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The Ultimate Athlete Project is a proud sponsor of the Eurostars Tour.

While in Seattle, the Eurostars stopped in at Ren Fitness. Ren is a consultant to and friend of the UAP. In this video Ren and Izzy demonstrate one of our favorite single leg strength exercises.

Single leg strength determines your ability to perform athletically because more of your movement occurs with only one foot in contact with the ground at a time. Deceleration, changing direction, having balance and control are all enhanced with a focus on single leg strength training.

The rear foot elevated split squat is an excellent exercise for developing functional strength. Unlike a single leg pistol squat, the leg on the back bench allows for more stability. This enables the athlete to load use more weight because the athlete can maintain a neutral spine in this position. The quarter rep at the bottom in this version creates more time under tension in the...

Photo: Ren at work in the field. With permission from Renfitness.net

We opened the RenFitness Gym this year in large part because we felt that having a dedicated facility would help us in our mission of furthering the sport of ultimate. We’ve found so much more value than we even hoped for, and we’re excited to keep using the gym as a test ground and research hub for new protocols for the sport! Along with training ultimate players for strength, speed, and agility, we continue to also focus on injury education and prevention. 

An article was recently published by Gabriel Cabrera calling for more research and development around the sport of ultimate (read the full article here). He raises a lot of good points, noting the lack of clinical research on injuries and health in ultimate and comparing the amount of support ultimate receives to the attention paid to other more well-known sports. 

“The lack of awareness in regards to injury and health of ultimate...

Huge thank you to Andrés Angel for the interview and to Elí Santiago for the translation and English subtitles.

 Note: Click on the CC button in the corner of the video to activate the subtitles.

This interview was conducted between the World Games and the US Open. 

Mauricio Moore has been an influential part of the Colombian ultimate scene for many years.

We hope this interview, which contains subtitles in English (click on the CC button in the corner of the video to activate the subtitles) will give the English speaking ultimate community further insight into the rise of Colombian ultimate. 

Mauricio Moore is a philosopher coach. In this interview he discusses in depth the importance of SOTG and the particular challenged Colombians face in international tournaments. Mauricio explains the special challenges of coaching mixed ultimate and how the team philosophy that enables excellent flow and chemistry between teammates.

It is clear that the team...

It's publishing day for Ulty Results contributing coach Dunte Hector! We excited to announce here on the blog that his new eBook, Fast Kids Don't Train Slow, is now available for purchase on Amazon. 

Our Austin-based friend and colleague dove headlong into ultimate back in 2015. He brought no previous knowledge of our sport with him, but he did have a lifetime full of sprinting, lifting, and training himself and other athletes. 

Since then, he's been sponging up as much face time, game film, and training hours with Austin's ultimate community. He trains the elite women and men of Showdown, Doublewide, and Sol. He debuted his writing with us back on Skyd, where he penned his first training blog column on how to jump higher. 

Dunte's training and his writing are imbued with a to-the-point sensibility and seriousness about training smart. His book is a digestible 30 or so pages long, and it's chock full of his philosophy and training regiments for ultimate...

(photo credit: Paul Rutherford of UltiPhotos)

When I was young I wanted to be a scientist. That’s what I said when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. And when I pictured what I would look like when I grew up, it always came up in my mind’s eye as a white haired dude in front of a blackboard.

I no longer want to be a scientist and I’m more than thrilled with my current career choice. But along the way I learned that it’s difficult to be what you can’t see.

We support the Eurostars tour because we support increased visibility of women in Ultimate. Visibility is important because we want role models available that girls can more easily identify with.

I’ve been asked if there aren’t better places to put our resources, like clinics to improve skills. Clinics for boys and girls run by both men and women are important. There is absolutely a place for those activities. There is also a place for supporting equity in visibility....

Learning to throw is important at every stage of ultimate, from rookies learning a flick and a reset pass, to club veterans expanding their arsenal and refining their control.

There are numerous throwing resources available: instructional articles and books; throwing sessions with more experienced players in your community; and just playing more.

Simply throwing with a good thrower and trying to mimic movements can be very helpful. However, it can be difficult to discern which aspects of the throwing motion are personal style and which are core components of the throw. If you have someone in your community who is good at translating instructions into action (talking you through slight shifts in grip and movement), ask them for help before asking the hucker on your team who can’t really explain what they’re doing.

Over the last seven years, I have been collecting photos and video footage of top throwers, with the goal of identifying the key to throwing with power....

 Power in your throws is generated from the ground up. How the feet are planted, hip action, and core stability, and throwing form all affect the power and distance of your throws.

Apart from throwing form, core stability is the largest contributing factor to haw far you're going to be able to launch your hucks. Energy is transferred through the core into the upper body culminating at the shoulders, arms, and wrist. To be efficient in the transfer of energy from hips to upper body, you need a solid core.

In training the core for throwing power first we want to develop the ability for the core to be rigid in the presence of rotational forces. We want our shoulders to provide a similarly stable launchpad for the disc. And finally we want to be able to generate power in the hips and have the core act in a coordinated manner to transfer power from the hips into the disc.

Core stability in the presence of rotational forces.

Can your core maintain it’s position while...

This post is a review of Alex Davis' 2015 URCA presentation: Defensive Positioning for Shut-Down Defense. Alex is a longtime member of historic men's club Vancouver Furious George and a coach for Team Canada. 

You can see the full presentation by becoming a member of our URCA Classroom. 

"If you don't know who I am, that's in large part because I think I'm pretty good at shut-down defense. It's one of the most touted forms of defense, but not one easily learned through highlight reels." 

That's how Alex begins his engaging talk on one of the most talked-about skills in ultimate that is the hardest to teach, learn, and appreciate. Do you know how to do it? Are you an ace defender already? Can you teach others? 

In this talk, Alex uses his careful, well-segmented approach to break down what's made him worthy of the title of D-line captain for one of ultimate's storied clubs. He even explains why rectangles are his favorite shape for drawing out on-field...

Above, Ella Juengst of HB Woodlawn in action at the US High School National Invite in June 2017. Photo: Mark Oslen - Ultiphotos.com

I wrote an article a couple years ago about girls and functional performance training called Growing Up Strong. I want to follow it up now with some training-focused strategies for creating an awesome athletic team culture for mixed ultimate, specifically at the youth level (though adult mixed teams will hopefully get some ideas as well).

RenFitness coaches work with a bunch of teams and organizations at all levels and ages around the country and the world. We have a constantly widening perspective and we’ve learned a lot about how gender issues influence the success and cohesion of mixed youth teams. To clarify: when I use the term “girls”, I’m referring to those who self-identify as girls or women, regardless of assigned gender at birth.

Mixed ultimate creates great opportunities for girls! It’s often difficult to get...

The growth of video in ultimate has given way to a surplus of footage that shows us elite players in action. Few things are more fun than looking at highlight reels.

Better still, what we have on camera can take us beyond entertainment. How can we use ultimate footage not just for entertainment, but also to make us better ultimate players? Highlight reel plays are only happening a small percentage of the time. What are those great athletes doing to be in those positions to make such spectacular plays and what are they doing to be throughout the game? 

 As a coach, my job is to find ways for my athletes to capitalize on their unique strengths to shine on the field. You can be short and speedy, tall and explosive, average human size and aggressive, etc. and find ways to be successful on the field. As a person developing their skills, this is an exciting time with all the footage available to see people your size and shape crushing it.

 Last weekend, I was at...