Feed The Cats

Tony Holler has had as big of an impact on me and my coaching philosophies as anyone in my journey of studying and learning the great game of lacrosse... and he isn't a lacrosse coach!  I highly recommend you dig in and learn Tony's teachings as it will create massive returns!

First, check out this MUST LISTEN Speed Development Podcast with Tony Holler.  It will challenge you and make you think!  It's amazing!

How do you FEED THE CATS (FTC) as a lacrosse coach?

All overarching principles of FTC are applicable to lacrosse and fit perfectly into the JM3 Philosophy of Free Play, Constraints Lead Approach, The Box Lacrosse Paradigm, and Principles Based Lacrosse.

#1) The foundation of high performance is rest, recovery, and sleep. Sleep is more important than practice.

#2) Sprint, don’t run. Quality > Quantity

#3) Perform in practice. Moderate exercise never leads to extreme performance. And, don’t wait until championship week to value performance, start on day one!

#4) Never let today ruin tomorrow. Don’t burn the steak.

#5) Let the actual competition be the hardest thing you do. Stop practicing long and hard trying to make games easy. Fast and healthy players who execute will win the fourth quarter. Getting tired in practice has no bearing on how fresh you are at the end of a game. Tired is the enemy, not the goal.

#6) Rather be 100% healthy and 80% in shape, than the other way around. 

#7) No conditioning. Eliminate aerobic-focused work. Get into shape by practicing with game-like intensity. Stack anaerobic work.   Also, allow your games to condition your athletes.

#8) Practice fast and intense, not long and hard. (And, in order to practice fast and intense, practice must be choppy with periods of recovery.)

#9) Alternate “high output” and “low output” practices. Within “high” practices, include “high” periods and “low” periods. 

#10) Pareto Principle: 20% of our work produces 80% of our results. Constantly re-evaluate what you do. Search for the 20% that truly matters. DO LESS, ACHIEVE MORE. Never fill time. Practice the “Disciplined Pursuit of Less”. #Essentialism.

#11) Make your practices THE BEST PART OF A KID’S DAY. 

#12) Attract great athletes to your team. See your sport through the eyes of your players. Promote. Own the narrative. 

#13) Facilitate growth. Encourage your players to “build their own house.”

 

 

 

 

 

Blending Feed The Cats with the JM3

Understanding High and Low Output Practices

*HIGH OUTPUT* aka Performance Days are game day, or full-intensity environments in practice such as full field scrimmages, rides/clears and transition situations, or half-field game-like environments with competitive context of 4v4, 5v4, 5v5, 6v5 or 6v6 in men’s lacrosse or 5v5, 6v5, 6v6, 7v6, and 7v7 in women’s lacrosse. The goal should be achieving an intensity similar to or greater than that of a game during portions of practice. To do this, you must micro-dose this intensity and give adequate recovery between outputs. Get rid of the traditional lacrosse approach where teams practice in a constant state of fatigue or simply repeating drills until they "Get it right."

Another term for a “High Output” practice is a PERFORMANCE practice. “High” does NOT mean exhausting. Performance Practices feature short bouts of fast-speed high-intensity play.    Making performance practices Game-like, allowing the players to win or lose a drill/game (as opposed to a coach manufacturing the results with his voice, corrections, or a “Do over”) is also critical in simulating a game.  Remember, games are not in the control of the coach.  Games are like the wilderness, so don’t practice like you’re at the zoo!  

Timing Sprints: on our performance practice days last year, at least one time per week, we kick off practice with a Feed The Cats "Atomic Workout" which allows us to get faster in season.  This also gives us barometer of how physically rested we really are.  If our times are getting slower we are doing too much.  

 

A *LOW OUTPUT* aka skill/IQ Practice should not be just a walk-through, skeleton offense, shell drill on defense or a day to focus on isolated skill reps and teaching.  Training in environments devoid of context (opponents/teammates) is wasting precious time!   Skills are solutions to problems an athlete faces in a game situation and IQ is simply an athlete's ability to find solutions.  You cannot separate the skill from the situation!  

Skill/IQ Practices have lower physical outputs and as a result can be higher in decision making opportunities.  Using constraints such as small nets, no long poles, tennis balls, limited or no equipment, we can leverage box lacrosse environments while scaling decision making reps. 

 As we have discussed, the balance between context and reps is critical for a coach and small goals are a solution.  Small nets simply make it harder to score and require team play in the form of passing and picking.   A 3v2 game on a small net will naturally elicit more passes and movements to score a goal than a 3v2 game on a full sized net. 

In the JM3 Principles Based Lacrosse, we use core defensive drills from the Notre Dame defense, which involve low impact / high IQ as well as read and react situations in drills such as: Shed Build up, Skip Survivor, 32 Lunch Pail, Cylinder Drill etc.  Although, these defender vs defender drills are not as Game-like as live reps the players do work on reads through players working together at 1/2 speed to create the reads!  You will learn more from the Coaches Training Program.
 

Dialing up and down your Low Output Practices 

There are different levels of Low Output Practices.  All even games such as 4v4 + goalie 5v5 + goalie, or 3v3 on a side + a goalie with or without a feeder are more physically demanding games than an uneven game like 3x, 4x or 5x.  

Generally, I like to play small net games with a fence behind the goal, which limits the running after missed shots. Epic ground ball battles will occur with or without a backstop and are incredible for the development of anticipation, scrappiness etc, but might be more impact than you want.  Sometimes we use a shot clock to speed the game up but limit the long possessions. 

Lastly, I also don’t believe in doing full court games because they end up being more running and less playing.  It would be like playing full court 2v2 basketball... a great workout, but not scaling your basketball reps and definitely will wear you out.

