The box-out dump cut
Defenders HATE this one trick!
If you look online to learn how to dump cut, you'll consistently come across diagrams of a V-shaped cut. For example, you might find this video from RISE UP Ultimate with over 100K views:
Or you'll come across this video, also from RISE UP but this time featuring Mario O'Brien instead of Ben Wiggins:
I also recently found this blog post from a Johnny Bravo coach, after his recent article was posted to Ultiworld (here) and Reddit. Again, the V-cut:
At least in the articles and videos I was able to find, I didn't find a single one that explained the concept that I'm about to teach you. I hate clickbait, but this is actually kind of "ONE technique that they DON'T want you to know!" (I don't actually think anyone doesn't want you to know this. It's just a small technique that's easy to overlook and difficult to put into words.)
Dump cutting is not just about making a V-shaped cut. Elite players also commonly use what I'll call the "box-out dump cut". Positioning and boxing out your defender are more important for dump cutting than is usually appreciated. The box-out dump cut looks like this:
Start with a hard cut down the field to get your defender moving in that direction
Make a short, quick cut to get right behind your defender ("behind" = in the spot they just left, i.e. closer to the dump space than they are)
Now that you've boxed your defender out, make a hard cut to the dump space to receive the dump pass.
The usual coaching on dump cutting only includes the first and third steps— the V-shape. But a quick defender will often be able to jump the lane and shut down your dump cut. Adding the box-out as a second step makes jumping the lane much, much harder. Elite cutters understand this, as you'll see in the videos below.
The first step may be unnecessary when your defender is already downfield of you, but not boxed out. The first AND second steps may not be needed if your defender is downfield of you AND boxed out—you can just cut back for the disc. You'll see these variants since defenders sometimes want to play it safe and be sure to take away downfield cuts.
V-shaped cut with no box-out
The original idea for this article came when I wrote Walking before cutting. I used a few examples of dump cuts and from those clips I started to realize how much dump cutting could benefit from boxing out. I did already use the box-out dump cut in my own game, but I didn't have such a clear mental image of what exactly I was doing. Take a look at this play from an Arizona Sidewinders game that I highlighted in my previous article:
Although the pass is completed, the defender has a clear path to the disc and nearly causes a turnover. This cut is your classic V-shape, starting one way and then making a clean break to go another direction.
Some box-out dump cuts
Recent Player of the Year award winner Rowan McDonnell used the box-out cut in Truck Stop's national semifinal game against PONY. Watch here:
After driving hard downfield, he makes two direction changes. As highlighted in the GIF below, at the peak of his downfield motion, he plants his foot at the 45-yard line and a full step inside the hash marks. By the time he's cut back to the 43-yard line, his foot is on the outer edge of the hash marks. He's cut backwards about two yards and moved about one yard towards the sideline. Eventually he catches the disc at the 39-yard line, with his feet still on the edge of the hash marks.
So after first making a quick cut at a 2-to-1 angle towards the disc, boxing out the defender, he adjusts his angle straight backwards towards the dump space to get the pass. The GIF below highlights these three points:
So, the full box-out dump cut looks like this:
A good box-out cut take advantage of what you know about your defender's momentum. Since they're reacting to you, they'll keep moving downfield for a moment after you start cutting. So you can actually aim your box out cut right at their back foot, knowing that their momentum will take them further downfield before they can stop and adjust to your cut. Do it right, and your defender will stop but won't be able to accelerate back towards the dump space because you've put yourself in their path in the time it took them to stop. In the clip above, Rowan and his defender were at the 45-yard line at the same time. But because Rowan cut hard first, he was able to be at the 43-yard line boxing his defender out when the defender had only just turned around.
Another example: although RISE UP Ultimate likes to draw V-shaped arrows, the "preview" video for their Season 1 Episode 5 lesson has a good example of a box-out cut. Although Ben Wiggins's coaching voiceover suggests the reason the cut worked is because the cutter "got low", what they really should've been teaching you is that good dump cutters are using box-out cuts and not just V-shaped cuts. Watch as the cutter drives hard upfield, then cuts hard towards the sideline for about a step and a half (boxing out the defender) before cutting back into the dump space (clip is from 0:34 to 0:38 in the video):
Box-out cuts starting downfield
As I mentioned above, you can make a box-out cut without first driving hard downfield. This cut works in situations where your defender is already on your downfield side, or where you are already downfield but need to get open for a dump pass. Here are a couple small-ball maestros showing off their game.
