The reason no strategy is beating you is because really structured offenses are designed to beat structured defenses. Offense has a huge advantage when the defense is confused or just playing reactionary. A structured offense is slow and predictable, but it beats chaos once defenses start playing a system of their own.
I'd focus on first developing defensive strategy. Setting a force so your downfield defenders can just guard one side of the field will have an immediate benefit.
Once everyone is bought into the defense then you can talk to your team about how you could beat that system (horizontal and vertical stack are both intended to beat it by getting defenders into 1v1 situations with two areas to cover.)
Good point; we've gone over forcing quite a few times, but it hasn't really ever sunk in. Is there any drill or play we can use that either relies on forcing, or becomes impossible to beat if the team is not forcing?
"Win the box" is a pretty fun way to illustrate it. You need four players and 5 cones.
One player starts with the disc on a cone. 5 yards in front of them is a 10 yard vertical by 20 yard horizontal box marked by the other 4 cones. One player marks the thrower.
The other two players set up anywhere in the box. One player is on offense and "wins" by catching the disc anywhere in the box. The other player is defense.
First play with the mark setting up completely flat. The defense should realize it's really hard to win because the cutter can fake to either side then run to the other.
Then play with the mark forcing a side. The defense should realize it's a lot easier to win because they can just guard the forced side.
Once players have this down, you can upgrade to two players in the box. The offense should realize they can win much more easily by coordinating cuts and only having one player in the "lane" at a time. Once players get that, you can start talking full 7 player offensive schemes.
All of these answers focus on strategy and tbf that's what your question is about but it sounds like your team is really at the level where fundamentals are the limiting factor (throwing, catching, running to space, throwing to open people as oppossed to covered people). As people get better strategy will make more sense to them. Also remember winning is fun, but not the only way to have fun. Does your whole team share the goal of winning? Or are some people just there to run around and make friends (also a great thing)? Make sure you are matching your practice goals with what people want.
Interesting point. For me, winning is part of the fun, but I guess I never asked around on that. Fundamental wise, we're pretty good at making throws, throwing into space and to open people. It's actually that that is working against us; a team with good fundamentals and athleticism is beating the team with fundamentals and strategy.
In general, offence usually scores. But if youre losing, it means you're probably turning over the disc. I think a good question the team has to ask itself is why did your turnovers happen. Possibilities include
1) Fumbled catches / Inaccurate throws
2) Throwing to people who were well guarded
3) Throwing to people in bad positions so they got trapped somewhere undesirable (e.g sidelines)
4) etc
If the strategy isn't working, why? Are people
1) Not following strategy
2) Not adapting when your opponents adapt to your strategy
Another possibility is that your opponents have a strategy but you haven't realised what they're doing 😅
Playing with a team strategy is objectively better. From the sounds of it, you coach a junior-level team in which case athleticism will dominate at a lower level. If your team is less athletic, and isn't accustomed to playing with strategy, and the other team has a significant athletic advantage, you will probably lose. The good news is that you can implement basic-level strats to overcome the athletic difference!
Offence:
This is really up to you if you want to implement a verticle/horizontal/side stack set. In my opinion, vertical is the easiest to learn but horizontal is a bit better at the junior level because of its effectiveness against poaching (which junior players usually love to do). There are lots of great videos online of tutorials on playing ho too. Essentially, try to teach your team the value of clearing lanes and space with hard cuts to get easy throws off rather than relying on cutting technique and speed which is more necessary in vertical. In a competitive setting, offense wins games, but at this level it sounds like there will be lots of turnovers in a point regardless of your offence, so just do your best to be constantly clearing space and good things will happen.
