November 12, 2012 by Charlie Eisenhood in Other, Video with 3 comments
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From professional leagues to the major USA Ultimate restructure, this is a time of great change and innovation in ultimate. But it’s not just the highest levels of the sport that are undergoing a shift. For the first time, new and developing players have the resources at their disposal to greatly improve their skills and strategic understanding of the game.
On the heels of the release of Ulticards comes RISE UP, a new instructional video series that focuses on the building blocks of ultimate. The project, which hopes to be an “ultimate education revolution,” raised over $17,000 on Indiegogo, a crowdsourced fundraising website similar to Kickstarter.
The team of people putting together the videos know what they’re talking about. Mario O’Brien, RISE UP’s producer, is a long-time coach and Portland Rhino captain. He recruited Ben Wiggins, perhaps the top strategic mind in the sport, to serve as the coach. (Check out Wiggins’ Q&A from September).
The result is a polished presentation of fundamental concepts in ultimate, presented in an easily digestable way but without sacrificing the necessary depth of coverage. The first episode gives a comprehensive look at the dump and swing: why it’s important, how to do it, how to practice doing it, and how to evaluate your performance. Each episode will follow that same model on a given topic (i.e. horizontal stack cutting, throwing into space).
This is a breakthrough in the availability of a high-level understanding of ultimate. A few years ago, Wiggins created The Huddle, which offered unprecedented insight from elite players and coaches into different topics and challenges that arise in ultimate. But, often times, maximizing value from the advice required an already-developed understanding of the game.
RISE UP further democratizes that information. Using video allows new and inexperienced players to see exactly how something should look on the field, while also giving them straight-forward drills to implement at practice.
Granted, Ultiworld has only seen the first episode (which you can now see in full on RISE UP’s website). But if the quality is consistently at this level, we can highly recommend purchasing a subscription to anyone who doesn’t have access to high quality coaching or instruction. It seems particularly suitable for high school players, young college players, and league players trying to get to the next level.
