June 29th, 2005

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Sports
3 Comments »

Ultimate Videos

I play ultimate frisbee. Very badly. I like it because:

  • It’s mixed gender. Every men-only team sport I’ve ever played, regardless of how ‘fun’ and ‘recreational’ it’s advertised, ends up in a whose-penis-is-bigger contest among testosteroni men.
  • It’s outdoors.
  • We only play in summer, and occasionally, the fall.
  • It’s high-intensity, meaning I don’t have to spend a ton of time doing it.

I often say that I run more in a game of ultimate than in any other sport I’ve ever played. I’ve thought about this, and I think it comes down to the physics of the frisbee or ‘disk’. In ball sports, because of the ball’s volume-to-mass ratio, the ball only remains in the air for a short period of time. The disk, on the other hand, carries farther and hangs in the air longer. This results in more running.

These videos, from a league far more elite than my own, illustrate my point:

Comments: 3 Responses so far

Rick
June 29th, 2005
8:47 am

Man, I really miss playing. I played all through college on our club team and wished I could have kept playing after college, but Rochester doesn’t have any teams and the Twin Cities league is during the week, which doesn’t work out so much for me since the Cities are 1.5 hours away. *Sigh* Maybe someday I’ll move to a place where there’s a team.

[Reply]

Rog
June 30th, 2005
5:19 am

Wow, what a different view. I don’t enjoy testosterone focused sports either, but I really don’t enjoy Ultimate because it seems to be so high-endurance focussed and is highly competitive. Yes, there is an insane amount of running. Far from a casual sport.

[Reply]

Krishen
July 1st, 2005
5:12 am

Those are great videos — thanks for passing them along. :)

Rog, there are definitely high-endurance types who play Ultimate, but in my experience that’s a side-effect, not the focus.

[Reply]

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