Sprint training explained (1/3): Why Ultimate Frisbee Players benefit from sprint training
By Jan BobinecIn this three-part series I’m going to tell you why you should think about sprinting more. You might not have had a trainer or the chance to work on speed, so I’m going to share some practical ideas on how you can incorporate sprinting drills into your frisbee practices. In this first piece I will answer the why and the what. And no, you don’t need to be a certified Sports Performance Coach, have Track and Field experience or anything like that to be able to start doing the right things.
Now let’s start talking about why it is ever so important to incorporate sprinting into your practices all year round. For me, there are two main reasons. One: injury prevention. Two: being faster will always be an advantage on the field - and there are some easy things everybody can do to become faster.
Sprinting as Injury prevention
Ultimate Frisbee is a physically highly demanding sport, and the fact that it is more often than not played in a tournament-style format with multiple games per day makes it even tougher. Preparing for those demands on your body should therefore be a must if you want to avoid injuries for as long as possible - especially if you want to play at a high level.
This kind of preparation is often done by players in the off-season and typically includes strength training and conditioning to be ready for team practices and tournaments, and to become physically stronger than your opponents.
If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself “yes, that sounds like me” - well done! You're already on the right path. Here's something to set you on your way to achieve both of these things, whilst not forgetting one of your main physical attributes: speed.
Across the wide spectrum of physical qualities of human performance, strength and sprinting are opposite each other. You know that strength training is important to prevent injury. Building muscle and getting stronger will ultimately prepare you for actions where a lot of strength is required, which makes you more robust, and so able to avoid injuries that occur under high pressure or load situations.
But what about when you need to move as fast as you can? Typically, a lot of soft tissue injuries occur exactly when you sprint or try to move as fast as possible. The best way to prevent these kinds of injuries is….to run as fast as possible. Yes, as fast as possible. Not just fast as in “I’m going for a long throw” fast… but as in “I’m going to time myself while competing with someone who is as fast as me over 40-60 meters” fast.
As most of the athletes in the Ultimate community don’t have Track & Field experience before joining the game, most of them don’t know how to reach their true top speed within 20-30 meters, especially when they are trying to avoid body contact with opponents or are trying to position themselves to receive the disc in the endzone. So, just chasing a frisbee might not be enough to really get you to run as fast as you can.
In order to effectively strengthen your muscles in high-speed action you need to try and reach at least 90-95% of your top speed to achieve that goal. This is hard to measure without help, so let's just say you have to go as fast as possible. Just like you would sometimes squat for 3 reps with very high loads to increase your strength, you can run 3-5 timed sprints once per week to make sure you really push yourself to reach that top speed. The muscles that contribute a lot to stabilizing the leg are especially often neglected in the weight room and can be trained and therefore strengthened and prepared by sprinting regularly. But be aware: Both heavy squats and sprinting have important technical elements that should be trained before going after it like crazy.
Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t want you to cancel all strength training. Sprinting and strength training should be worked on simultaneously over the course of a season to prepare yourself for what you will face during games. A lot of change of direction cuts (deceleration —> acceleration —> deceleration = high loads, i.e. a lot of strength required) and quite a few high-speed runs.
Speed kills
Just like with most team sports, in Ultimate Frisbee, speed kills. Just look at who we consider to be good players in our sport (https://ultiworld.com/2023/11/28/the-top-25-female-matching-players-in-europe/ or https://ultiworld.com/2023/11/28/the-top-25-male-matching-players-in-europe/). Would you win that 20 Meter race? Maybe against a couple of them, but I am quite sure that you wouldn’t against the majority of them. And that's probably also one of the reasons why they play in good teams. Or are the teams good because they have those players? Either way, they are fast, and they are the ones competing for the medals at the end of the day.
The way you play is dictated by the things you can or can't do. Your physical and technical prowess, mixed with your tactical understanding of the game, decide what you do on the field. Being faster means you can add more to your arsenal both physically and tactically. If you get meaningfully faster over the course of a couple of (off-)seasons, your ability to cover an opponent changes quite a bit. You can let the space between you and your opponent get bigger without risking them getting away from you if they go deep, which means you can take away other spaces on the field (poaching).
Or if you're on offence, your cut timing will improve as you can stay clear of the space you want to cut to for longer. That way your thrower has more time to set up and your cut won’t be too late because you can still get past your defender. And last but not least: the foot races we have across the game. Up-line cuts, getting the disc on an undercut, or just blasting deep past your defender. All of that gets a lot easier the faster you get.
It’s a skill
Just like any other movement, sprinting also can be broken down into its core elements, some of which are more technical and others that are more physical. And that is exactly why it is not sheer luck if you are fast or not. It's a skill. Practically speaking, it’s the physical qualities in particular that are the ones you can work on quite easily before or during your team practice.
Here we have four areas that are as important and can be practiced for team sports athletes:
Power (e.g.: moving heavy things as fast as you can)
Top Speed (e.g: moving as fast as you can from A to B)
Repeatable Sprint Ability (repeating a short sprint of 3-5 seconds)
Reactivity (how well the body uses its elasticity. e.g.: reactive jumps)
In the second part of this series I’m going to dive into the technical side of running fast. But here’s a little glimpse of what you could work on when working on your technique:
Projection (e.g.: body position during acceleration)
Switching (e.g.: your legs moving in the opposite direction when you complete a step)
One important thing to understand when starting to work on your speed is that it takes time to develop and make you better. In the end it is another ability, and just like you were not able to throw a forehand the first time you tried, you won't be faster the first time you try to be. Maybe, just maybe, you will become slower at first. But hang in there. Raising the bar doesn't happen overnight and definitely doesn't happen within your comfort zone.
In the End…
I hope some of you can now better understand why sprinting should be part of your weekly training routines. All in all, there are huge benefits from doing a little bit of the right things regularly.
Covering all the important areas of the sport can be overwhelming when you try to do it all on your own. In the next blog post I want to clarify what you can focus on when training for speed so it gets easier to start and maintain!
Jan Bobinec is a sport performance coach from Graz, Austria. His primary focus is speed development for team sports athletes. He has multiple years of experience with athletes in various sports ranging from novices to experienced veterans.
IG: janbobinec.coaching