First, here's John Randolph from the same game as the Rowan clip above. He starts at the front of the stack as the disc is tapped into play. This one's funny to me because it's just so obvious:
He gets in underneath the defender and forces them to stay on the downfield side, giving himself an easy path to the dump space. It looks like there's a bit more contact on this one than on any of the other examples here.
He made a similar cut earlier in the same point, again starting from the front of the stack. On both cuts, the defender starts out closer to the camera than he is (playing a "force backhand" technique), but he uses the box-out cut to get fully between them and the dump space before making a committed cut to the dump space:
This cut is a bit subtler, so I made another GIF to highlight the slight angle change. It's not as drastic, but since he's already close to the defender he doesn't need to make a large movement to fully box them out. It's typical for this to be a pretty subtle move, since if the defender is one stride away from you, it only takes a cut that's one stride long to be in position to box them out. It helps that his box-out cut is a hard fake across the field—the defender has to respect that and gets slightly off balance moving in that direction.
Finally, here's a great box-out cut from the downfield space by Manu Cardenas. There's two things I really LOVE about this cut.
The first thing I love is that when she doesn't get the disc on the first box-out move, she stops and boxes out the defender again. I'm not sure whether to call that second cut a box out, or a stop-and-go, or just a good fake. But the first box-out is pretty clear. Here's the video clip:
Again, it's pretty subtle but by tracking where her foot lands you can see the angle change:
The second thing I love about this example is that you can see the effect that the box-out has on the defender's strides. Watch again, and watch Opi Payne (the defender) as Manu makes her box-out cut. I suggest you hit the Settings icon in the YouTube video and set the Playback speed to 0.25x.
When Opi sees Manu start to accelerate, she also starts to lengthen her own strides. But Manu boxes her out, and she realizes she needs to slow down to avoid running into Manu. You can clearly see as she crosses the 30-yard line that she's forced to put her right foot down just next to her left foot. This shorter step slows her down a bit just as Manu is accelerating away.
Here's Opi taking a full stride:
And then as Manu gets to the space first, Opi is forced to take a very short step to avoid fouling Manu:
By first taking away the defender's path to cut off the pass, she makes it a much safer pass. Although we've usually thought of boxing out as something that happens when the disc is already in the air, these examples show how you can play the body position game before the pass is even released.
Playing safe and fair
I hope it's clear that by "box-out", I'm not suggesting that you need to play a more "physical" style of ultimate. You don't need to give people an elbow shiver to the chest and put your butt into their hips to box them out (That's how I learned to "box out" in high school basketball). Understanding Ultimate has a few good articles on boxing out, where he explains how boxing out can be something that happens without physicality—by being the first one to get to the spot that your defender would very much like to be in. Only one of the examples in this article involved any physical contact during the box out.
That being said, I do think using box-out techniques can lead to more contact. The cutter and defender are both interested in occupying the same space. Sometimes it'll be clear who's gotten there first. But every once in a while, both players may think they're going to get there first and they may bump into each other. Manu Cardenas is a relatively "physical" player, but I don't think it's because she plays
"cheap". She just understands how important boxing out is to getting open, and all of those little battles lead to a few more situations where people end up running into each other. She's also quick enough that she can get into a space at the last moment, and a slower defender doesn't have the reaction speed to slow down in time.
Wrapping up
As the last Manu Cardenas example highlights, boxing out is so powerful because if you're between the space where your defender is and where they want to be, they can't just accelerate straight ahead. They either need to let you move first (as the defender, Opi Payne, does in that video), or they need to accelerate around you. Going around you is dangerous for a defender because if they commit too hard, you can cut back upfield and leave them in the dust. It's also harder for them because they need to run a longer path — a curved path around you instead of a straight path to where they want to go.
Some parts of frisbee strategy go in and out of fashion, like whether to play a horizontal or vertical stack. But some skills are timeless: no matter where the trends of the game go, it'll always be a powerful skill to understand how to position yourself in space to make it hard for the defender to make a play.
Edit (2023-09-19): Long after posting this article, I did find a few sources that mention the idea of sealing off your defender. This RISE UP Ultimate video on the give-and-go discusses sealing your defender off from the space you’re cutting into. This Flik Ulti article seems to be making a similar point, although I can’t read it b/c I’m not a subscriber.
It’s good to see that this wasn’t a completely unknown technique, although I’m not sure they fully appreciated that this technique is effective in non give-and-go situations, as well. (To be fair, I’m guilty of this too, using “dump cut” in the title of this article. But the Manu Cardenas example above shows how this sealing can be used downfield as well. I may write a follow-up article one day to develop this further.)