Effective Pratices

[BeaverFondu]

I would love to know how to get more effective pratices going. I'm not a coach but I'm a captian and our coach listens to what us(captians) and players say so it's cool.

But thats besides the point, I would like to know how one would run a more effective practice. This is what are practices are now: Warm Up/Stretch. Line Drills and 3 Man Weave for 20-30 minutes depending. After this we will run some ground ball drills or 1v1's or 2v2's. After this we break off with the offense doing shooting drills and defense doing long passes. Following this is either a 6v6 or a 10v10.

I just feel that a lot of time is being wasted during the shooting drills and long passes. I mean on a personal level this is because I'm sick of doing long passes and during our game today I felt I didn't do well on the fast breaks. I understand why but after 4-5 days of shooting drills you'd think the offense would have it down pat. Alas, another problem for another day.

I know that theres this whole coaching style we no one is standing around or waiting in lines, everyone's moving. If anyone has any guides to or any personal experience I would love it. I would have searched for it but I forgot what it's called.

Whew, that was a long one.

[-Cicero-]

try 2v1s and the carolina stick drill they are both very effective and maybe do some half field 6V6

[-Cicero-]

Also another one thats good is fast break drills where you get defense and goalie and four offense then have everyone else at mid. and they run up and pass to offense and try to score

[BeaverFondu]

try 2v1s and the carolina stick drill they are both very effective and maybe do some half field 6V6


What's the Carolina Stick Drill?

[Pitibear]

the concept you are searching for is called "economical training," and it is taught in several of the sports coordinated by Olympic sports' governing bodies. I learned this at the national coaching school for the USSF.

two concepts:

1. incorporate as many of the four components of training into every drill that you can. Don't just run. Run and shoot, run and pass, run and dodge...combine skills, combine skills with interval conditioning. Combine skills work with game situations (like break-on-goal situations?).

2. All training environments ("drills?") are within stations. everybody performs the exercise somewhere on the field, and everybody in doing this at the same time...if a coach operates a drill that has three guys working, while the other 14 are standing in a line, he or she would flunk out of the coaching school I went to...not trying to slight any coach who hasn't learned this.

Example: how do you run shooting drills with only one goal and still have everybody working the drill? You can't...set up ten cones around the field, these become goals, ten groups of three (or four, or whatever) each run the drill at the same time. The coach observes everybody from the center of all these "mini-environments." The actual goalies can go from cone to cone, stopping for a few reps at each "station" as they are called. Put a group on each side of the cone, so one shot sends the ball to the group on the other side, and their rep of the drill sends the ball back, and so on. Each group thus plays/rests/plays/rests, and so on.

Imagine that your line of three participates in every other rep for fifteem minutes, how many reps are you going to get in? Compare that to doing one rep, then standing in line for 4-5-6-7 reps or more, before your next one. Which way will make the better practice? Duh...It sounds like you already are familiar with this, see if you can get your coach to work with it..."economical training."

[BeaverFondu]

Thanks Pitibear, thats exactly what I was looking for.

[TheKOB]

Also, focusing on one thing is fine, especially if you need to work on it. The only thing is to make sure you do it at high speed. You're going to want to focus on some things intensly, such as shooting (high # of balls, high # of reps) and faceoffs (5-10 min of practice with 2 middie lines going at it). I've always found it frustrating during our practices when the offense is doing something, and the defense does long passes. These long passes are basically pairs of D standing the width of the field apart, passing the ball back and forth. It was pretty lazy, there was no movement, and I really fought the urge to chew them out when they started throwing their sticks up in the air instead of backing up and actually making an effort.

My favorite drill for teaching passing is the box drill. Basically you have 4 lines at 4 corners of a box. The first player passes the ball while running to a player who is running from the 2nd to third line. When he catches it, a player from line #3 starts running to line #4, and he's passed the ball.

You can adjust the drill by varying the distance between each of the lines, ie the area of the box. You can also make it more of a rectangle, so that each cycle through it's two long passes and two rather short passes.

The thing that I like most about this drill is that the farther they're apart, the less they can "push" their passes and the more they'll have to use correct throwing motion. Once they get that down (snapping of the wrists, etc) you can move the lines closer together to have the ball moving quicker, throw in another ball, etc.

