Diagnosing Reset Issues

Problems with your resets? They might not be problems with your resets

There's a lot of information out there about different types of reset systems* and how to practice the skills involved. If your team has struggled resetting the disc this is the first place most coaches will turn to. However, here are a couple of different ways to look at your resets before you start running endless reset reps at your trainings.

Potential Problems

a. You rely on resets too much

b. Resets are treated as a completely different segment of the game

Do you need to reset so often?

Reset turnovers can be a symptom of larger problems within your offence, namely that you aren't able to get into flow and chain continuous passes together.

If every pass downfield is followed by a reset then you’re probably not going to turnover on downfield passes (you’re being very cautious about throwing them) so you’re probably going to end up turning on a reset because you have to throw them and you have to throw them a lot.

Running reset drills is going to make you slightly more efficient at throwing resets but you’re going to hit diminishing returns.

You also have a disconnect between the physical effort in practice vs. games. Reset drills tend to be cycled through, everyone does an equal share with predictable rest periods during it. In games and tournaments the bulk of the effort is focused on a small number of players on your team. That’s a lot of physical and mental pressure to need to grind through. And of course, the opposition is going to heavily pressure this part of your game.

By working on your offence outside the reset you can improve your reset. The handlers will be less physically and mentally tired, and if the defence has lots of things to worry it becomes less valuable to them to concentrate on shutting it down. All of which makes your resets easier.

How to practice flow

Limited pass reps

Give players a maximum number of passes. A low total will encourage players to look to maximise

Bonus Points for paired completions

Pair up cutters on the line and award bonus points if they throw to each other in the point and their team scores. This works well in small sided games, at 7v7 it's a little too artificial so you could consider something like needing a cutter-cutter pass during the point instead. Another way would be to require two consecutive passes over a certain length e.g. 20 yards which both encourages players to look for those high value throws but also here they can figure out that the 20 yards can come in any direction which feeds into the next point.

Switch the play instead of resetting

Reset issues can be caused by the offence not recognising it's in a bad position. Most conspicuously known as tunnel vision - someone with the disc on the sideline staring at the space in front of them. This situation leads to the hardest resets i.e. ones where you are under time pressure and the defence has had time to recognise the situation and lock in on reset defence.

This may seem contradictory to the first point - but it's really a progression.

- We want to continue our offence downfield

- We want to be able to recognise situations where this can't happen. Most commonly because

a. A mis-timed cut

b. Extra defenders

- Rather than turning away completely for a hard reset, we want to be able to explore if there are alternative spaces to attack. Good defences will quickly shut down your offence if all you want to do it throw in straight line downfield or reset. You need to be able to see the whole field and find other spaces in between.

How to practice switching play

Specific pass targets

Similar to above but you can explore how the offence treats different target numbers. The rhythm of the offence will change a lot depending on the target. A limited target like score in 5 passes will encourage players to take their time and look to extract maximum yards from each pass. A high target e.g. can only score after 15 passes will encourage to move the disc quickly, not worrying so much about yards, but about keeping the disc away from pressure**.

Defensive Pitch Zones

Divide the pitch into half or thirds vertically, and the downfield defenders have to all be the same half/third as the disc. Here the offence players should learn quickly that the best space to attack is not the tunnel directly in front of the disc***.

Teaching and Reinforcing Bad Offence Habits: Drill based practice

From my experience the way players practice sets up this binary offence where the thrower is either staring at a particular part of the pitch, or turning completely towards a handler to reset the disc.

This is not intentional. This is implicitly taught to players through drilling static resets and static 1v1 or 2v2 cutting.

• If your reset instruction comes in the form of having players walk into predetermined position, checking in a disc and looking for a predetermined person to make predetermined cuts with no real consequences for success or failure then you're going to get a very stilted, static and obvious 'reset' phase in your offence.

• If your cutting practice comes in the form of 1v1/2v2 cuts from static, where the cutters are only allowed to cut on the openside, you are teaching throwers to do that - to look in one space, not expect any cuts going to a different location, and to look there for a set amount of time even if you can see there is nothing developing.

There is a time and place for this sort of instruction - you can definitely use these formats to isolate particular skills that need some extra focus. But if you only teach these concepts through those sort of drills then your players should be good at handling those situations should they come up but you haven't taught them how to recognise or deal with anything else.

This goes for more than just resets and cutting, but if you can approach coaching your sessions where you play games first - included modified and constrained games - and use drills as an intervention when isolating something specific is needed you will end up with players that are better at playing Ultimate in the long run.

Summary

Get better at resets by not throwing as many resets. An ideal offence point for me is a goal without any reset situations. A lot of resets are feedback that something isn't working well elsewhere.

*But if you want my opinion on that, the less systematised and the more dynamic the reset system the better. Base it on principles rather than trying to script exact options.

** You can also add a time limit to speed up this process. For example, if you need to take at least 8 passes and you have only 60 seconds to score, you're going to move the disc quickly.

*** You also teach defenders to be aware of disc position at all times