The Ultimate (Frisbee) competitive season of 2024 is over. Now is my chance to improve athleticism for next year, as I am an old man by the standards of my young-man's team. In my past lives I’ve always been a grappler, so this novel focus is invigorating.

1. My top priority has to be injury prevention, which means strength-mobility work at end ranges and preparing for high impacts and accelerations.
2. I need to improve my disc skills, particularly catching hard throws at weird angles, and my high-release backhand and mid-range forehand. Those go awry under cardio pressure, so any improvement to general cardio is a boon.
3. I have to maintain or hopefully improve speed. Two good targets are my first and second step and sprints of circa 40-75 meters.
4. As a matter of vanity (and principle too, I admit), I can't give up training for general physical preparedness.

There are many ways to attack these priorities. Here is mine.

Kinds of S&C sessions

I use workouts at the track, the gym, and home. I’ll describe each in rough order of importance.

The Track

I’ll do 10-20 minutes of varied sprint starts, skips, jumps, bounds and rebounds, making sure to include plenty of lateral and single-foot variations. I don’t push the plyometrics too hard for now; if all goes well I’ll increase the intensity shortly before the spring season begins. Occasionally I will follow plyos with some basic max-effort sprints, between 40 and 80 meters.

(I love that the speed/athleticism literature is clear that speed training is only to be done as long as the athlete feels good. The instant the work feels sluggish, as soon as moving explosively starts to drag, the technically correct strategy is to stop. The session can continue with other kinds of work, but training at the far “pure speed“ end of the spectrum comes to an end for the day. So my job as an athlete is to move athletically until it doesn’t feel awesome. It’s delight.)

Then I practice sprinting form with A/B/C skips. This is also where I can practice throwing under pressure.

I finish with conditioning, usually in the form of 75-80% sprints of 60-100 meters, repeated 10-15 times with 1:1 or 1:2 work:rest ratios. Also in the toolbox are 4x400s – oof. The repeats can get tiring but aren’t permitted to become a grind – speed needs to remain high for them to be effective.

I leave these workouts with some in the tank.

The Gym

After a month or so of experimentation, I’ve landed on a rough structure for visits to the temple.

1. Plyometrics: 10-15 minutes, as when at the track. Movements fast but not pushing this portion of the workout.
2. Power cleans: maybe 5 sets of 3, or a short complex involving hang cleans. The heavy lift of the day.
3. (Superset the above with Cossack squats, working up to lightly-weighted sets across. Movement quality is the goal.)
4. One-leg reverse squats: find a heavy weight to do for 3 sets of 12-15 reps. The session’s main bodybuilding movement.
5. An injury-prevention circuit for 3-6 rounds
   1. One-leg seated calf raises: as heavy as I can for 10-12 reps
   2. Some trunk lateral movement training, like Copenhagen planks or dumbbell side bends, light / 12-20 reps
   3. Tibialis raises, not sure I’ve found a challenging variation here – just getting a pump
6. Pull-ups might be found anywhere in the workout, with total reps between ~50 and 75
7. The grab bag: optional work to taste. A good place for strengthy GPP. Usually zero to two of dips, farmer’s walks, suitcase walks, deep lunges (are we really calling them ”split squats”?), widowmaker squats, back extensions, Jefferson curls, that kind of thing.

The plyometrics moonlight here as injury prevention. The power cleans are my strengthy-explosive training. (It’s as close as I get to pure strength work because I’m not weak for an Ultimate player.) The lateral lunges superset well with the Olympic lift variant because they’re not demanding: I just want to practice access to those end-range hip positions.

The reverse squats were in the grab bag until I felt their effect on the recovery phase of a sprint stride. Instant promotion.

The injury prevention stuff is either obvious (I know my adductors need extra love) or the darling of the latest research (calf raises).

The grab bag is my solution to FOMO at the smorgasbord of fun, useful exercises I either want to try or have a longstanding relationship with.

How should I feel at the end of a gym session? The great fighter Fedor Emelianenko said:

I like this feeling of weariness after training, when I’m walking home exhausted, dragging my feet. I like this a lot.

Such weariness is acceptable, though not the goal. Strength and bodybuilding aren’t negatively affected by it the way speed is.

Home workouts

Here is where I allow myself the least focus on sport specificity. Home workouts are for fun, general physical preparedness, and keeping some movements from being completely ignored during this training block.

I’m open to variety but the core idea is to do a lot of kettlebell clean-and-presses. They’re good strengthy cardio and part of my belief in training overhead for shoulder health. I like how they make my traps and shoulders look.

I might superset with ring pull-ups. A kettlebell circuit or something from the grab bag might fit its way in.

Miscellania

I’ve found juggling fun and I think it helps my catches. I’m not good and I don’t approach it rigorously. It’s just fun to practice occasionally.