Please feel free to leave questions below.
Frequently Asked Questions
I am a bit curious. Please send me any written material you have that describes the offense.
You can look through www.z-boyz.org but that’s just a glimpse really.
This offense is a lot like Tex Winter’s Triangle offense.
When I met with Idris to discuss this offense, he did offer me some advice and so I’ll apply it now.
That advice is basically this; don’t think of this offense as an either or situation. Instead of thinking of the motion O as a replacement to whatever offense you’re running, think of it as an augmentation. These concepts won’t be taking away from what you are doing, they’ll be complimenting it and in fact could be used against any kind of defense thrown at you from clam to zone to man to whatever.
Everyone participating in the Motion Offense clinics will obtain at least a dozen valuable and easily discernible new skills and be able to perform them with precision. These skills are universal and could be applied to any offensive system.
With regards to balance, this means several things all in one. Personal physical balance as well as a more balanced attack both individually and as a team. Again, who wouldn’t want their players and team more balanced no matter what offense they were running?
Conversely, along the lines of adding these same two additions, an unbalanced team with a diminished skill set would have to work significantly harder to compensate for these two deficiencies. Make sense? What this means is that a team with these two additions wouldn’t have to work so hard and instead could let the game come to them. When this happens players would probably begin to make decisions on the field a bit differently.
So this is where my third prong in my approach to coaching the offense comes into play. I have a practical system for scrimmage that is objective (anyone could do it once they learned the basics) that highlights decisions that are made on the field so they can be examined and changed if appropriate.
Each one of my practice sessions are set up to execute two new drills, one on technique, the other on balance and then we run this analytical based scrimmage to incorporate and reinforce those two things that we just learned. The results I’ve seen so far in running practices like this have been dramatic. Essentially, I know what I’m looking to achieve and while others may not see the big picture just yet, my system for integrating these new skills and balance has consistently exceeded my expectations.
I honestly don’t think that anything I’ve said is hyperbole. You add these techniques, balance and decision making abilities to a team as athletic as today’s elite teams and they’ll destroy their competition. I’ve watched them all. There is nobody who is remotely close to this type of approach to the game. Your offense will be unstoppable. And guaranteed to be very fun.
What I need to understand is how you move forward. There is a lot of emphasis on moving away from your defender, which often will have you moving negatively. How do you move positively?
Think soccer. That’s where I borrowed the word ‘negative’ from. In soccer, the offense is moved negative all the time. If you watch, frequently its more than just passing the ball negative, the whole offense (or at least a sub-component of it) moves backwards for just a bit before it moves forward. Like unhooking a fishhook. Sometimes you have to move back first before you can easily move forward.
The end result of a balanced attack is that you wield more control over the defense. You dictate tempo to the D instead of the other way around.
European soccer may differ from Brazilian soccer in the positive/negative ratio and could be 70/30 vs. 60/40 or whatever.
What would you say the ratio is In Ultimate? 98/2? I think I’m being generous here. In my system, I don’t usually qualify a dump or dump-swing as ‘negative’. A 98/2 ratio is not a balanced attack in any sport and from my perspective, I see that kind of lopsided lack of balance everywhere in Ultimate, not just in the positive/negative ratio. And I’m not proposing to make it 2/98, probably 80/20 would be a good ratio but that’s not important right now.
If you take any lopsided system, be it a V8 engine running on five cylinders or a guy and a girl carrying an awkward couch up a flight of stairs, it takes significantly more work to accomplish your goals. Yeah? Balance out the system and get all the sub components working in harmony and everything gets a lot easier.
When I watch and elite team and the ‘quarterback’ throwing to a comeback cut, I would suggest that for a moment, when the receiver catches the disc, their offense is running negative, they just don’t think about it in those terms and capitalize on it like they could. They just worked their butts off to elude the defense and get a completion off and the first thing they do is automatically & immediately confront the defense again. They’re so used to the effort required operating within an unbalanced system that its just taken for granted that everything is a struggle. “This is the way It has to be” is almost a mantra**. As a consequence, there’s too much of a premium on athleticism in the sport relative to both skills and ‘ultimate IQ’.
**even in your last point at the botton of this page, you’re telling me “This is the way It has to be” and I’m here to tell you “NO, it DOESN’T have to be that way; your beliefs are based on antiquated thinking”
In a balanced attack, once you’ve established to the defense that your offense is multi-dimensional, they have to honor your versatility and guard you differently and when they adjust in whichever way they decide to, moving the disc positively is much more effortless. Moving negative makes outflanking your opponent a standard part of your attack as opposed to attacking head on. Attacking head on then becomes the exception to the rule instead of the norm.
In basketball, when a point guard picks up the dribble, the defense can clamp down harder. Right? It’s like that. By being one dimensional, you’re allowing the defense to dictate tempo instead of the other way around. A big part of what I teach is how to ‘dribble’ and to make players multidimensional as well as making the team as a whole multidimensional. Ironically, in Ultimate, there is no such thing as picking up the dribble as a player can always penetrate but they just don’t know any better.
A big part of any defense in any sport is knocking the offense off balance and in conventional ultimate, the offenses already do this for them.
The emphasis on moving the disc negatively (as well as emphasis on ‘moving without the disc’, keeping the ball moving, always maintaining multiple options, and other areas in the game where there is pretty much a void right now) creates wide open throwing opportunities. In this O, you’ll be able to run plays where your best deep throwers will be launching hucks (or midrange throws) without a marker. Get the ball to the open shooter, just like in hoops.
Please address the specifics. Do not write me with concepts. I get the concepts. Like Idris, I agree with the majority of the fundamental concepts.
That being said, you continually are comparing ultimate to other sports to prove your point about balance, but then you conveniently ignore the places where this comparison breaks down. Soccer has lots of negative movement and ball control, but there are a lot of turn overs and a lot of the time teams aren’t even trying to score because they do not have to. You ignore one of the closest sports to ultimate…. football. In football there is no negative movement. Why? If I’m playing defense on you and you are moving backward, I’m ecstatic in football and in a lot of cases ultimate.
But let’s focus on your positive ultimate offense. If you are not stepping out (off balance) to make a throw, how is the offense moving positively?
In reverse order, your specific question first