Implementing The FTC / JM3 Practice Week

Below are some practical ways to plan your practice / game schedule week by week in order to maximize performance and development.  Stripping the week down to the essentials is not easy, but it's necessary as well as liberating!  Keeping your X's and O's simple and principle based while allowing your Game-like environments to develop your players.

Offensive Principles: Great shots, possession, passing, picking, spacing and reads

Defensive Principles: Make the other team make great plays to score, ball pressure (with in feeding range), read the quality of defense on the ball, force low angle shots, protect the middle, help on ball, communicate, 1v1 don't get beat on one move

Team Principles: Don't give up transition, get in, 

Also, remember game day is like a performance practice for full field lacrosse.  With two games per week, you're getting enough riding/clearing and transition for the week which means you don't have to do high output riding clearing, transition in practices!

This quote from Steven Covey, author of  7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says it all: "The Main Thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."

The Main thing is for your players to be healthy, rested and happy for game day and performance practices, all the while scaling decision making rep opportunities to develop the intangibles of your players.  

 

The Tuesday - Friday Game Week

Monday – Performance

Tuesday – Game

Wednesday – Skill/IQ

Thursday – Skill/IQ

Friday – Game

Saturday – Off

Sunday – OFF

This is a typical game schedule throughout much of the nation.  Sunday would be the PERFECT day for a performance practice after a Saturday off, but most school districts don’t allow Sunday practice. If you can have practice on Sundays, then you go M-fundamental, T-game, W-OFF, Th-fundamental, F-game, S-OFF, Sun-performance. If you can’t practice on Sundays, I suggest giving your team the entire weekend off.  Giving the two days off will put your players in a great position to be rested and ready for the week!  Another option would be to have Wednesday off and a performance practice on Saturday.  I might do this if the Friday game wasn't competitive.

The Saturday - Wednesday Game Week

Monday - Performance

Tuesday - Skill/IQ

Wednesday - Game

Thursday - Off

 Friday - Skill/IQ

Saturday - Game

Sunday - Off

This is a typical prep school game week.  I like this schedule because it has good balance.  Thursday off will be hard for some coaches to stomach, but trust me, you will be happier with rested, healthy, happy players.  Use this time to teach through film and allow them to recharge.
The Tuesday - Thursday Game Week

 

Monday – performance

Tuesday – game

Wednesday – Off

Thursday – game

Friday – Off or Skill/IQ

Saturday – Performance or Skill IQ

Sunday – Off

 

Last season I coached a team with this schedule and we gave the team three days off per week, with no Skill / IQ days, and two performance practice days per week.  I was coaching a veteran team that had played a lot of free play and really needed the rest and the performance practices.  Furthermore, many of our games were blowouts, so it allowed us to have two hard days.  
 
If i had been coaching a less experienced team I would have used Friday or Sunday as a Skill / IQ or even substitute a Skill / IQ day for a perforce day if the games were particularly taxing.
 
Three Games In A Week
This is a tough situation especially if the games are all competitive.  As difficult as this sounds, you probably won't be able to have a performance practice that week and days off after the tough game is crucial.  If one or more of the games aren't competitive, this will help, but if your mids play a half a game, it's still very physically demanding and is probably still equivalent to a performance practice.  Try not to allow many three game weeks!

 

Peaking At The Right Time

Is there anything more important than peaking at the right time?  Peaking is both physical and mental.  Many teams face a level of burn out from players and even coaches at the end of the year just when you would ideally be hitting your stride!  Tensions rise, fatigue in players creates sloppiness while simultaneously, mistakes in practices seem to be magnified and the fatigue in coaches exacerbates the problem.  The athletes are tired and the coaches trying to do more and more preparation, add looks, etc.  The combination creates frustration!

Last season with the ThunderRidge Girls Lacrosse was the first time with a team I coached that we didn't have any level of detectable burnout.  I'm such a grinder, that I would inadvertently grind the kids over the course of the season.  I don't mean I ran them into the ground, but we were always working on something: a new look a new skill, etc and by the end of the year players would be tired.   Giving the days off and sticking to the same key principles all year through our high and low output days of practice allowed us to be at our height at the end of the season!

This is what peaking at the right time looks like.  With literally no subs in this game, we had the physical and mental capability to come from behind and win a playoff game over perennial power Cherry Creek.

 

 

Practice Plans

 

Below I have provided practice plan templates for how to construct high and low output practices with a minimalist approach and leveraging the Principles Based Lacrosse concepts and drills.

Women’s Lacrosse Performance Practice

00:00.    Atomic Workout (warm up)

00:15     2man 3man on the run

00:25.    5v5 Keep Away Variations (No switch on picks or double picks)

00:35.    Draws/Circle Work and 8 M Shooting Live

00:45.    3v3 + Feeder on a side

00:55.    7v7 Competition vs man to man

01:05.    7v7 Competition vs zone

 -Clear / Ride to the midline*

01:20.    Extra Player Offense / Defense

 *We won't ride to the midline every time because it is too physically taxing.  Sometimes we ride to restraining line, other times we play it out to the defensive possession.

 

Women’s Lacrosse Skill / IQ Practice

00:00    Warm up

00:10.    Uneven Keep Away

 -3v2’s

 -4v3’s with motions or crank keep away

00:20.    3v3 on a side Small Net or Big Net

00:30.    Uneven Build up 3v2, 4v3, 5v4, 6v5, 6v5 competition.  Offense scores 3 to win

00:45.    Small Net games

 -Uneven: 3x, 4x, 5x

 -All even: 3v3 on a side, 4v4 + goalie, 5v5 + goalie

01:15.    Walk Through or one way transition drills