Stop-and-Go
Why the stop-and-go move is so underrated
Most of us have heard of stop-and-go moves, but I couldn't find anywhere on the frisbee internet that they're explained in all their glory (you may have noticed I really like overexplaining things). This Ultiworld article was the closest I found, and it's not that close (it's not trying to be, it focuses on a different subject).
Here's my breakdown of why the stop-and-go move is very underrated.
Every time you stop you give yourself a chance to get open
If you've found my blog, you've probably read my previous post, Accelerate as fast as you possibly can. The summary of that article is that the cutter has a big advantage when they accelerate quickly. Humans have non-zero reaction time and the defense has to react to the offense.
Cutters generate separation at the beginning of their cuts—when they have started moving quickly but their defenders aren't up to speed yet. When two equally fast players are running full speed, the cutter isn't increasing their separation. But the same cutter can generate separation from the same defender by accelerating from a low speed to full speed.
Since separation happens when the cutter and defender are accelerating, you should slow down as much as possible and not just a little bit. The longer this acceleration phase lasts, the more separation you can generate. And it lasts as long as possible when the difference between your starting speed and ending speed is as big as possible—so start at zero speed! (But all changes of speed will have this effect, and smaller speed changes have their place in cutting, too.)
In short, every time you stop you are creating a new opportunity to accelerate and get open. Didn't beat your defender after the first three steps of your upline cut? Come to an immediate stop and try again.
The stop-and-go cut in the video above (Jimmy Mickle in the 2022 WUCC Finals) is a great example of how stopping gets you open. (Check out the diagram below if you’re not sure which cut to look for.) He first makes a hard under cut and he's guarded closely even though he's running pretty hard. But when he stops and accelerates again, he gets more separation than he ever had when he was running hard. Slowing down got him more separation than continuing to run fast!
Time your cut to your thrower's readiness
Stopping can be useful to time your cut to what your thrower is ready for. Take a look at this play that I used as an example in a previous article, from 2022 USAU Nationals (you can skip ahead to about 18 seconds into the video):
The cutter makes a hard cut up the line, and the throw is open...
...but by the time the thrower has pivoted across their body and moved the disc from a forehand grip to a backhand grip, the cutter has gone too far downfield and the quick upline pass won't work:
Turning this cut into a stop-and-go move would give the cutter time to communicate with the thrower, and give the thrower time to start their pivot. The cutter can slow down, make eye contact with the thrower, give a little hand wave into the open space, and then finally accelerate into the cut. The thrower would know what's coming and be able to react more quickly.
The following stop-and-go cut from Yina Cartagena showcases perfect timing in multiple ways (she's the one who catches the first pass—watch the first throw and then rewind the video to find where she comes from):
First, she times herself with the thrower in exactly the way I would've liked to see in the example above. If she hadn't stopped, she would've been making her upline cut while the thrower was pivoted in the other direction pump faking the dump pass. Stopping gave the thrower time to finish their pump fake motion and get ready for Cartagena's upline cut.
As an added bonus, the downfield defender clears out of the space she wants to cut into just before she makes her move. The way she times her cut perfectly with both the thrower and the downfield defense is masterful.
Defenders don't take advantage when you slow down
So stopping is beneficial in multiple ways, but there's one obvious issue: if the cutter slows down, the defender could keep moving fast enough to get on the downfield side of the cutter and take away the upline cut (in a situation like the two above).
This is true. But upline stop-go moves still work because not many defenders do this. Of course the defense's thought process should be: my person slowed down? How can I get in the perfect position to help my team? But in reality, their typical thought process is: my person slowed down? I'll slow down too.
Even though slowing down should take away the advantage you have over the defense, in most cases the defense won't make use of that advantage you've offered them.
Of course, defenders won't always fail to notice when they're in a poor position. Most defenders are smart enough to know that they need to run hard and catch up when you have them beat badly. If you have 5 yards of separation and slow down, they're going to try to close the gap:
But most defenders don't adjust their positioning to just the threat of an upline cut. If your defender is a step closer to the dump space than you are, but they should be a step closer to the endzone than you are—they're probably not going to make that adjustment. They're going to slow down when you slow down:
We saw an example of this in Cartagena's upline cut above. Here's another example. In both cases, I want to stress first that it's hard to distinguish between "a defensive lapse" and "a team's game plan". So take this analysis with a grain of salt—in reality, this specific example might have been a calculated choice by the defense, but it also highlights a way that many people do often play suboptimally on defense.
Watch San Francisco Fury's Opi Panye in this clip from the 2022 National Championship game:
At the start of the point, Opi is staying on the downfield side of Manu Cardenas:
Manu makes a quick move downfield (at 8:00 in the video), and gets on the deep side of Opi. When Manu slows down again, Opi has the option to keep her speed and get back on the deep side of Manu. But instead, she slows down too:
Again there's a chance this was the game plan — "take away the under cut when Manu's downfield, but take away the upline cut when she's in the dump space". But it highlights a real situation—defenders don’t take advantage of a cutter slowing down to improve their positioning, because as long as they're "close enough" they don't challenge themselves to get in the optimal position.
