The Ultimate Frisbee Workout Guide - Everything you Need to Know about Training for Ultimate Frisbee

Many ultimate players aren’t getting the best results from their workouts. Often simply because they’ve gotten stuck doing the same things they did in high school. Or perhaps they’ve bought into a popular general fitness plan because the marketing makes it seem reasonable enough.

If you think that might be you, then the great news is you’ve likely got loads of untapped athletic potential waiting to be unleashed on the frisbee field.

Even if you’re already pretty experienced in working out, even if you’re experienced in the weight room, there is still more potential in you to become faster and jump higher than you realize.

I know this is true because I’ve seen it happen for hundreds of ultimate players, and I’d like it to happen for you too.

That’s what this guide is all about. I’m going to help you understand the principles behind athletic adaptation so that you design an ultimate frisbee training schedule that WORKS.

Best of all, this does not require hours and hours of running. In fact, some of the ultimate frisbee workouts you’ll be doing are likely easier than what you’re doing now.

If you like the idea of training smarter so you can get more results in less training time, then this guide is for you.

Who am I?

I’m Melissa Witmer, creator of The Ultimate Athlete Project’s Strength and Conditioning program. I’ve travelled all over the world coaching players on how to train more efficiently for ultimate.

But before all of that, I used to be like a lot of you. I played a lot of frisbee. I trained a LOT, with sprint workouts, and lots of conditioning. I had an edge because I was also experienced in strength training. I knew a lot about being strong and being in shape. I even had a degree in Kinesiology.

But despite all of that - even though I was fit in college. Even though I had a ton of experience in the weight room, I became a much, much better athlete in my thirties than I ever was in my twenties. Why?

Because I finally got FOCUSED on training specifically for the results I wanted.

This guide is about helping YOU to get the results you want. Don’t settle for getting the same results as everyone else by doing the same workouts as everybody else.

You CAN do better and you can perform better.

I know these principles work for more than just me. I’ve used these principles to help hundreds of athletes from ages 16-52.

Just like my clients and UAP members, you can also become more durable, play full tournaments without soreness, stop being afraid of getting beat deep, be able to cover or BE the unrecoverable squirrely handler, and in general have more fun on the field by being able to athletically outmatch their opponents.

That’s what this guide is all about. So let’s get started!

The first thing I want to address is this…

Long runs are NOT the best way to get you in shape for ultimate frisbee.In fact, they will be counterproductive.

There are two reasons for this. Well, one main reason.

Your ultimate frisbee conditioning workout should mimic what you do on the field if you want it to transfer to the field.

There are two implications for this.

First up, intervals for ultimate frisbee training.

Getting in shape is about helping the body to learn to process and use more oxygen. You can get in shape most quickly when you work out at the speed where you’re consuming the most oxygen. But you can only do this for about six minutes before your muscles get so tired that you literally cannot continue at the same pace.

The fatigue you feel is caused by the buildup of acid in the muscle tissue. To avoid acid buildup, we would have to work out at intensities in which only the aerobic system is used. At this intensity, about 99% of the metabolic energy comes from the aerobic system. This is a pace that can be maintained indefinitely. But at no point will you actually be using nearly as much oxygen as you can. Working out at this low speed does not produce gains in the aerobic system as rapidly as working out at higher intensities.

So the problem is, how do we work out at the speed in which we are using as much oxygen as possible without tiring out from lactic acid buildup?

The answer is interval training. The whole point of interval training is that you can extend the amount of time you spend using the most oxygen you possibly can with significantly less lactic acid buildup in the muscles. Beyond just being efficient, interval training is the best way to train for ultimate ^{(or any other field sport)} that requires bouts of speed and bouts of recovery.

Watch an actual game of ultimate. Pick a player and time how much time they spend in motion versus walking and standing around. You might be surprised! Between calls, the disc going out of bounds, and turnovers, there is a lot more standing around in ultimate than you might intuitively think!

So in addition to training your cardiovascular system efficiently, you are also training your body to recover rapidly from bouts of hard effort, just like you’d be doing on the field.

Stop running in a straight line

If all of your conditioning is on a track in a straight line, you may still become tired when you step on the ultimate field - even if you think you have a good level of fitness.

The muscle groups you use in conditioning matter because the body works as a whole system. Fitness gained by bicycling or swimming does not necessarily translate to running as well as you'd think. And fitness gained by running in a straight line won’t translate well to a sport where you are starting, stopping, accelerating, and changing directions many times per point.

Changes of direction require more core stability and single leg strength than simply maintaining movement in the forward direction. Conditioning workouts should include decelerations and changes of direction in order to reflect the demands of ultimate.

Use These Ultimate Frisbee Conditioning Workouts Instead!

With these three principles in mind, here is a sample of a typical workout we use in The Ultimate Athlete Project

Some of what we do in The Ultimate Athlete Project feels counterintuitive. It can be unnerving to do workouts that are different than what you’ve done before. I occasionally have athletes email me a month or two into our programming, worried that they might not be doing enough to get results.