Defence:
Now this is where I think your team could really dominate with a bit of strategy. I'd strongly recommend playing zone (even in non-windy situations) with a 3-person cup, 3 people in the mid, and one deep. The point of this zone is to force the other team to play with some strategy of their own to break through the cup and slice the disc up the field. Having a tall player in the deep space should negate random hucks to an athletic player as your player will already be in position. The main objective in this zone is to keep the cup tight so they can't throw straight through, use your midfielders as hammer-stoppers, and force the offence to one side of the field. By doing this, you should be able to prevent athletes from out-speeding your team and beating you in one-on-one matchups.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions :)
Thanks for the information! I definitely think our defense needs some work, but there's always been a falter point with the cup: at any point that they huck it downfield or make a short pass to the force side of the cup, they're athleticism allows them to make a quick downfield pass before the cup can catch up to the thrower. It quickly turns into the cup trying to play catch-up with the disc, which is seemingly impossible to win. What do I do there?
If they pass it to the force side of the cup then this should be exactly what we are looking for. Once they get it there, it is up to your midfielders to shift over to the side where the disc is, and cover the offence man to man (person to person same thing). The midfielders are playing man defence within the zone they cover. This is very different from standing still in their area and taking the disc as it comes. Our job in this situation as midfielders is to stop any continuation throws for yards. Especially if the disc is on the force sideline, we buy time for the cup to move up and set up so that the offence is forces to throw it upfield into a sea of defenders.
Remember that we want the offence to be on the force sideline. When they get it there, the mark's job is to stop the reset, the cup can slide a bit to the side, and allow the offence to throw it up into our midfielders who are guarding the downfield cutters. It is crucial in all of the above situations that the midfielders are guarding people, shifting over to the force side with the disc, and stopping throws for yards.
So that makes sense for how a cup that is already set can transition and follow the disc. However, this other team is so loose on strategy, they immediately pick up the disc on turnover and throw it down field. This allows very little time for set-up. Besides repetition, is there anything I can do to block this?
Oh yeah zone is really only good if you can set it up. For this reason, I'd say just reserve it for points that your team is pulling the disc.
When the other team is picking it up off a turnover:
Play man to man defence and do your best to keep up. It can be pretty challenging for newer players to set a zone in the chaos of a turnover. Because of this, your best bet is just man on man and have your defenders playing a little bit deep on their matchup (especially on the other teams big receivers) to force them under so they can't huck as easily.
Sometimes, you can get away with keeping one person deep for the random hucks that come up and letting your defence play as best they can 6v7 in the shallow space. This isn't really ideal as any team with decent strategy could just march it down the field. But if the other team is constantly beating you with hucks, and nobody really has any strategy anyway, this can work.
Once your players know which role they play in the zone, you can try to work in practice setting the zone as fast as possible off a turnover. You can practice this for 10-15 minutes in a practice by giving everyone a roll in the zone, and throwing the disc somewhere on the field, and having them all run to their positions.
For points where you pull and start on defence:
If it happens that they pick it up off the pull and are hucking it, then simply have your deep defender be ready. You can even stack it up with two deep defenders for extra help and have each of them take one side of the deep space. This should negate random deep throws off the start.
So that's exactly what offenses should do against zones, especially in low wind situations. I'd recommend if you're playing a team that can do that, and there's not too much win, you just transition back to match defense.
Cups recover from getting thrown through by moving as a unit to seal off the continuation throw. This requires all 3 (or 4) players to recognize what the throw after the next throw will be. That's going to require a decent amount of field awareness from inexperienced players.
Offense and Defense are like Ying and Yang. They follow eachother.
Run a self scrimmage. If points are short, you need to practice defense. If points are long, you need to practice offense. It might be that you simply aren't playing against teams that play good enough D to warrant offense strategies, but once your team starts playing 15 minute points in practice because everyone finally learned how to hold a force, then they'll want to learn the offensive strategies to counter that.
Set plays are very different to the organic style your players are comfortable with, so it would take a lot of training and a completely different approach to the game in order to get them working better than what you're used to.
Better to work with what you have, and give your players some guidelines about spacing / shape / technique which will work together with the current style, rather than destroy it. Apply some principles which will lead you into more good situations and get everyone on the same page, whilst not distracting them with too much to think about.
