Speed, acceleration, and endurance are some physical skills that allow you to be successful on the field. You only have a finite amount of time and energy to invest in training and improving yourself in these skills. How much energy would you invest into each? How would you train effectively to see gains, season after season?

We asked our authors for a look into how they think about their defensive matchups. How do you use your pieces against the other team? This is an incredibly complicated question, and we've specifically asked our authors to work without much information. What are the basic pieces of designing a defensive strategy?

In my mind, the big difference between a 4-person cup zone (why doesn't anyone call it a 4-2-1?) and a 1-3-3 is the emphasis on pushing the disc backwards in the 4-person cup. The trap looks exactly the same, but in the middle of the field and on the non-trap sideline, the cup curls around, making the passing lanes out of the cup angle back much more than against a 1-3-3 or even a 3 person cup.