And I understand! When I went into my first tournament I was afraid I wouldn’t last because I hadn’t run over 200 yards at a time in over 3 months. But not only did I last, I played in the cup all weekend and felt strong and fast until late in the day Sunday. Even more miraculously, I woke up Monday morning barely feeling sore at all! I could not remember that ever happening in my entire college career.

This is a common experience for my UAP members. At first they wonder if the volume or training is enough to produce real results. But those who stick with it often see results far beyond their expectations.

“I just finished playing in my college club team's first tournament this last weekend, and it was easily the best I have ever felt during and after a tournament.”

~ Mitchell Fanning

“My condition towards the end of the season was awesome. At 36, I was probably the most ultimate fit I'd ever been. The key was I felt I could cut non stop. Even though I was still slower than many, my work rate was very high. I genuinely felt awesome at Regionals and other lead up tournaments.”

~ Wally Crocker

“We just had our first tournament yesterday, and I lasted the whole day. (Okay, maybe the last game was a little rough) I played puke/chase/mark in our zone and junk defense almost every point! It is amazing how not-so-sore I feel today!”

~ College age female UAP member

So, trust the principles and trust the training. You’ll be doing shorter, easier more frequentworkouts. It might feel too easy, and you’ll get much better results than what you’ve tried before.

Speed, acceleration,j u m p i n g, _changing ^direction, & q u i c k n e s s, are all related.

They are all part motor skill and part nervous system training. To train these athletic qualities we use primarily the phosphagen pathway of energy production. We’ll skip the science but what you need to understand is that this energy pathway requires significant time in betweenbouts of effort in order to work properly.

Adaptation is driven by intensity

Intensity is about output not about effort. In order to get adaptation to speed and agility training, the training stimulus must be done at or above 90% of your current maximum ability. If your max vertical jump is 20”, executing a jump above 18” will cause your body to adapt to jump higher. Any jump executed below 18” does not promote physical adaptation.

Truth is, ultimate players are sometimes least likely to properly do the type of training they need the most. This is because workouts that challenge the nervous system don't feel difficult! Unlike cardiovascular training, you don’t get out of breath or feel tired. Unlike intense anaerobic training you don’t feel any burn in your muscles. So it’s impossible to tell during the workout whether anything is happening.

If you’ve only done general fitness training or haven’t worked with a professional strength and conditioning coach, then this training WILL feel different.

It is normal not to understand it fully until you experience the results for yourself. So here is a sample ultimate frisbee speed and agility workout with the proper rest intervals included.

Sample speed and agility exercises for ultimate frisbee

In this speed and agility workout we’ll focus on speed and jumping. We’ll use three exercises with appropriate rest intervals in between. The entire session will take about 25 minutes including your warmup.

First, start with an ultimate frisbee warm up...

--Now the exercises--

3 Step Approach Jump

Works on the footwork and explosiveness needed for getting discs in the air on the move. If you have a visual aid to focus on like a vertec or a friend standing on something holding a disc that’s even better.

1Jump off the right foot, rest 30 seconds
2Jump off the left foot, rest 30 seconds
3Repeat twice
4Rest 60-90 seconds before the next exercise

Gallop

Looks ridiculous, but this is one of my favorite single leg plyometric exercises. Focus on slamming your front foot into the ground to catapult yourself both up and forward as explosively as possible.

16 strides right foot forward, wait 30 seconds
26 strides left foot forward, wait 60 seconds
3Repeat three times
4Rest 90-120 seconds before the next exercise

Three Point Start to 40 yard sprint

This drill is about pure acceleration. If you’re not comfortable in a three point position, it’s fine to start standing up with one leg slightly in front of the other. Attempt to get up to full speed as quickly as possible.

1Start with right foot forward and sprint 40 yards, rest 90 seconds
2Start with the left foot forward and sprint 40 yards, rest 90 seconds
3Repeat three times

Scheduling your SAQ training so that it’s done while you’re able to perform at max intensity is important. This means not doing SAQ work at the end of practice. Sometimes it may mean not doing a heavy leg day in the gym. Doing vertical jump training or SAQ drills at the end of practice when you’re too tired to perform near your max capability won’t really get you anywhere.

So let’s move on to the next section about how to plan your ultimate frisbee workouts and then how to plan your ultimate frisbee training schedule.

If you want to succeed in ultimate, you need to think about your training in more than just the short term. Understanding the big picture can help you better focus on what needs to be done today in order to elicit the best performance many months from now when games matter most.

The most common mistake I see is that ultimate players want to improve everything at once. Workouts with a little strength, some agility work, ending in conditioning are popular. But the body adapts best to training when you focus on one main athletic quality at a time not only within a workout, but also within a training block.

As you can see in our ultimate frisbee workouts above, you can’t include everything you need in one workout. And in fact, you shouldn’t include everything you need even in the same week. This is because of the law of competing demands.