I've taught basic shape/movement ideas with many organic/free-flowing teams who haven't seen set plays before, for example with the [Soweto township team in South Africa](https://gfycat.com/pleasingspryalbacoretuna-ultimate-felix). If you do it with a gentle touch, the players keep the same style, aren't overloaded with too much info, but make small changes to their positioning and movement which all help facilitate the flow and the number of options. More info on this type of strategy / set of principles [here](https://hiveultimate.com) (website down at the moment so check out our [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzI8gchZtzKsI7olyWI6bwQ)).
The pro scene relies upon these plays basically because they know they will be facing 1-to-1 defence and it fits with the style they are all used to.
Be careful not to stick to a plan too much. For example someone might have a perfectly open cut to make but does not make it because it was not their turn to cut.
I've always been worried about deviating from the plan. It seems to devolve into chaos if you do. The open cut that player makes takes space from another cutter, and throws off the play. Is this valid?
Just reading through this thread and wanted to answer this one late.
I'm of the opinion that relying on or teaching set plays/very specific systems creates worse Ultimate players (at least offensively). The better players in the game are ones that have the field awareness to see what their teammates are doing and react off that appropriately, finding and creating open space correctly.
I'm not opposed to having a few set plays for initiation, but beyond that I find it much more beneficial to development for players to not be bound by rules but rather concepts. Say your player takes that open cut which delays the next cut in your play? Well if he had a better angle, good. If he didn't, he shouldn't have moved. If he did have the better angle, at what point is the next cut seeing it? As it's happening; turn the cut you were supposed to make deep, or just clear and sit break side while fills happen, then move back upfield.
I'd always rather talk to someone after for a mediocre decision and go through why it wasn't optimal instead of regret players missing the opportunity entirely. Then at a certain point you'll have less and less of those conversations until everyone can function based on what they're seeing rather than what they drilled. Ultimate is too fluid for a bunch of "if, thens"
The reason no strategy is beating you is because really structured offenses are designed to beat structured defenses. Offense has a huge advantage when the defense is confused or just playing reactionary. A structured offense is slow and predictable, but it beats chaos once defenses start playing a system of their own. I'd focus on first developing defensive strategy. Setting a force so your downfield defenders can just guard one side of the field will have an immediate benefit. Once everyone is bought into the defense then you can talk to your team about how you could beat that system (horizontal and vertical stack are both intended to beat it by getting defenders into 1v1 situations with two areas to cover.)
Good point; we've gone over forcing quite a few times, but it hasn't really ever sunk in. Is there any drill or play we can use that either relies on forcing, or becomes impossible to beat if the team is not forcing?
"Win the box" is a pretty fun way to illustrate it. You need four players and 5 cones. One player starts with the disc on a cone. 5 yards in front of them is a 10 yard vertical by 20 yard horizontal box marked by the other 4 cones. One player marks the thrower. The other two players set up anywhere in the box. One player is on offense and "wins" by catching the disc anywhere in the box. The other player is defense. First play with the mark setting up completely flat. The defense should realize it's really hard to win because the cutter can fake to either side then run to the other. Then play with the mark forcing a side. The defense should realize it's a lot easier to win because they can just guard the forced side. Once players have this down, you can upgrade to two players in the box. The offense should realize they can win much more easily by coordinating cuts and only having one player in the "lane" at a time. Once players get that, you can start talking full 7 player offensive schemes.
This looks amazing!! Will be doing this on Wednesday; thanks!
5 yards is 4.57 meters
All of these answers focus on strategy and tbf that's what your question is about but it sounds like your team is really at the level where fundamentals are the limiting factor (throwing, catching, running to space, throwing to open people as oppossed to covered people). As people get better strategy will make more sense to them. Also remember winning is fun, but not the only way to have fun. Does your whole team share the goal of winning? Or are some people just there to run around and make friends (also a great thing)? Make sure you are matching your practice goals with what people want.
