Surviving (and Thriving) at a Week-Long Tournament

In this article, Ali Smith (She / her) shares her professional tips and personal playing experiences on preparing for week-long tournaments with your team. Brew and Nads have shared some tips on how they approached some of these topics during their ‘23 and ‘24 EUC and WUC campaigns. These tips are intended as sharing experiences and not specific guidance (unlike Ali, they are not professionals!), you can find some links to resources they used, throughout the article.

Ali competing for Bristol during the 2014 WUCC in Lecco.
📸: Jeff Bell here

Bio: playing history and leadership history

Hi, I’m Ali, and I’m the GB Ultimate Performance Director. I began playing at Leeds University and played 3 European and Worlds cycles with GB Mixed, and 4 World Clubs tournaments (2 mixed division, 2 women’s division). I joined the GB Committee in 2012 and I currently hold a voluntary role as Performance Director. Outside of Ultimate, I’m a Lecturer in Sport Psychology at the University of Bath and teach on a range of topics including performance management, athlete welfare, social issues in sport, and practitioner development. I’m fortunate to have worked with multiple sports organisations and athletes, and to have learned a lot from within and beyond our sport.

Ali's first week long tournament

I was fortunate to play at multiple week-long international tournaments, and to manage and support teams at multiple events, but I still remember my first World Clubs in Hawaii in 2002. I was fresh out of university, surrounded by more playing fields that I could count, and completely out of my depth. The week was a complete emotional rollercoaster, bringing highlights and huge challenges in quick succession. It was part of my inspiration for returning to university to study sport psychology.

Week-long major events like Worlds are more than high-level competitions. The competition structure is intensive (a colleague once described it to me as binge sport), players spend extended time together with minimal personal space and rest, and there are logistical challenges with transport and food arrangements. I’ve learned that it’s just as important for managers and coaches to prepare for the event, as it is to prepare for the performances and I’ve brought together some key practices that can help the week run smoothly.

Brew co-captaining Reading during the 2025 season.
📸: Graham Shellswell here

Make player self-management a season goal

When we play 2-day or even 3-day tournaments, we can often get away with not being on top of nutrition, hydration, rest and recovery, and having our kit (and ourselves!) organised. At week-long events, we don’t have this luxury. So, begin the conversation about expectations, team rules, and player self-management early in the season, practice this throughout training and warm-up tournaments, and actively feedback on it. If you can get the majority of the team working like a well-oiled machine, it allows your focus at World Clubs to stay on performance.

Think proactively about mental rest

The structure of 6-8 tournament days with 1-2 games per day leaves limited time for rest and recovery. Although we might plan physical recovery, players also need built- in opportunities to allow cognitive and emotional systems to recover. Mental fatigue can impair aerobic endurance, decision-making, tactical focus, and sleep quality (e.g. Wu et al., 2024), so even physical rest can be undermined by a lack of mental rest. When looking ahead to World Clubs, proactively plan opportunities for the team to have both individual and group downtime. Talk about the need for mental rest during the week and encourage players to actively plan activities that enable mental

‘detachment’ from playing (e.g., listening to music). Group activities away from games and functional activities (i.e., eating and travelling) also enable mental and emotional recovery. These could be activities at training, or at the Worlds hotel, to allow cognitive rest after a day’s play, or even pitch-side to allow emotional intensity to reduce between games or during half-time. Be intentional with these activities, particularly with less experienced players who may be less aware of their need.

Nads and Brew: Mental rest is also very important for managers and coaches too. They often will spend player downtime planning for future games. Brew and Nads would recommend:

Setting and communicating time slots for player management within the tournament setting
Asking players to take on tasks (e.g. cooking or schedule support). For example at EUC in 2023, one of our players organised food shopping and cooked all of our meals.
Create a living space that is as relaxing as possible for management (e.g. sharing with other members of management).
Identify at home support. For example Emma Klima and Conor Hogan watched footage of our opponents during WU24 2025. This allowed us to reduce evening admin burden and focus on running effective team meetings.

Players, it is imperative that you consider what you can do for your management teams and how you demand time, whether that is supporting with logistics, simply checking in on their needs (e.g. getting them a coffee), thank you's or gifts and maintaining good levels of self-reflection and awareness. Looking after them, makes them better managers to look after you.

Direct focus on one game at a time

Players look to leadership to direct their attentional focus, and the best place to focus is on one game at a time. As managers we might be looking at possible routes through schedules and predicting power pool match-ups, but these are distractions for the team, so keep all team conversations focused on the upcoming game. Keep communication simple, with no more than 3 take-away points at each team meeting, pre-game talk, or huddle to maintain a manageable cognitive load. Enable players to stay as ‘in the moment’ as possible. To achieve this, have a leadership group who can talk through the aspects that are not shared with the wider team, so no one person is left over-thinking alone, and ensure leadership have protected downtime too.

Nads and Brew: Management can work with players to identify how and when information on the next game should be provided to best direct focus and protect mental fatigue. Management groups should recognise different players have different needs when it comes to communicating game plans, schedules or results - and so we would recommend discussing this well in advance of your most important tournament so you can get into a routine early in the season.

Engage in ‘what-if’ planning

Challenges including injuries, weather disruptions, and schedule changes are commonplace at week-long events and, when margins are tight, success is often shaped by which teams best manage these obstacles. Ensure you can navigate challenges smoothly by doing ‘what-if’ planning in advance. Ideally at least 1 month before travelling and including only the team leadership, envision all the situations that could arise (e.g., delays, re-schedules, mid-game stoppages, off-pitch events) and create a realistic plan of action. You can capture the plan in a document, if needed. Not only are you prepared, but you also transfer any ‘what if’ worries out of

conscious thought, leaving you to focus on preparation.

Nads and Brew: Brew and Nads have created a PDF to support navigating challenging scenarios. This allows the whole team and management to process and determine how the team will respond to these scenarios, taking away unnecessary mental load should these scenarios occur. These should be personalised to your team. The example we shared, we used during the 2024 World Championship campaign, and it helped the team focus on controllable' s and pre-agreed communication channels instead of “panicking” if and when things went a bit wrong!

Plan for the event, not just for the performance

Week-long events like World Clubs are the highlights of many players’ ultimate careers. When planning your season, take time to plan how you’ll prepare the team for the event itself. Identify varying experience levels across the team, support those with less experience to prepare, and reinvest the experience of those who have attended events before by creating opportunities to share what they’ve learned. Actively planning how to navigate the unique challenges of these events helps players and teams focus on the reason they’re there - to perform at their best against the best in the world.

Nads and Brew: Brew and Nads have created a PDF for logistics management to support planning for the event. Where possible, logistics should be shared with players to reduce burden on management (e.g. accommodation organisation or travel support). Brew and Nads would recommend:

If your team has some disparity in experience of week long tournaments, sharing knowledge in different forms can be helpful (e.g. buddy groups based on experience, open forum for questions, senior players top tips).
Cost is a priority as frisbee is expensive, however balancing cost against elements which reduce mental and physical fatigue should be considered (e.g. cars or hotel location).
Accommodation and social and private space is critical for team bonding/closeness across the week.