Dynamic Warmup!

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor or anything, but all of the info below about stretching comes from opinions that I've formed from a variety of different warm-up and stretching techniques.

For any of you that have been to tournaments with the team know, I am a big, big proponent of an active or "dynamic" warm up in place of the traditional static "reach and hold" stretching that most people have learned as the way to get ready for athletics. In my opinion (and experience), you're much more ready to go into a drill or scrimmage after a dynamic routine than with the traditional circle team stretching.

I know that right now we still run practices with static stretching at the beginning, but I'd really like to see us move away from it. In order for that to happen, we need to all know how to run through a dynamic routine as well as we can the routine of static stretching that we've all learned through the years. So, here's a good dynamic routine (with some explanations where necessary) so everyone can begin to get comfortable with warming up this way. Remember, we should all try and be more flexible so continue to take a little bit of time out of your day when you can to stretch and gradually increase your flexibility.

For the majority of this program, you'll be set up on a line and doing an exercise that will move you towards another line (sideline, some discs, whatever). In many cases, you all be doing an exercise towards the line and then the same movement backwards towards your starting point. The distance between the two points should be 10-15 yards.

Alright, on to the warm up:

1. Light jog to get moving, should get your heart-rate going and a little bit of a sweat.

2. Toe and Heel walk; walk from your staring point to the second line up on your toes the whole time, come back doing the same thing but walking on your heels.

3. Driving knee skips, skip towards the line and drive your knee up on each skip. There should not be a lot of time between when each skip. Backwards on the way back.

4. Side skips, same motion, but turn90 degrees and move sideways. You'll go one way on the way out and another on the way back. Should face the same direction on both ways.

5. Mounting shuffle, start facing toward the other line then shuffle at a 45 angle to the right and towards the other line. After a few shuffles, bring your inside leg (in this case your left) up and over as if you're bringing it over a hurdle, this should change your angle so you're now moving at a 45 angle to the left but still towards the endpoint. After a few shuffles in that direction, you swing your inside leg again (now it's your right) back in and repeat the same movement you started with. This continues until you get to the endpoint.

6. Dismounting shuffle, same as above but you are moving backwards, so the swing of your leg will reach backwards as if you are stepping backwards back over a fence / hurdle.

7. High knees, forwards out and backwards back

8. Butt kicks, forwards out and backwards back.

9. Carioca out, put a high knee in on the way back. The high knee should mean that you drive your knee up as it crosses over in front of you to help get a bit more of a back stretch. For both ways, you should focus on rotating your hips.

10. Inchworm calf stretch; put your hands on the ground in front of you and "walk" your feet up towards them. You should feel a pretty good stretch, hold it for a second and then walk your hands further out in front and repeat. Make three reps in each direction.

11. Frankenstein hamstring stretch, kick your feet straight out in front of you and keep your knee straight, hands should be out in front of you as well. Do both out and back.

End with a series of acceleration sprints that include both backpedaling and side shuffles into sprints. After completion, take 5-10 minutes to do traditional reach and hold stretching on anything that feels tight. Note that none of the static stretching at the end should be held for very long as you should be pretty loose at this point.

There are tons more exercises that you'll see people do and you should feel free to add / delete stuff as you feel is most appropriate for what your body needs.

How do we get better?

Alright, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but the spring semester and college season have really gotten into swing and so now’s as good a time as ever…

First, I’ve been really happy with practice so far in the bubble. We’ve been pretty good at focusing and getting some great work done in what is usually a very short hour session. I wish we could get a little more time for the B team to get scrimmages in, but that hopefully will get fixed in the next few weeks.

Over the year and a half that I’ve been around, the overall level of the team has increased greatly. We’re now running things in practice and games that would simply have been disasters a year ago. Everyone has worked hard to make the team better and has been doing a fantastic job of understanding where they fit into that improvement. But, I thought I’d speak a little bit more to what individuals should try and do to make themselves better over the course of a semester, year, and eventually over the time you play college ultimate so that we can not only improve how we fair as a team, but how much each of you guys develop as players separate from the Spoonheads.

More or less, it all comes down to finding something you know you need to work on. No player is ever finished developing and I’ve really found that giving myself a specific “skillset” goal to achieve during a semester or summer has really worked well. As an example, when I finished my freshman year at Skidmore I really could not throw a lick. I mean, I knew how to throw, but for the most part of freshman year I was just a deep cutter who would either try and get into the endzone or try and immediately find an older player to unload the disc to whenever I was in need of making a throw. So, I spent most of my summer at pickup and summer league really focusing on throwing and getting comfortable with a mark on me and making downfield decisions. By the time sophmore year starts, I’m a lot more comfortable making decisions with the disc and am able to be a more than one dimension threat on O.

Many of the sophomores have been very good at this and it shows in the improvement that class has made in a year of playing. Basically, try and be very critical of your individual game and spend a month, semester, or summer focusing on what needs to be worked on next.