Hello Ultimate World!

Hi there Ultimate World! My name is Leslie Wu and I’m the third newest writer on UltiTraining.com, which we hope will keep on growing as the #1 Ultimate Frisbee training resource on the Web.

I’m currently a student at Stanford University with interests in Ultimate (duh), Russian Kettlebells, and Vernacular Bioinformatics. While I’m fairly new to the college Ultimate scene, I came to it with my experience in Freestyle Frisbee, Lifting, and Chinese Martial Arts.

At most schools, Ultimate is a club-level sport, which means that although many college teams have coaches to teach them about the game of Ultimate–throwing skills and game strategies–they typically lack the S&C (strength & conditioning) staff/coaches one might find in varsity college sports.

Here at Stanford, when I first met the head physical therapist on campus, he showed me a pile of Ultimate discs dating back over a decade. I’ve since learned that medical professionals here see a lot of Ultimate-related injuries, since the Bay Area is awash in high school, college, intramural, pickup, and club level games, without much S&C coach supervision. This in mind, I decided to learn myself how to train and instruct others in the skills of strength and movement (since my sports background is as a strength&movement athlete rather than as an endurance athlete), as college Ultimate players get at least a base level of conditioning just playing Ultimate and other sports, running sprints after every practice, and doing hill sprints and interval bike rides the rest of the week.

So, in the spirit of teaching myself the arts of strength & movement coaching, I have been spending the last year learning from the best of the best how they get strong, stay resilient, prevent injuries, and keep on moving well along the way!

Earlier this year I attended Pavel Tsatsouline’s Russian Kettlebell Challenge (RKC) course in San Jose–a life-changing and challenging experience–and have since completed over 60 hours of Z-Health dynamic joint mobility instructor training with Z-Health founder Dr. Eric Cobb, to address all the weakest links I found along the way (the hard and hard-style way at the RKC).

Leslie teaches the Turkish Get-up

Most recently I completed my Z-Health R-phase movement coaching certification, and hope to learn more about the FMS (Functional Movement Screen) from Gray Cook and deepen my Kettbell and movement practice next year.

I’d like to share what I’ve learned along the way (absorb what is useful and reject what is useless if you will as Bruce Lee once said), with a specific focus on injury prevention, better movement, and women Ultimate players in particular.

Ultimate!!