Conor Hogan's Pulling Thoughts

Hogi shares his detailed thoughts and tips about pulling

I’m delighted to welcome Conor Hogan onto the blog to share his pulling advice. Hogi studies pulling a lot more than the average player so I’m sure you’ll find some useful ideas and tips here - Ian

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I started playing Ultimate in 2008. I spent the first year bricking pulls. Almost every time (LOL). I remember at EYUC 2009 being introduced to spin-pulling one evening as we just threw around after games. I then spent the next year spin pulling instead. This didn’t solve my bricking issues, but I looked cooler doing it.

At the start of my third year of playing, I was actually good at pulling. I ripped a slightly upwind pull at Ireland Open trials in January 2011 and it had so much hang time over the endzone, I could sprint the length of the pitch and had the force on before the catch. I think this in part got me on the team but I couldn't replicate it for the rest of the year, so I was relegated to chasing pulls.

© Mark Early photography

But since then, I’ve worked on my pulls a lot. I don’t think it was until I was on Erasmus in 2013 and had nobody to throw with that I really starting thinking about how I actually wanted the disc to fly, the different types of pulls and when each of them would be more useful in different kinds of wind. And it wasn’t until I moved to London in 2016 that I would spend time picking the brain of Tom Abrams (Mum) and I would pick up a lot of knowledge I will now try to pass on to you, the reader.

Getting started with Pulling

Genuinely though, where do you start? For me, I would refuse to let you try pull at training until you actually practice SOMETHING away from training. Sorry, that’s really strict and I’m sure some of the Bettereverydaycoaching Discord will come after me but I think if we’re practising game realistic scenarios, first time pullers probably aren’t going to pull in game.

My thinking is: you shouldn’t cut without purpose, and you can learn through observation and practice what that cutting purpose is. You shouldn’t throw without purpose, and you can learn through observation and practice what that throwing purpose is. If you haven’t thought about a purpose, you’re not going to get a lot out of pulling at training your first time out. But once you’ve practiced and have an idea of what you’re actually trying to achieve, you can get in the pecking order at training, getting some reps and then go to games with confidence you’re not a total n00b. After you have developed a bit of technique, it then helps to turn up early and rip some pulls with other pullers so they can see you’re actually doing something about getting good at pulling.

Okay, so I won’t pull at training until I’ve practiced. How do I get started in my pulling development?

Before I tried proper pulling form, I would stand still and rip backhands, and this is where I think it’s useful to start for in game pulling if you don’t have any pulling form to fall back on. Once you actually start trying to incorporate form into your pulls to maximise performance, I think watching other pullers is really helpful (actually, watching tons of ultimate regardless is useful for so many facets of the game). I wasn’t really taught to pull so much as I taught myself (an answer to all the bricks…) by watching how USA World Games pullers did it in 2009. I think my earliest pulling form was some kind of uncoordinated looking Dylan Tunnell copycat.

Why watch others? And what should I look for in others’ pulling form?

If you see, you can do. Impersonation is a great form of flattery… and learning.

• Watch their feet / their run-up; how they set their feet before release; 

• Watch their arm motion / the reach back; 

• Watch their shoulder and upper body rotation; and

• Watch their follow through - what do they do with their arm, what do they do with their feet and in particular their back leg (does it stay grounded or kick up behind them?)

Then ask yourself, “is this replicable?” Of course it is. It'll look slightly different, sure but steal stuff you like. You can learn to take a penalties like Sam Kerr, you can learn to pull like Elizabeth Mosquera, who for the record is a top 3 favourite puller for me to watch…

Players I like to watch pull below. Few notes: (1) this isn’t an exhaustive list of good pullers. These are a few players who I think have good technique and when I was thinking about who has good tekkers from over my career, these were front of mind; and (2) this isn’t a particularly well weighted list of MMPs to FMPs. I apologise for that. I have many more hours watching Open games and Mixed games from an era where FMPs pulled significantly less than I do Women’s ultimate. 

