Six Things Lacrosse Coaches Get Wrong

Conditioning. I’ve seen coaches who condition at the beginning of practice, during practice, and after practice. Tired is the enemy, not the goal. Practicing in a constant state of fatigue guarantees you are practicing slow. It also guarantees that your kids see practice as drudgery.  Your games and your performance practices will be what gets your kids in shape.  Have you ever noticed that no matter how much you prepare, your athletes are never in game shape until about the 2nd or 3rd game of the season?  That's because games are how you get in shape combined with your regular practice!  

Too Much Stick work. There is a time and place to practice on the run throwing and catching.  I recommend 2man and 3man weave/no weave drills simulating transition lacrosse.  It takes coordination and strength as players move farther apart for longer passes and with gradually increased speed, this environment teaches players to throw/receive hard passes in variable conditions.  For most teams I might do this for 10 minutes

Most Line drill type of stick work is a colossal waste of time in terms of development.  In these stick work drills there is no context, unrealistic angles, and are usually practicing what I would call "fake fundamentals."   

Keep Away games are the best way to work on realistic stick work that simulates half field offense or clearing.  Using confined space, scaling across your whole team at once, mixing even and uneven situations are all great ways to give your players game-like experience while they are getting better at the most important principle: Possession!

Too Much Part-Whole: I used to believe we get get a lot of mileage out of 1v1's, 2v1's, 2v2, 3v2's and 3v3's.  Trying to leverage the Part-Whole model, I would teach all the dodges, movements, terminologies in these neat little environments and scale them across multiple cages to maximize reps.  Now I realize that while there is some value in these environments, there's not enough context to make it worthwhile!  Unless using small nets I don't go below 4v3 in men's lacrosse or 5v4 in women's.

One exception is in some teaching of reads in 2man game where I will do 1v1 + picker or 3v3 on a side. Otherwise I'm going to bigger numbers.

Fix Problems / Correct Mistakes: I used to believe it was the job of a good coach to recognize and correct mistakes.  I shook my head at coaches that didn't do something to correct problems that would surely result in losing games.  I now realize the players will learn through Game-like situations and film and I need to let them play it out whether they're getting it right or wrong.  It is my job as a coach to create a game that teaches what I want them to learn, then I can let the players win or lose and teach them later on video.

Too Much Shooting.   I used to be a coach who's teams shot A LOT!  Now, I would rather my teams focus on playing at practice than spending precious practice time shooting in environments devoid of context.  I do think players who want to be great shooters should shoot, and I particularly believe they should shoot on goalies in order to learn deceptive shooting.  Kids can and should shoot on their own, but they can't play in context at home.

I would rather players learn the poise it takes to score in the context of our Game-like environments where we scale our reps on small nets. 

The exception to this would be shooting on goalies with Tennis balls in practice to learn deceptive shooting, which cannot be learned on empty nets.  We use tennis balls because shooting on your goalies with lacrosse balls will beat up your goalies and likely injure them and will eventually result in a broken thumb.  Shoot on your goalies with Tennis balls and learn the various ways you can fool a goalie into thinking you’re shooting high when you’re shooting low and vice versa.  I would use all of our goalies to maximize reps.

Trying To Create Toughness. Toughness is an intangible necessary for winning games, but I don't think you can make someone tough through physical activity.   I believe your tough players will be your tough players no matter how hard you work them and your soft players would still be soft.  In fact your soft players might crush the run test and then play soft in the game while your toughest players might suck at the conditioning test.  These toughness tests will make your tough players tired, which will not help you win in the 4th quarter.  

Sometimes players are just lacking confidence which manifests itself as soft.  

Remember, Navy Seal Buds is not training as much as it's weeding people out.  You don't want to weed out kids, you want to train them! 

 From Tony Holler on toughness:

"I've had an epiphany recently about toughness. 
 
Love of the game creates toughness. We are willing to SUFFER for what we love.  We are not willing to suffer for what we dread. Therefore, create a program where the love of the game AND the love of practice creates special toughness based on intense love of what we do. 
 
Then, secondly, Lombardi said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." Traditional football coaches decided that they should get the players accustomed to fatigue throughout the week to keep their players from turning cowardly in games. The other approach (duh!) is to seek performance during practice and prioritize rest, recovery, and sleep... keeping players away from fatigue. 
 
These two ideas go together... intense love of the sport, teammates, coaches, games, and PRACTICE, combined with healthy, happy, bouncy, freshness makes athletes damn near unstoppable. 
 
Then throw in the value of this approach for coaches themselves... being inspired daily by your players and not forcing them through hard, dull work (definition of grind as a noun). Holy shit.... we might be on to something!!!!"
 
Have a great weekend!