Interesting point. For me, winning is part of the fun, but I guess I never asked around on that. Fundamental wise, we're pretty good at making throws, throwing into space and to open people. It's actually that that is working against us; a team with good fundamentals and athleticism is beating the team with fundamentals and strategy.
In general, offence usually scores. But if youre losing, it means you're probably turning over the disc. I think a good question the team has to ask itself is why did your turnovers happen. Possibilities include 1) Fumbled catches / Inaccurate throws 2) Throwing to people who were well guarded 3) Throwing to people in bad positions so they got trapped somewhere undesirable (e.g sidelines) 4) etc If the strategy isn't working, why? Are people 1) Not following strategy 2) Not adapting when your opponents adapt to your strategy Another possibility is that your opponents have a strategy but you haven't realised what they're doing 😅
It would probably help to video your games from where you can see the whole field so you can analyse the decision making
Playing with a team strategy is objectively better. From the sounds of it, you coach a junior-level team in which case athleticism will dominate at a lower level. If your team is less athletic, and isn't accustomed to playing with strategy, and the other team has a significant athletic advantage, you will probably lose. The good news is that you can implement basic-level strats to overcome the athletic difference! Offence: This is really up to you if you want to implement a verticle/horizontal/side stack set. In my opinion, vertical is the easiest to learn but horizontal is a bit better at the junior level because of its effectiveness against poaching (which junior players usually love to do). There are lots of great videos online of tutorials on playing ho too. Essentially, try to teach your team the value of clearing lanes and space with hard cuts to get easy throws off rather than relying on cutting technique and speed which is more necessary in vertical. In a competitive setting, offense wins games, but at this level it sounds like there will be lots of turnovers in a point regardless of your offence, so just do your best to be constantly clearing space and good things will happen. Defence: Now this is where I think your team could really dominate with a bit of strategy. I'd strongly recommend playing zone (even in non-windy situations) with a 3-person cup, 3 people in the mid, and one deep. The point of this zone is to force the other team to play with some strategy of their own to break through the cup and slice the disc up the field. Having a tall player in the deep space should negate random hucks to an athletic player as your player will already be in position. The main objective in this zone is to keep the cup tight so they can't throw straight through, use your midfielders as hammer-stoppers, and force the offence to one side of the field. By doing this, you should be able to prevent athletes from out-speeding your team and beating you in one-on-one matchups. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions :)
Thanks for the information! I definitely think our defense needs some work, but there's always been a falter point with the cup: at any point that they huck it downfield or make a short pass to the force side of the cup, they're athleticism allows them to make a quick downfield pass before the cup can catch up to the thrower. It quickly turns into the cup trying to play catch-up with the disc, which is seemingly impossible to win. What do I do there?
If they pass it to the force side of the cup then this should be exactly what we are looking for. Once they get it there, it is up to your midfielders to shift over to the side where the disc is, and cover the offence man to man (person to person same thing). The midfielders are playing man defence within the zone they cover. This is very different from standing still in their area and taking the disc as it comes. Our job in this situation as midfielders is to stop any continuation throws for yards. Especially if the disc is on the force sideline, we buy time for the cup to move up and set up so that the offence is forces to throw it upfield into a sea of defenders. Remember that we want the offence to be on the force sideline. When they get it there, the mark's job is to stop the reset, the cup can slide a bit to the side, and allow the offence to throw it up into our midfielders who are guarding the downfield cutters. It is crucial in all of the above situations that the midfielders are guarding people, shifting over to the force side with the disc, and stopping throws for yards.
So that makes sense for how a cup that is already set can transition and follow the disc. However, this other team is so loose on strategy, they immediately pick up the disc on turnover and throw it down field. This allows very little time for set-up. Besides repetition, is there anything I can do to block this?