• All-time favourites:

  • Elizabeth Mosquera (Revolution, Colombia) (see here)

  • Christian Foster (spin puller) (read this)

  • Dylan Tunnell (Chain Lightning, USA World Games 2009)

  • Tom “Mum” Abrams (CU, GB Open)

• North America

  • Robyn Fennig (Heist / Noise, USA)

  • Jimmy Mickle (Colony 2018, PoNY 2023)

  • Dylan Freechild (Team USA Dream Cup 2013)

  • Eric Taylor (Ring of Fire 2018)

  • Justin Allen (formerly of Ring of Fire, USA U23 2023)

• Oceania

  • Rob Andrews (Colony 2018, Australia World Games 2022)

  • John McNaughton (Australia Mixed 2024)

  • Takanuri Furazawa (Japan Open #18, WUGC 2016)

• Ireland

  • Fiona Mernagh (Jabba the Huck, Ireland Womens 2019)

  • Sinead Dunne (Ireland Mixed 2023)

  • Lotte Inkenhaag (Ireland Mixed 2023)

  • Brian Henderson (Ranelagh Ultimate, Ireland Mixed 2015)

• UK

  • Bex Palmer (RU and GB World Games 2022, now Rogue and Australia Mixed)

  • Alice Beeching (Bristol Women, GB Mixed 2023)

  • Connor McHale (CU, GB Open 2024)

• European

  • Sofiene Bontemps (Mooncatchers + Belgium Open + Belgium U24 Open 2023, incredible high arcing spin puller)

  • Nicole Lafiata (Italy Mixed 2023)

  • Mo Brucklacher (Germany U23 Open 2015, lotta bricks though)

  • Nico Muller (see EUC 2019 final - Fanseat)

  • Luca Miglioretto (Freespeed 2017 Windmill - Fanseat)

Okay, I want to try it myself now. What do I do?

Get your bag of discs and let’s go to a big ol’ green space to work in. I find it useful to set out a pitch so you know what you’re aiming at in each direction, and also so you know roughly how your pulls are ending (short/long or in-/out-of-bounds)

Step 1: Do not run before walking. Do not walk before crawling.

My advice to people who struggle with pulls or who are just starting out: why not stand still and rip a backhand? (I don’t think forehand pulls are that effective as backhand pulls (on average) and for me they’d be a GREAT way to give yourself tennis elbow, especially if you’re the best puller on a team that gets lots of breaks) You’re more likely to tick boxes like power transfer and direction if you aren’t worried about tripping over your feet.

Starting off, learn balance when throwing a backhand huck - let yourself travel, don’t worry about being grounded by a pivot foot, just get used to the hucking motion at full beans. Unlike hucking where we don’t want too much hang time, we’re okay to aim high and to get float on our hucks at this stage.

How to: Pulling - Step 1: Hucking

Step 2: Do the same as Step 1 but emphasise reach back and follow through

We want to reach back as far as we can without becoming unbalanced and then follow through, reaching back as far as we can behind us to promote the rotation we need to max out on our pulls (or indeed long throws). Thinking about swinging a golf club, if you stop immediately after hitting the ball, it won’t go as far as if you swing through fully; similarly, we don’t want to stop our arm immediately after releasing the disc.

How to: Pulling - Step 2: Maximise your arm swing

Step 3: Building up momentum

Once you’re happy you’re nudging your max output with hucks, you can experiment adding a little walk or one-or-two steps into a huck. Initially, don’t prioritise reach back and follow through, if it means foregoing balance, then build these back into your pull as you find yourself balanced and generally good at sending your pull in the direction you want it to go. As you progress through this stage, you can build up speed so your steps are faster or you can add more steps to add momentum as you build your routine.

How to: Pulling - Step 3: Building Momentum

Step 4: Getting your feet right

Add in the 3-step-cross-behind to the end of your run up. “Why this run up and not another run up?” I like the 3-step-cross-behind because I find it good for balance and getting my hips into the right angle to pull in the direction I want, and you eventually start doing this by force of habit and won’t have to think about your feet – nice to have one thing less to think about in all this.

