Should there be specificity when it comes to endurance training for a sport? I feel like I should mix in cutting, shuffling and backpedaling as endurance training.
Endurance for a particular sport is one of the most sports specific things there is.
This is why no matter how hard NBA guys train in the offseason - and some of them get in amazing shape - when they start playing basketball again it takes a little time to get into "basketball" shape.
The way to look at it is in the past we told athletes to lots of long distances to "get in shape". This is better than nothing but most coaches now realize it's unnecessary and not very effective.
So, we can move to the type of endurance a sprinter develops in training which is far better for sports. We can do interval training which will build up our lactate tolerance and muscular endurance. We can even simulate this in the weight room. Personally, the best track shape I can get into is when I feel like I can run moderate distances at decent pace with short recovery - if I can do something like 6-10 150-200m sprints under 24/30 seconds with very limited recovery between them I feel like I'm in great speed endurance "shape" as far as sprinting.
However... That is still a long way away from being in shape for a sport like basketball, football, soccer, or frisbee. That's because a huge part of sport endurance is managed recovery. If you think of a basketball game there are so many macro breaks (shooting free throws, ball out of bounds, etc) and micro breaks - fast break you are not involved in, getting in position, spotting up, etc. The fittest athletes use these breaks to recover.
That's why to get better endurance there is really no way to substitute it besides playing the sport. So your best avenue to get into frisbee shape is to play a lot of frisbee games or scrimmages at a competitive clip. Nothing is better...
However, if your training alone or you don't have access to actual games - can you make endurance more specific than interval sprinting? IMO the answer is yes but you are accepting a tradeoff as you are no longer doing workouts designed to most efficiently get you into lactate threshold so your not building general endurance as well AND if you start cutting and making your endurance work to specific you are risking injury and delaying recovery in your endurance training - this can be unwise as ideally endurance training fits in nicely as a safe recovery tool into your program.
IMO whether or not you should do this depends on how much frisbee you play.
Do you have games every weekend and a scrimmages a couple times a week? If so get your sports specific endurance in then and stick to sprint intervals on your training day..
Are you not able to get much actual game play in or your doing offseason training by yourself? Then you might want to tailor your endurance work to make it a bit more sports specific... However, I wouldn't go overboard - don't add in things like sprints followed by 5 disc throws, followed by sprints and then 5 simulated layouts... Keep it sprint endurance focused but alter it - don't redesign a circuit of sports moves because it will never be the same as gameplay...
For some of my sport athletes I like to have their endurance work focused around a certain sprint repeat. For example imagine I am training sprinter who is also a soccer/football/basketball player, lets assume his 60m PR is 7.1.
I like this drill:
Set up cones at varying distances but the distance from 1st to last cone is 60m. Initially the drill is 60m repeats with rep/set rests at varying (ideally random times and rests).
A set of six might would involve sprinting 60m in a certain time, running through line and walking/jogging back to line in under a certain time and then sprinting back to the start to do 60m in another certain time. It might look like this:
1) Run 60m in < 8. Get back to line in under 20 sec.
2) 60m < 10. Back in 30.
3) 60m < 9. Back in 10.
4) 60m < 10. Back in 10
5) 60m < 8. Back in 20.
6) 60m < 8. Done.
Could you get creative as long as you don't go overboard? Sure.
You could set up cones so a rep could be sprint to 20m, touch ground, come back 20m in < 10. You could have a rep be back pedal for 20m and turn and run in under 12. Ideally, a training partner could vary all three to challenge you - vary the task, vary the speed, and vary the recovery time. What I wouldn't do is add in too much dynamic movement - I wouldn't add in bounds, jumps, etc. The reason being that these are still technical skills and we don't want to practice single leg bounding while fatigued. We want quality always for technical movement because as anyone who jumps a lot knows - good practice is extremely important to improve these abilities - bad practice is counter productive. Yes, I realize that you might have to perform an ME single leg jump while fatigued to go catch a frisbee... That's part of the sport.. Hopefully you managed your fatigue well and can execute it and hopefully you don't get injured - it's necessary for sport but not something we want to practice if that makes sense...
