4. I’m an Ultimate player form Poland. I started my off-season workout 2 months ago. I practice in the gym times a week, yoga 1-2 week, and I play some indoor Ultimate once a week. Should I practice more specifically? For example: only ABS on Monday and than on Tuesday backs, etc.? How many exercises, sets and reps you recommend? – Mac
TIM MORRILL
Lift full body every session: 2 – 3 x per week, address full body power, leg strength, upper body push, upper body pull, core movement. Though your body may be sore the next time you lift, pushing through the soreness is the only way to adapt. Train movements, not muscles. Training individual body parts is for body builders, not athletes.
TYLER KINLEY
Ditch the single-muscle-group exercises, & Core Core Core. I generally like lifts that incorporate as much of your body as possible to maximize your time in the gym. I don’t like bicep curls for this reason– lots of time, just for your beach muscles. Instead, do chinups, which work much, much more. In addition, I think your core — your abs and back — might be the most important muscle group in terms of building other strength and remaining healthy– I recommend doing core work every trip to the gym. Finally, I highly recommend the squat, deadlift, and freeweight shoulder strengthening, since shoulders are often overlooked and are a major piece of ultimate (especially in regards to injury prevention).
MELISSA WITMER
I don’t recommend doing exercises that target the small muscles like biceps and triceps. I personally do upper body, lower body splits in the early off season. So my week would look like Monday-legs, Tuesday-upper body, Thursday-legs, Friday -upper. For my leg workouts I try to strike a balance between exercises where I’m bending a lot in the knees (squats and lunges) and those where I’m bending more in the hips (deadlifts, pull throughs, hip lifts). For upper body workouts, you want to balance pushing (bench press, pushups) with pulling (chin ups, db rows). I also do core work at the beginning of every strength training session.
CRAIG COOPER
Body part splits don’t exist in real Strength Training. If you are training for Strength, then you consider the types of Movements that you want to include to make you stronger, not the body parts that you want to work. Besides, the body doesn’t work in parts, it works as a whole.
5. What are some good lifts/exercises to increase flexibility and help stabilize the hips and knees, basically with the goal of helping to extend my break throws/prevent injury? And that can compliment the Olympic lifts. -Geoff
TIM MORRILL
Front squat. It complements the clean, stabilizes your hips/ knees and develops mobility at the hips.
TYLER KINLEY Mobility… Stretch! For hip mobility, stretch stretch stretch. Spend 20 minutes after a gym workout just stretching your hips/legs. Try this: Facing forward, try to spread your feet as far as possible– use your hands on the ground to help balance once you get far. Take deep breaths, allow yourself to sink further.
Now, once you’re about as far as possible, try to turn your upper body to face the right, rotating your hips, and now stretching different muscles. It’s hard, but take your time. Your back leg will probably be slightly bent– that’s fine. Try to support your weight without your hands. Now bend your front leg and see if you can move forward slightly, still supporting your weight and balancing. Then return to face forward and repeat on the other side.
Finally, standing up straight, lunge one foot forward as far as possible with a straight back leg, and extend your upper body down towards the ground, such that your goal is to extend your shoulder below your knee. This will also stretch your hip nicely and help extension on low break throws.
MELISSA WITMER
Make sure you’re doing some mobility work to increase you movement quality and balance. In addition to that, there are about a million lunge variations to work with that can help. Start with simple split stance lunges and work from there.
For shoulder protection I do a lot of pulling exercises like chin ups and rows. It’s important to do these at a full range of motion and imagine squeezing your shoulder blades together at the end of each rep to really get at the smaller muscles. I also do the traditional YTWL series occasionally.
CRAIG COOPER
The low-bar Back Squat for most of what ails you.
Pressing (overhead) will help with most shoulder problems.
Bonus Questions
As a captain of a team, how do you help young players get confidence in their abilities despite their lack of experience. Also, how can the leaders of a team criticize their players so they can improve without making them feel bad about themselves and lose confidence? – Zack
TIM MORRILL
As a captain, you are a coach. Everyone has a different coaching style that is reflective of your personality. Use the “pick them up before you put them down” principle. Give one good comment, then expand on their weakness. “Man you have an awesome low release back hand, but if you cuff that disc into your wrists you can throw the high releases, let’s try it”. Also, read books on leadership.
I’m a player who tore his ACL this summer (surgery in June) and I’ve been going to PT pretty regularly but can still see a noticeable difference between the size of my quads and my extension. Are there any exercises I should be doing at home to improve my extension or exercises in the gym that would target one quad? – Stefan D.
TYLER KINLEY
Make stretching fun: The frequency you stretch that quad will be the main key in improving extension. Stretch it all the damn time. Stretch it now. Make a game of it. Whenever you see the color blue, or whenever someone says car, or whenever you check your watch, stretch, and count how many times, and try to break your own record.
Quad strengthening: As for strengthening your quad, it will depend on where you are in your recovery, but early on I did single leg squats onto a seat so that if it was too hard I could simply sit down (and I began by only sitting, not standing back up, I was too weak). As you progress, begin doing step-ups onto a platform with one leg, then add dumbells into your hands. Perform single leg squats on an inflated cushion for stability. As you progress further, begin walking stairs, then running stairs, then running stairs with a weighted backpack. There are an infinite number of things you can do– be creative. Think about the movement you want to train and the muscle group, and look for ways to work it out. Finally, ask your PT for advice!
* My VMO (the tear drop muscle at the lower inner part of your quad, above your kneecap) was difficult to strengthen, and to even get to fire properly for a while during my recovery. I found it effective to watch TV, and simply hold my leg out straight and flex my quad hard, all the while touching that muscle to make sure it fired. Just this simple exercise can make a big difference in training your body to behave the way it’s supposed to after a traumatic injury/surgery.
What are your opinions on using weight resistance on throws. I have been faking slowly with a 10 pound weight and working core to increase the distance on my throws. Is this okay? what else should I do to increase my throws? – Dave
MELISSA WITMER
It’s good that you’re thinking about how to make your training more sports specific. However, part of specificity is the speed at which motion occurs. Ten pounds is far to much to be loading in a faking motion and there won’t be much transfer to your faking skills if you are faking slowly. Even when baseball players use weighted balls in their throwing training, the weights of the balls used are not so different that they will affect the mechanics of throwing. I’d use the same principle when adding load to faking or throwing in Ultimate. You could try experimenting with a heavier discs for throwing or faking motions. Alternatively, you could train for general upper body power with medicine ball throws. Most likely you’ll get the greatest increase in throwing distance simply by practicing throwing as far as you can.
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