How to: Pulling - Step 4: Getting your feet right

Step 5: Add speed

And I don't mean just run up faster, I mean add controlled violence to it (can’t think of a less aggressive description, contact sports background, I apologise) - you should be whipping yourself through quickly without losing control and by doing your run up and pulling motion faster, you should gain momentum and power behind your throw.

How to: Pulling - Step 5: Add speed

Step 6: Pull, Review, Adapt, Repeat

Be honest with your feedback to yourself on pulls. If you pulled really far, but it was low and fast, it’s going to be caught earlier in its flight path before its final resting place (RIP), so don’t settle for that. If it has a ton of hang time but is shorter than a brick, then just throw a brick and enjoy the stroll down the pitch. Be critical of yourself but be fair too. Film yourself, ask someone to watch your pull, then take/give yourself feedback, change something if it needs changing and do another rep. Repeat this until you’re happy or run out of practice time. Then repeat the session.

How to: Pulling - Step 6: Pull, Review, Adapt, Repeat

Step 7: Experimentation

This is arguably my favourite part of learning how to pull. Try different pulls; OI or IO; slower run up, faster run up; add in a spin, practise a roller. See what works and keep the good bits. Ultimately, you want to do the same thing every time you try an OI pull vs IO pull vs spin or whatever. Embed a repeatable run-up, routine and release into your pulling form. It might be that you don’t become your team’s primary puller, but it might be that your coach calls your number to do a specific pull at certain moments in a game; they could be keen for a roller to trap a team and if your main puller is actually just big on hang-time and distance and not on rollers, this is your time to shine! Similarly, your main puller could be struggling with a particular wind, so feel free to step in and let them know you got this. (But if you’re gonna pull out of rank order, you can’t go bricking it 😉 )

How to: Pulling - Step 7: Experimentation

Stage 8: Get meaningful reps

Do it at training and in low stakes games for reps before doing it in big games when the value of a good pull is greater. Do it before games and at training. Pull with the other good pullers on your team and give/receive feedback. Not only will you learn and get better, but people will know you’re investing time in these skills and it won’t be so alien to the team when you say you want to try a pull in game.

How to: Pulling - Step 8: Do it in game

Cool, so is that it then? Or anything else to think about

Oh, there’s a LOT to think about :D Take a seat, we’ll be here for a while yet.

What’s an ideal pull? Where do you want the disc to land on pitch?

If you could get the disc to land and finish in the exact spot you’d like every time, you’d probably say an inch inside the lines at the back of endzone and sideline right? Is that a realistic spot to aim for? Your margin for error is an inch, you’re going to brick a lot I reckon. And do you have the arm to throw 81 metres every time? If you do, fair play to you! I’m guessing you’re the best puller there ever was or will be <3

For us mere mortals who can’t do this, what do we settle for? My take (well, Tom Abrams’ take which I’ve adopted) is to aim for the disc to land deep down the middle of the pitch. The “deep” element is obvious, but why down the middle and why not a sideline? I’d like to emphasise that all ideal scenarios include a good, coordinated pull chase. So let’s assume we get down on a good, hanging pull and stop something each time with no more than 1 “centring” pass.

• Scenario 1: If a team does get a pass off, we don’t want it to go from a sideline third to the middle third. This enables them to attack either side of the pitch or down the middle after that centring pass (100% width of the pitch).

• Scenario 2: If we pull down the middle, chase hard and prohibit them for passing straight in front of the catcher for maximise yards game, we push that first pass to go lateral into the left or right third of the pitch. From here, if they’re going to get yards on their next pass, it’s most likely going to be down the third in front of them, or towards the middle of the pitch (where hopefully we have other defenders), so we’ve only got 66% of the pitch to defend now.

The outcome or objective of a good pull

The ideal outcome of a good pull is to prevent the offensive’s first look from being comfortably executed. By this I mean, we want the throw and chase to be good enough that the offence cannot just isolate someone in the lane and get their first option out with momentum.