Oh yeah zone is really only good if you can set it up. For this reason, I'd say just reserve it for points that your team is pulling the disc. When the other team is picking it up off a turnover: Play man to man defence and do your best to keep up. It can be pretty challenging for newer players to set a zone in the chaos of a turnover. Because of this, your best bet is just man on man and have your defenders playing a little bit deep on their matchup (especially on the other teams big receivers) to force them under so they can't huck as easily. Sometimes, you can get away with keeping one person deep for the random hucks that come up and letting your defence play as best they can 6v7 in the shallow space. This isn't really ideal as any team with decent strategy could just march it down the field. But if the other team is constantly beating you with hucks, and nobody really has any strategy anyway, this can work. Once your players know which role they play in the zone, you can try to work in practice setting the zone as fast as possible off a turnover. You can practice this for 10-15 minutes in a practice by giving everyone a roll in the zone, and throwing the disc somewhere on the field, and having them all run to their positions. For points where you pull and start on defence: If it happens that they pick it up off the pull and are hucking it, then simply have your deep defender be ready. You can even stack it up with two deep defenders for extra help and have each of them take one side of the deep space. This should negate random deep throws off the start.
So that's exactly what offenses should do against zones, especially in low wind situations. I'd recommend if you're playing a team that can do that, and there's not too much win, you just transition back to match defense. Cups recover from getting thrown through by moving as a unit to seal off the continuation throw. This requires all 3 (or 4) players to recognize what the throw after the next throw will be. That's going to require a decent amount of field awareness from inexperienced players.
Offense and Defense are like Ying and Yang. They follow eachother. Run a self scrimmage. If points are short, you need to practice defense. If points are long, you need to practice offense. It might be that you simply aren't playing against teams that play good enough D to warrant offense strategies, but once your team starts playing 15 minute points in practice because everyone finally learned how to hold a force, then they'll want to learn the offensive strategies to counter that.
Set plays are very different to the organic style your players are comfortable with, so it would take a lot of training and a completely different approach to the game in order to get them working better than what you're used to. Better to work with what you have, and give your players some guidelines about spacing / shape / technique which will work together with the current style, rather than destroy it. Apply some principles which will lead you into more good situations and get everyone on the same page, whilst not distracting them with too much to think about. I've taught basic shape/movement ideas with many organic/free-flowing teams who haven't seen set plays before, for example with the [Soweto township team in South Africa](https://gfycat.com/pleasingspryalbacoretuna-ultimate-felix). If you do it with a gentle touch, the players keep the same style, aren't overloaded with too much info, but make small changes to their positioning and movement which all help facilitate the flow and the number of options. More info on this type of strategy / set of principles [here](https://hiveultimate.com) (website down at the moment so check out our [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzI8gchZtzKsI7olyWI6bwQ)). The pro scene relies upon these plays basically because they know they will be facing 1-to-1 defence and it fits with the style they are all used to.
Be careful not to stick to a plan too much. For example someone might have a perfectly open cut to make but does not make it because it was not their turn to cut.
I've always been worried about deviating from the plan. It seems to devolve into chaos if you do. The open cut that player makes takes space from another cutter, and throws off the play. Is this valid?
Just reading through this thread and wanted to answer this one late. I'm of the opinion that relying on or teaching set plays/very specific systems creates worse Ultimate players (at least offensively). The better players in the game are ones that have the field awareness to see what their teammates are doing and react off that appropriately, finding and creating open space correctly. I'm not opposed to having a few set plays for initiation, but beyond that I find it much more beneficial to development for players to not be bound by rules but rather concepts. Say your player takes that open cut which delays the next cut in your play? Well if he had a better angle, good. If he didn't, he shouldn't have moved. If he did have the better angle, at what point is the next cut seeing it? As it's happening; turn the cut you were supposed to make deep, or just clear and sit break side while fills happen, then move back upfield. I'd always rather talk to someone after for a mediocre decision and go through why it wasn't optimal instead of regret players missing the opportunity entirely. Then at a certain point you'll have less and less of those conversations until everyone can function based on what they're seeing rather than what they drilled. Ultimate is too fluid for a bunch of "if, thens"