Welcome to my next blog post. We will talk about how I track my Ultimate Frisbee exercises and games with my fitness watch. I am a sport loving person. And I do all kinds of different sports. For example, running, going to the gym, biking, swimming and now I added the team sport Ultimate Frisbee to it. If you have a fitness watch already you sometimes want to track your activities and can’t find the right way to do it.
I found a way to track Ultimate Frisbee and will share it in this article with you. If you have a better way or other improvements feel free to share it in the comment section. Everybody will have an advantage from your contribution.
About half a year ago, in March 2021 I bought my first fitness watch, the Garmin Fenix Six to track my every day exercises. Mainly I bought it to use it while running. Now I can watch my calories, I can see the exact effect my workouts have and if I have to increase or decrease my load.
How I track Ultimate Frisbee Exercises with my fitness watch
As soon as I started my journey as a beginner in Ultimate Frisbee I was interested to see how exhausting it is. Therefore I wanted to track it with my fitness watch. Unfortunately we play inside during the cold season. This means, that my watch has no GPS signal.
I looked only and couldn’t find the right solution. In the Garmin Connect IQ Store I could not find any plug ins to use for Ultimate Frisbee. But for me I found out, that tracking it as a Treadmill Activity has the best results.
The watch uses only my steps to calculate the distance. It is not that accurate but for me as an Ultimate Frisbee beginner its enough. Through my heart rate the calories and trainings effect is calculated. This gives me a good overview how exhausting the practice was.
When I am just outside and play catch with a friend we don’t run that much. Therefore I just record it as a classic Cardio Exercise. Sometimes you need to chase a not well thrown disc. For someone who tracks their calories this will make sense. If you don’t you can only track the games and practices.
I can just say, that is very interesting to see how exhausting the practices are. If you track more games or practices you can compare them to each other. And you can see a positive trend if you get better. I can truly recommend a fitness watch for every sport enthusiast! You will learn so much about yourself. And it’s a big influence on your activity level.
How exhausting is Ultimate Frisbee
When I started out it was a good workout. Ultimate Frisbee is an intensive sport and if you have a bad fitness you will be exhausted after the first few practices. But you will soon get better!
As a beginner you will run a lot in every game. But when you get more advanced on one hand your fitness level gets better and on the other hand you play much wiser. In the beginning you just run around and try to get everywhere. Step by step you learn more tactics and strategies.
For example as the offence team you soon adopt the stack technique. Basically only one player runs at a time. As an Ultimate Frisbee Beginner everyone runs at once. This and many other improvements make the game way easier to play and less exhausting.
For the defence team you try to force the thrower on one side of the field. That results in a large decrease of running for you as a defender. Because you know already where the disc will end up.
Now we take a closer look at my last Ultimate Frisbee Practice. In the beginning be focused on throwing. First throwing only backhand and then only forehand. After that we practiced being a cutter (running to catch the disc) and being a handler (throwing the disc to the cutter). After about 30 to 45 minutes we started playing games.
In the whole Frisbee practice I burned 1173 calories, ran 8,00 km (5 miles) and we played for about 2 hours and 15 minutes. You could say that is was a really good workout.
The two pictures show some more data of my last Ultimate Frisbee Practice. Keep in mind I am a beginner, heavier gym dude and with the treadmill tracking it is not 100% accurate. And yes it’s in german but I will translate for you.
On the top left you can see the pace in minutes per kilometer. This shows that a game and the exercises consist out of short and fast runs. On the lower left corner you can see my heart rate. It goes up and down a lot but a rate of almost 180 bpm is quite a lot. On average my heart rate was around 137 bpm which is a good area.
In the top right corner you can see the Training Effect of the Ultimate Frisbee exercise. I don’t want to get too much into detail what the two different numbers mean but you can look at this article if you are interested.
Aerobic Effect increases during rhythmic exercise like running with constant tempo. Anaerobic Effect increases when you for example quickly sprint. It had a good effect on my Aerobic Fitness and a smaller effect on my anaerobic.
In the lower right corner you can see my steps per minute. They vary a lot because of the short sprints to get the disc in an Ultimate Frisbee Game. I would say the data on the right is useful for everybody even beginners. And the data on the right is for the ones who love data and analysing their fitness.
Which fitness watch do I use for Ultimate Frisbee?
I use the Garmin Fenix Six Pro to track my Ultimate Frisbee practices. I bought this watch because you can basically do anything with it. It’s a multi sport watch because as I said in the beginning I do many different sports. Going to the gym, hiking, running, swimming, Ultimate Frisbee and biking. And I really love data..
Yes I am a nerd. But I just love it.
I get so many insights. You get heart rates, trainings effect, you get even a coach, you get stress level, body battery, sleep tracking, current state of training, VO2max and now I already geek to much.. sorry š
Besides all the nerdy but fantastic and helpful data you are completely influenced. But in a good way.
Frist you pay a good amount of money for the watch so you have to make it worth every penny you paid. And then the whole ecosystem is build to make you better every day.
Garmin has a Newsfeed where you can see all the activities of your friends. Five or six of my friends have a Garmin and if you are about to be lazy the activities of the others will motivate you.
Every month you get challenges. For example run 10 km this weekend. For every done challenge you get points which will get you to a higher level. Then you have different badges for achievements which also give you points.
The whole gamification and social connection make it really easy to stay fit.
You can check out my watch here. And they have a lot of different options. Cheaper ones as well.
For my runs I also use a heart rate belt. This one goes around the chest and gives you even more data! Better heart rate monitoring, balance between left and right, length of you steps, vertical movement and time of ground contact. This is only for real runners or data freaks like me.
Conclusion
You don’t need a fitness watch to play Ultimate Frisbee. But it’s very interesting to see how good your fitness is and how you develop over the time. It’s a good influence to stay motivated.
I track my practices as a treadmill activity and when I just play catch with the disc I track it as normal cardio without GPS.
Ultimate Frisbee is a real sport and sometimes very exhausting. As soon as you develop from beginner to more advanced you run less and your fitness level increases.
I use a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro to track Ultimate Frisbee and all the other sports I do.
Do you use a Fitness Watch and how do you track it?
Frisbee Dude 