Defensive wins on the pull to varying degrees of win:

• Stopping the centring pass

• Stopping the centring pass AND the first cutting option

• Forcing the offence to start from a disc on the floor or from the sideline (because of hard to catch blades or rollers)

• Forcing the offence to start from inside their endzone, or the first pass not getting them out of their endzone, and/or

• Having their first pass take them to one of the lateral thirds of the pitch so they don’t have the full width to play with

All these wins depend on both the pull and the chase. Defensive wins are rarely the product of just one person doing it all themselves – they are team efforts and that starts, every single point, with the pull.

Aim

I don’t mean aim, as in objective. We’ve covered that, you goose!

I mean aim, as in where in the air are we aiming. When you start with hucking, you might find in an attempt to throw far, you aim up and you balloon a few of them and they have way too much hang time so everyone and their mum can get under it for a bid (No? Just me? Sick. Love that for me). This is less than ideal for hucking. But it’s not necessarily bad for pulling. We do need to aim higher than we normally aim for distance throws. With hucks we don’t want them to stay in the air for too long, but with pulls hang-time is good if we’re not sacrificing too much distance. So when people I coach throw pulls low and far, I’ll always say “aim up” to them. (“aim higher” maybe more specific and useful – I’ll adopt that for 2024).

So how to aim up?

A few different ways really can contribute:

1. Tilt the front edge of the disc up so that naturally it will want to go in that path

2. If you find you bend over a lot to pull, you can stand a little more upright and see if it changes how you naturally release the disc. It could be you’re more bent over to get your body and legs out of the way so your arm can swing through properly, which is fine and means you might benefit from…

3. Changing the arc of your arm. I also encourage this a lot for getting more IO on your pulls, if you’re the kind of person who struggles to get IO on your pulls.
   Instead of releasing with your arm going outwards in the arc you want to throw, angle your swinging arm to swing upwards and outwards at a steeper angle (see example here in this clip)
   This doesn’t have to be a high arcing blade but it will help to swing upwards to throw upwards, right?

Grip

Grip wise, it will come as no surprise that I use a power grip for additional spin. This is for all backhand throws, not just pulls.

Power Grip

Additionally, and this could vary person to person… but to generate more spin, which helps the disc to cut through the wind and hold its edge/angle for longer, I grip the absolute bejaysus out of the disc. I squeeze it super tight, so that when I snap my wrist to release, it will naturally get a lot of spin from my grip-snap combo.

Distance vs Hang time

Age old debate. I think most will say Hang time > Distance. Within reason of course – if you can’t get the disc to hang close to the endzone line at a minimum, you’re probably giving the opposition something similar to a brick feel anyway. I’d also hazard a guess that you are probably maxing out your distance and it could well be worth your while experimenting with different pull variations if someone else on your team can get hang time into the endzone.

You want to give yourself enough time to get down on the pull. If training to be a better puller, you should absolutely film yourself and record the time the disc is in the air, i.e. from when you release it to the moment someone could feasibly catch it (helpful to have a throwing buddy actually doing this for you). If you vary your pull aim between max distance and max hang time (without sacrificing too much distance), I’d be interested to know if you find the disc is in the air for drastically more/less time. If the time in air is similar and you’re getting your max distance pulls into the endzone, I’d arguably go for distance. If your max distance is short of endzone, I’d arguably focus on hanging them or practising rollers to offer something different, while working on getting more distance on them.

What’s best? OI vs IO? Are other pull types worth practising? Spin pulls and rollers?

Personally, I think you’ll do best to develop IO pulls. Discraft discs tend to flip up from IO to flat and then turnover to OI during their flight. You need a LOT of spin and edge to keep your pulls IO through their full flight but you get more distance and hang time (going upwind especially) if you pull IO. 

Other discs vary, Aria discs and Eurodisc discs have a deeper rim, so they fly further if thrown flatter. With these discs, I tend to throw more OI pulls. Similarly, if I’m throwing downwind, I quite like an OI pull; I think I will sacrifice a little distance but I can keep the disc in the air for longer by throwing high hanging pulls.

