do care about—helping people learn to play frisbee. But the feedback I've received in the form of comments/emails suggests that my posts have been helpful to people.
I'm a little sad I've gotten out of the habit of posting longer book reviews (I did post some shorter reviews). There's a few books I've already finished that I'd like to write longer reviews of, but I keep ending up working on other things instead.
I have mixed feelings about the amount of time I've spent writing. I've generally spent less time writing than the goals I set for myself, and I often mildly feel that I'm letting myself down. But even though I don't meet my personal goals, the time that I have been able to spend writing has added up slowly & steadily, and in total I've been able to post a lot (roughly once/week for the past ~1.5 years).
Coaching
I continued coaching a local university B team throughout 2024. I think there have been some clear ups (seeing players develop new skills, for example) and some clear downs (the common B team struggle of getting everyone to come to practice, for example). I don't feel comfortable going into too much detail here, so I won't, but let's just say coaching frisbee has been and hopefully will continue to be an important part of my frisbee experience.
Life outside of frisbee
Life has been reasonably good, and quite steady, lately. To be honest, right now I think I'm in the (probably very small) group of people who would benefit from more stress in their life.
Here area few random notes on the non-frisbee stuff:
I've made some new friends, fallen out of touch with a few others, and reconnected with a few friends from my past. (Again...pretty steady overall.) I could definitely be better at texting people back quickly.
I read just over 30 books this year. That's a bit below my long-term average, and similar to last year's total. I think I'm generally feeling less excited by books than I was 5-10 years ago, as it slowly gets harder to find a book that feels totally new. Starting sometime in 2023 and continuing into this year, I've been watching YouTube videos a lot more than I was previously (aside from watching frisbee content, Cracking the Cryptic, Gotham Chess/Eric Rosen, and Will Anderson are some go-to options—I'm really into games, I guess).
Sleep may end up being a big development this year. I finally got sufficiently fed up with my struggles falling asleep and, in May or so, fully committed to figuring out how to do it better. The summer and fall had some ups and downs but since the beginning of November I've rarely had trouble falling asleep. The cooler temperatures have helped, so I won't be surprised if I have a bit more trouble again once it warms up, but I know I've made good progress here (i.e. I'm also doing better than I was last winter).
The only downside is that, to some extent, I've traded trouble falling asleep for trouble waking up too easily in the morning. I often wake up an hour or two before my alarm and have some trouble getting back to sleep quickly. I still think this is an improvement over my previous problem—first of all, because I do think I'm averaging a bit more sleep than I used to, and secondly, because "being slightly tired but consistently falling asleep and waking up at the same time" feels a lot more reasonable than "being slightly tired but sometimes not falling asleep until 4am".
But if, going forward, I can figure out how to solve my problem of waking up too much in the morning, I'll have fully fixed a challenge that's plagued me my whole adult life.
I'll probably write a longer post about my sleep some day.
My houseplants did well this year.
It was not a year of much experimentation diet-wise. I mostly ate the same few meals over and over again. I'd like to get back to trying more new recipes. I actually don't get bored at all with my repetitive diet, I think it tastes great; I just think there are various benefits to being more adventurous.
In the spring I started a morning walk habit (related to my goal of sleeping better), which I've been able to mostly continue through the year.
My finances have been solid, aided by the stock market doing well this year. My total expenses for the year were a touch over 13,000 USD. (I've started writing about my finances multiple times, but have never gotten a post to the point I wanted to post it.)
I continued my Chinese study, slowly and steadily. (I'm currently reading Harry Potter in Chinese. No, the anagram-based plot twist in Book 2 doesn't translate well.)
At 33, my body still doesn't really feel like it's getting old. My knees, which have been through 3 ACL surgeries and various other smaller injuries, do feel "old"—but they also felt that way when I was 22. The rest of my body just feels "normal", and is essentially free of aches & pains. Maybe I get dinged up slightly easier than I used to? But for the most part, aside from my knees, nothing feels any worse than it did when I was much younger.
Mistakes made / lessons learned:
I wore out the tread on my hiking boots by wearing them for workout hikes on city streets; hiking boots will be saved for hiking from now on.
As mentioned above, not exactly a "mistake", but I did realize I need to be in better shape endurance-wise if I want to make it through multiple games in a day at a tournament
(Also as mentioned above) I learned that I need to be less cavalier about catching, and really make sure I stay focused & catch every pass.
I need to continue to get better at having those types of conversations that feel a little awkward as they're happening but make things more comfortable in the long-run.
On the coaching side, I want to do a better job in future years of talking with the captains before the season to make sure we're on the same page about expectations & responsibilities.
Hopes/expectations for 2025:
Playing:
I'm looking forward to being fit enough to play frisbee and workout consistently outside of frisbee. Fingers crossed, I'd like to get back to my 2021 levels of fitness.
I'm tentatively planning to play Masters Nationals—I'm excited to play with some friends I don't usually get to play with.
Assuming no serious injuries, I'll be playing some combination of club/summer league. Exactly what that'll look like, I haven't decided yet. I'd definitely like to play club at some point before I "retire", but after 3 ACL surgeries I think I'm always going to prioritize my knee health & not commit to the most intense stuff unless I really feel confident.
Fitness-wise, I'm hoping to get back to running sub-6-minute miles for the first time since early 2022.
Blogging:
On the blogging side, I highly suspect I'll stop posting once a week sometime before the end of 2025. For one, there's only so many things you can say about frisbee strategy. And for two, I expect I'll want to spend more time focusing on other parts of my life (both in and out of frisbee).
But I expect to continue to slowly post new stuff even once I'm no longer posting on a regular schedule.
I've also thought about branching out a bit, e.g. by making videos based on some of my posts.
Coaching:
There may be some new opportunities in 2025 (joining a new coaching staff? Doing some one-on-one coaching?), but nothing is definite yet.
I haven't been coaching for that long, so I think there's still lots of room for improvement & I look forward to continuing that growth
Happy new year & best wishes in 2025~
I hope you don’t feel too down about your writing because that was the most inspiring part! I’m hoping for an even better writing year for both of us this coming year. Thanks again for the support.