The major problem is that when your body has to choose between adapting for enduranceand adapting for more power, it always chooses endurance. This is why training for endurance limits gains in power.

Power and endurance adaptations are conflicting because they use different metabolic pathways. Powerful movements like jumping, laying out, and making sharp changes of direction, use primarily the phosphagen metabolic pathway.

The phosphagen pathway is built for max effort of just a few seconds. When you are training for endurance, you’re using primarily the cardiovascular metabolic pathway.

With proper periodization in the UAP, we eliminate the conflict of interests by focusing on one athletic quality at a time. Or by working on complementary athletic qualities like speed and power that use the same metabolic pathway.

Rarely do you want to completely neglect any athletic training, but you always want to have a clear emphasis.

  This careful, sequential planning is the primary difference between training like an athlete versus training for general fitness. We stack training blocks one after the other and get BETTER overall adaptation than the same amount of time spent on everything at once. This is why I’ve been able to help players who have been training for years and make them even better.

In our programming we have many phases that change every 4 weeks. Each phase is related to what comes before and after. And we create a full schedule based on the athlete’s most important tournament or part of the year.

To keep it simple, here are a few basic rules that can help you organize your training.

1Focus on 1-2 athletic qualities at a time.

Training everything at once can work for a little while but you’ll eventually plateau. It’s not as efficient or as effective as focusing your training on 1-2 athletic qualities at once. For example you could have a training block devoted to building strength, or to cardiovascular endurance, or to speed and agility work. But trying to do everything at once will not yield the best results.

A good length of time for a training block is 3-6 weeks.

2Train complementary, not conflicting athletic qualities

If you train power development and vertical jumping in the same training block, this will work because those are complimentary athletic qualities. Conflicting athletic qualities are those that use different metabolic pathways. Training endurance and vertical jump in the same training block will be counterproductive to your vertical jump training. This doesn’t mean no cardiovascular training at all. But it should not be the focus if your main goal is power development or anything that trains the fast twitch muscle fibers.

3Put your training blocks in order

Strength forms a basis for generating power. So a strength block before a power focused block makes the most sense. Strength endurance and  cardiovascular endurance blocks make sense 6-8 weeks prior to the season so that you can be in shape in time for tournaments.

And when thinking about your training year, there are Five primary phases:

The Five Main Phases of Your Ultimate Frisbee Year

1Post Season
2Off Season
3Pre Season
4In Season
5Taper

Post season: focus on recovery. Take care of any physical therapy and rehab needs. This is also a good time for cross-training with fun non-ultimate frisbee activities as your main source of exercise for a few weeks.

Off Season: this is where you will focus on the strength training principles you learned in chapter 3. You’ll want to do less conditioning and less playing so that you can avoid the law of competing demands.

Pre-Season: You’ll want at least 8 weeks of pre-season to focus on cardiovascular fitness. Make sure you’re following the principles of Chapter 2. I’d also recommend getting in some workouts on grass in cleats before your main tournaments and practices.

In Season: here is where you’ll want to decrease the volume of your workouts as the physical demands of the season get more intense.

Taper: Two to three weeks before your biggest tournament is time to decrease the volume of your training even further. This allows for micro-injuries to heal and gets you to a place of full recovery, ready to play at your very best.

What if I don’t have a regular season?

Many folks have repeating seasons (indoor, outdoor, beach, etc) that span the full year. This can leave you feeling like you don’t get the opportunity to focus on an offseason.

I understand the desire to perform at your peak at every playing opportunity. The hard truth is, that’s just not realistic. If you want to unleash your full athletic potential, you WILL need to prioritize.

What this means for each individual will be different based on goals, training age, etc.

For a player who is new to the game, playing more may be the best route to improved frisbee performance. For a player like this, I would still recommend following a periodized schedule somewhat. The tradeoff is that the off season gains will not be as effective as they would be with a true off season. You definitely want to be on some sort of strength training plan in order to help fight the wear and tear on the body from playing most of the year.

For a player with a good amount of skill who is aiming for a national team or going into a trying situation for a new team, I would recommend cutting out some playing opportunities during part of the year so that you can experience at least one true off season in your playing career. This will help you experience what is possible for yourself athletically. In following seasons you’ll have a better understanding of the tradeoffs you’re making in playing all year versus setting aside time for training.

Keep in mind, it does not have to be all of nothing. You can still play once or twice a week in the off season without doing much damage to your training adaptations. Anything more that twice per week of casual play and you will be making compromises.

Tradeoffs are no fun. It sucks to feel like you’re not in good shape in the off season. But it also sucks to be inefficient with your training time. If you want to have a breakthrough season because you’ve worked hard on strength and power development, then you may have to suffer a few months of feeling “out of shape.” The good news is that conditioning adaptations don’t take long. And when you get back to conditioning, your running economy will be much improved. Not a bad trade!