Other pull types, I really like a spin pull in low wind or light upwind. I think I generate more power and it aids my reach back and follow through, but I definitely sacrifice a little control. I often need to remind myself not to spin too fast so I can maintain balance and so I don’t over-rotate, making sure my hips actually get into the right place. I wouldn’t progress to spin pulls until you’re a semi competent puller with a more standard run-up. I think there is a lot to be said for getting basic technique down and you’ll benefit in your hucking too by practising more traditional reach back and follow-through without the full spin rotation to assist.

Roller pulls

I have historically been embarrassingly bad at. I couldn’t throw it low enough to make it roll and I’d just throw a weak OI blade that was fielded before it got OB. Last year (2023), I figured out if I just really commit to turfing the disc, I can throw them well. As an O-line player, I don’t think I’ve ever thrown one in game, but maybe I get a chance this year 👀 I think they are useful for getting a team stuck on a sideline and setting up traps, be it zone or person D with a little lane poach for example. These are a faff to practice unless you have an obvious blocker to stop the rolling disc so pick and choose your moments. Also be mindful that the distance you’ll be giving up is quite substantial. For rollers I mentally commit to playing defence from around the brick mark at best.

A final point on rollers… and this is absolutely crucial, I cannot stress it enough:

If you’re going to throw rollers, you must commit 100% to being peak obnoxious about people stopping the disc within 3m of the sideline, especially at tournaments like Windmill where some pitches have less than 3m total between 2 pitches. You have played your trump card, the roller, and you must gain the benefit of this, while equally boosting your Rules Knowledge & Use score +1 – you’re a genius.

Finally, what about team strategy?

There are a lot of things to cover in a season, but top teams will know when pulling what the priorities are for defence that point more than just forehand/backhand force. They will know what areas of the pitch are valuable on both sides of the disc, they will know what cheap wins look like and they will know in what ways they are happy/not happy to be beaten.

Ultimately, defence wants to keep an opponent’s O-line on the pitch for as long as possible. This gives your O-line a longer break and wears down their O-line, hopefully leading to more break opportunities later in the game, so you don’t want short points. You don’t want to give short field position which the offence can use to score more quickly, and you want to protect the openside under (probably) quite a bit.

Your defensive strategies can and should start with the pull and pull chase. Most of these articles focus on the throwing element, but as for the chasing elements, it’s super worth your coach/captains considering how they want to start points; are there any places it would be better to put the offensive after the pull / after a pass or two? If they play certain structures, like side-stack, how do we want to adapt our chase and positions (and force)? You can’t cover all situations but you should definitely practice some throughout the season as part of your overall defensive strategy.

Personally, I like a structure that sags for a phase or two until the deeper defenders have a lock on their players before clamping on handlers and suffocating them.

I also like an early emphasis on marking everyone except the pull fielder. Why? Because the pull fielder can’t score once they have the disc. You have an opportunity to stifle all momentum by playing 7D vs 6O for a few seconds.

Optional strategic approach: I would toy with having a pull chasing pod who will mark the 2-3 players closest to the disc (either 3 handlers in 3-4 or the 2 handlers plus front of stack in 2-5/side stack) and their priority at start of each point is to yeet themselves down the pitch and cover all space in front of the disc, stopping centring passes where possible and forcing passes wide for a phase or two before clamping down and making resets hard. Thereafter your next pod of 3 covers the space under the cutters but behind the handler pod; we want to funnel all cutters into your final person who is someone we blindly back as a deep defender to take on anyone who cuts deep and wins that aerial battle.

Done right this should stifle a lot of pull plays and create a disconnect between handlers and cutters. It will create a nervous feeling amongst the handlers who have had to swing the disc around for ages with nothing available to them for a few phases.

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If you’ve stayed engaged this far, thank you for putting up with my 4,000+ words about pulling. I love you and I hope you have 0 bricks in 2024.

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Thanks to Ian for having me on his podcast recently and for hosting my thought dump on pulling. He’s always been supportive of me, even when I didn’t deserve it, so be supportive of him and subscribe to his substack and podcasts and when he asks for stuff, do the stuff. Thanks Coach <3