Laying It On the Line
Picture-perfect layout from Masters Nationals 2021. Team: Reboot, player unknown. Photo by Kristina Geddert for UltiPhotos.com, used with permission
There is an art to laying out for a disc.
Maybe “art” isn’t the right word, but there is definitely a correct way to lay out, and a not-as-smart way to do it.
I feel like I’ve probably lost a couple of you already. “Laying out” means diving for the frisbee. And as you can imagine, when you are hurtling head-first toward the ground a lot can go wrong. Smart ultimate players practice laying out. To minimize injury, you want to land on your chest with both arms in front reaching for the disc. The impact gets distributed first to your chest, then your lower body. And it also gets dispersed by the slide.
I never practiced it. And rarely did it properly. I’d always extend my right arm for the disc, land on my side and sometimes roll out of it. For years I got away with this, but in 2010 I must have landed directly on my shoulder diving for a disc. I say “must have” because I don’t actually remember when I injured myself. I remember a couple weeks later nearly doubling over in pain when I attempted to throw a flick the first week of summer league. All of a sudden I could barely use my right arm.
I tried to wait it out and not use it for a couple weeks, but eventually went to a PT and got some exercises to do. It took nearly a year, but eventually I was back to full strength again. I played left-handed in the meantime and got pretty good at it, which was fun.
Fast-forward to 2016, first game of winter league in February. We are tied or down one and need to score. Someone makes an errant throw to me and I dive for it with my right arm extended… and don’t catch it. But, boy did it hurt. I knew immediately that I’d re-injured it. This time it wasn’t quite as bad - I could still throw with my right - but injuries in your late 40s are never great.
The best thing that came out of that injury was meeting Lorraine. When she first saw me, she knew I was having shoulder problems by my posture and that’s how we got talking. She is an amazing PT, for those not in the know. So we started dating and she helped me get through that injury. It took months, but not as long as the first time.
Now jump ahead to 2020. This time, it’s an even more dramatic cause: sleeping on my arm. Yep, I re-aggravated my shoulder injury by sleeping. Again I had Lorraine to help me with rehab, but it wasn’t getting better. Finally she made me get an MRI to make sure it wasn’t a major tear. It wasn’t. There was a tear, but it wasn’t huge. The doctor wasn’t insisting on surgery, but it was certainly an option if I didn’t improve.
Then I had a conversation with my friend Andy Brewer and he mentioned a book with a simple technique that completely healed my shoulder. You’ll have to hang in there for a week to find out what that was….