This defensive tendency makes stop-and-go moves all the more powerful. You can slow down and still maintain a positional advantage over your defender.
Moving slower makes the throwing window bigger
When a thrower is releasing a throw to you as a cutter, it's easier to complete a pass if you're NOT moving as fast as you can.
I've found this to be somewhat counterintuitive for some people. We're trained to "cut hard", so how could there be benefits from not going all out? But if you are comfortable with cutting skills like accelerating, boxing out, and quickly reading the disc in the air, there are huge benefits to slowing down a bit in certain situations.
Consider an upline cut, where you've generated ~3 feet of separation from your defender:
Situation 1: You're running full speed. (For example, you started your cut far from the thrower, and you've already reached full speed when thrower releases the pass.)
What if the thrower overthrows you? It'll be a turnover, because you can't run any faster than you're currently running!
And what if the thrower underthrows you? It's probably a turnover here, too. First of all, it's hard to slow down quickly because you're going so fast. And second, the defender is also running full speed right behind you—the thrower underthrowing you is a perfect pass to the defense.
In general, if the cutter has a slight separation from the defender at full speed, it has to be a perfect throw to avoid a turnover.
Situation 2: You're not at max speed. (For example, you've just started the "go" of your stop-and-go cut.)
If there's an overthrow: you can speed up to reach the disc.
If there's an underthrow: There's the risk of a turnover, but since you're not at full speed, you'll more quickly be able to slow down and box out the oncoming defender. (And since the defender is also not at full speed, there's less risk of an injury or offensive foul from them running into you when you slow down.)
Not being at full speed gives us more options (we can speed up; we can slow down to box out), and because of that, the thrower has a much bigger space where they can put the disc and still end up with a completed pass.
In other words, stop-and-go moves allow us to generate our separation at the time and place where it's most beneficial. When you generate separation immediately before the pass, you'll have both separation and the lower speeds that allow you to adjust to the pass. If you generate separation too long before the pass is released, you're forced to continue accelerating if you want to keep that separation. You could say that for a given amount of separation, it's often better to be moving at a relatively slower pace.
So how does this advice find balance with the advice that we should "cut hard"? As I've written, you should accelerate as fast as possible. But what you don't need to do is to run as fast as possible all the time. Once you and the defense are both running fast, you're not open, and you should stop and try again.
Another key to when we should slow down is when the pass is about to be released (like in the example I described above). There's uncertainty because we don't know exactly where the pass will go. Avoiding our top speed gives us the flexibility to accelerate, decelerate, or change direction once we know where the disc is going. We don't want to be stuck going our fastest when we don't know where the disc is going to end up. But once it's in the air, we can go all out to reach it.
Stopping really quickly is its own cut
I'll keep this short since it's covered in the Ultiworld article I linked above. Sometimes, you don't even need the "and-go" part of the stop-and-go move. You'll sometimes get open just by stopping, if your defender isn't able to stop as quickly as you. ("Decelerate as fast as you possibly can"!)
When the defense gets used to your upline cuts, you can stop quickly in the middle of the cut. When the defense gets used to that, you burn them with the stop-and-go.
[Update [2024-10-25]: I eventually wrote another article to highlight more examples of this: Getting open by stopping.]
In Summary
Stop-and-go moves have a number of advantages that make them really hard to defend against:
Every time we stop, we have a new opportunity to accelerate away from our defender
Stopping lets us time our cut with our thrower or other factors on the field (like a defender in the area we want to cut to)
Moving slower when the pass is released gives us much more flexibility to adjust to imperfect throws
Stopping really quickly can itself be a way to get open
Even though stopping theoretically gives the defense a moment to catch up, they often won't take advantage
Add the stop-and-go to your toolkit if you haven't already!
Edit (2023-08-17):
Here’s a stop-and-go move I liked from the USA vs. Japan gold medal match in the 2016 WUGC. Watch the cutter who scores the goal ~10 seconds after the video starts:
And here’s a similar one from Cheryl Hsu in the 2023 WUL season:
[Added on 2024-02-19]:
Here’s a great stop-and-go move from Brown’s Jacques Nissen in early 2024. The slight change of direction towards downfield forces his defender to respond and then he starts cutting towards the sideline again while his defender is moving in the wrong direction. It’s a good example of some of the factors discussed above: stopping and restarting to generate separation allows him to catch the disc further from the sideline than he would have if he ran at a full sprint the whole way. And his lower speed makes him an easier target for the thrower.
Update [2024-10-25]:
Here’s a stop-and-go move I love from Levke Walczak:
Having trouble getting open on your under cut from the back of the stack? Just…stop, then start running again.