Ultimate frisbee practice plan for beginners

A good ultimate frisbee practice plan for beginners fits in an hour and does four things: a warm up that ends in throwing, one drill where people throw against a mark, one drill where people cut to the open side, and a scrimmage with a single rule that uses what the drills taught. Picking one idea for the whole session and building every part toward it works better than covering a little of everything. For a first practice, that idea is the force: the mark takes away one side, and everyone else plays to the other.

Before you start

Most of a first practice is decided before anyone arrives. Know roughly how many people are coming, bring enough discs for one between two, and mark out a small square with cones for the drills and a shortened field for the scrimmage. Decide the force before the session, so you can say it once at the start and repeat it in every part. If you haven't settled on one, force forehand is the usual choice for a new team.

Keep the talking short. New players learn more from a drill that starts quickly and gets corrected while it runs than from a long explanation at the start. Give each drill one cue, show it once, and let people play.

An ultimate frisbee practice plan for beginners, in one hour

Warm up and throwing (about 15 minutes). Start with a few minutes of easy running and dynamic movement, then throw in pairs. Begin close together and move apart as throws get cleaner, with both backhands and forehands. Newer players will want to throw only backhands; ask for an even mix, because the forehand is the throw the force will ask for later. The game day warm up covers this part in more detail.

Throwing against a mark (about 10 minutes). Move straight into a drill where one player throws, one marks and counts, and one receives. The mark takes away the side you called, the thrower pivots to get the disc past them on the open side, and everyone rotates into the next role after each throw. Throwers learn to pivot rather than stand square, and marks learn where to stand and how to count. Correct the mark's position more than the throws at this stage.

Cutting to the open side (about 15 minutes). The second drill adds a cutter and a defender downfield. The mark holds the same side as before, so the throw can only go one way, and the cutter learns to get open there instead of wherever there happens to be space. Ask defenders to play at less than full speed at first so the cutter and thrower have something to read. The force drill article explains the rotation and steps through one round.

Scrimmage with one rule (about 20 minutes). Finish with a game on a shorter field, with smaller teams if numbers allow. The one rule is that every defender plays the force you practised, and the team calls it out before each point. Stop play only when something happens that the drills were about, such as a mark giving up the open side or a cutter running to the side that is closed, and keep those stops brief. Rotate players on and off so everyone gets a similar number of points.

The times are a guide. If the throwing is ragged, take a few minutes from the scrimmage and give them to the first drill. If the group is small, run one line of each drill and rotate more often.

After the first practice

At the end, take a minute to say what the session was about and what the team will build on next time. A second practice can keep the same shape with a new idea in the middle: how to cut and vertical stack spacing follow naturally from the force, and the drills stay much the same. Repeating a structure from week to week means less explaining and more playing.

If you also run the team on game days, you can set up your team on Playspedia. Players say whether they are coming through a shared link, and on the day it helps you build lines and keep playing time fair.