Know the Rules to Break the Rules

This will be my second post along a similar vein of becoming a creative player.  Again, there are no solutions here just questions.

The motif of Kennedy and my arguments in college was to what extent do we put “rules” or “structure” on our team?  From my perspective we needed rules and structure to get anywhere, the reasons we struggled were because we didn’t have a strict enough idea of where we were going and motion died.  Kennedy felt that the rules and structure were hamstringing our ability to play with creativity and we fell apart because no one knew how to react to what they were seeing.

Yngve has often told me that ultimate is like Jazz, when it’s your turn to go solo if you throw in a bad note you ruin the entire song.  Since I agree with Yngve I have often just filed his opinion under my confirmation bias folder.

Enter Leo, a Jazz piano major at Northwestern.  He is one of the artsiest kids I’ve ever met, and he feels strongly that you need to know the rules in order to break the rules.  Look at Picasso’s work as a young student of art, his pictures are perfect and realistic, compared to his work later in life, which we are all far more familiar with.  To hear an extremely artistic person tell me about the importance of the rules was the final confirmation I needed to believe that I am right.  You need to know the rules in order to break the rules, and although this process may take a long time and your players may look like robots for far longer than you’d hope you cannot skip the step of learning the rules and go straight into improv.

Rule	Breaking the Rule
1.        Make Upline cuts from the breakside of your thrower.	Making an upline from the forceside can be a cut that puts the defense is a very compromising position.  It gives you power position towards the breakside, and ideally would lead to continues through the breakside.  In order to execute this move you need to be able to space yourself and take an angle that actually gives your thrower a chance of completing this pass, which can be a technically difficult throw to make.
2.       Start cuts downfield from the breakside and towards the forceside.	If you are on the forceside sideline you can definitely make an incut toward the breakside, but you risk running into your breakside teammates and you risk giving your thrower a cut that he has no chance of throwing to.  You need to be able to look at the mark that is guarding your teammate and see what break throw your teammate has, when you make your move you have to be able to read that and cut so that your thrower has a chance to get it to you.  Before you can learn to do it from forceside to breakside, you have to have the understanding of going breakside to forceside.
3.       Throw with your dominant hand.	Using your offhand has become a very trendy thing, but before you can learn how to hit a dump, upline, or slip with your offhand you need to have a clear understanding of what the throw looks like and how to complete it with your dominant hand.
4.       Handlers handle and cutters cut.	My least favorite rule of all time!  Why can’t a handler dart off towards the big box?  Why can’t a cutter make his clear into the backfield and then set up a handler cut?  Because when you do these things willy-nilly you’re ruining everything, getting into people’s way and shutting down the offense.  When you do it right, you’ve broken the game open.
5.       Clear to the breakside.	If the forceside is easier to get to why not go there?  The answer here is pretty simple, just because something is easier to do doesn’t mean it’s better for your offense.  But there are times where going forceside is good and can be taken advantage of, but before you can start seizing these chances you have to have the rote skill of driving your cut breakside.

Too me rules are critical, but ultimate is not a sport until you start breaking them.  I think I have done a great job of clearly outlining rules in my own head and then transferring them to another.  I believe I can create a robot in about 6 months.  My efforts at helping a player break the rules and competently lay down an improvised riff have been basically zero. 

My roadblock is that rules are applicable to all scenarios; improv is reading the field and making a move.  How do you teach someone intuition without just handing them a long menu of reads, moves, and adjustments?  Should I blow a whistle every 10 seconds of scrimmage, walk over to a random player and start pointing out his options?  We all know how frustrating a big menu is, you basically end up not wanting to order anything.  The current plan is to trust that there are humans somewhere inside my players that want to break out and play beautifully.  If sitting around waiting for the team to reach a critical mass of rule following and doesn’t suddenly start making my guys start playing sports then I am currently out of ideas.