One problem is that during 6v6, you've got at least half the team standing around doing nothing. That's the perfect time (if you have the team leadership or the assistant coaches to do so) run another drill with the other guys. If they're more beginners (like when the starters are in the 6v6, everyone else is off to the side) then that's the perfect time to work on basic skills so that they can contribute...basically, learn by doing, not by watching.

[eamiddy16]

our coach kinda has like a mainly offense day and a defense day and a day for rides and clears and we pretty much cover everything for lacrosse and a drill for everything like passing shooting gbs man ball drill and such

[nptlaxgoalie121]

i don't know if this has been said sorry if it has, but if you have 2 goalies spilt the balls up. Set up 3 attack 3 d-man on each side have 2 lines of middys on both sides of the field. Have one guy on one of the middly lines break have the the goalie throw him the ball here is your fast break. Once the ball drops or would be out of play drill is over. Goalie who was just shot on has the ball and throws it to a breaking middy from the other line. Rotate attack and dmen as needed and if you want to get tricky have a second middy chasing the play.

[Bobsch]

Good points. Also, think about where you are in the season. If you have two months before the first game, you'll do things differently than if you have a game in 3 days. During season, I like to do fast-paced line drills for no more than 10 minutes, fast and/or slow breaks, work on things to prepare for the next team or teams, work on things that need improving, and scrimmage.

[laxpro]

One on Ones

For Attack and D
1 on 1s behind GLE. Attack starts with ball, and tries to score on the Goalie.

For Middies
Have them to 1 on 1s from midfield and try to score on the Goalie.

Just have them alternate. Going Attack, Middie, Attack, Middie, and so on.

Groundballs
2 people going for the ground ball. Coach rolls the ball out as he blows his whistle. Whoever gets the ball brings it to the goal and passes the ball the the goalie. Then the goalie clears it to the person who passed him the ball.

Groundballs 2
2 people going for the ground ball. Coach rolls the ball out as he blows his whistle. Whoever gets the ball brings it to the goal as the other plays D and shoots the ball. If the goalie saves it, he clears the ball to the player who didn't get the groundball.

Forget the Name but it is awesome

Start in a square. 2 lines at the top of the box about 15-20 yds apart. 2 lines on GLE about 20 yards apart. Ball starts at top right. Guy from bottom rleft comes calling for the ball. Top Right passes the ball to bottom left. Bottom Left roles on GLE and passes to Bottom Right who is behind the goal. Bottom Right takes ball to GLE and passes to Top Left who takes a pick from Top Right to catch the ball. Once Top Left Catches the ball he passes to the goalie. The goalie then passes to a long pole on the clear.

There is the drawn out version, hope you understand it

[rizzini]

[/QUOTE]Forget the Name but it is awesome

Start in a square. 2 lines at the top of the box about 15-20 yds apart. 2 lines on GLE about 20 yards apart. Ball starts at top right. Guy from bottom rleft comes calling for the ball. Top Right passes the ball to bottom left. Bottom Left roles on GLE and passes to Bottom Right who is behind the goal. Bottom Right takes ball to GLE and passes to Top Left who takes a pick from Top Right to catch the ball. Once Top Left Catches the ball he passes to the goalie. The goalie then passes to a long pole on the clear.

There is the drawn out version, hope you understand it[/QUOTE]

we do something like that in my tourney team. we call it the star drill, and it is indeed awesome

[claxbucky]

Our d would do the box drill noted above, while the o does a smaller box drill around the goal to work on getting the ball around. When we'd be learning something new, the starting d would get the 2nd string o and the starting o would get the 2nd string d, then the coaches would switch groups and teach the 2nd string guys the stuff. We also did full field clearing with no riding, where you couldn't hold the ball more than 3 secs, or you'd be doing push-ups, goalie passes to d, d passes to mid, mid passes to attack, attack passes to other attack, who feeds the 1st guy, who shoots, then the goalie on the other side does the same thing. There's 2 balls moving at all times which makes it a pretty fast paced drill. For our shooting drills, we'd usually have 3 or 4 goals set up, so everyone gets to shoot a good amount of reps. The goalies would step in sometimes, but usually not because they're getting warmed up at that time, and the d is working on fallowing ball movement or doing no-goalie clearing. Then we'd have full field fast breaks, with the goals moved to the top of the box on each side. starts 1x v 2o then 2o v 3x then 3x v 4o then 4o v 5x then 5x v 6o where x and o are the 2 teams. We'd usually do that with the starters or the 2nd/3rd string guys while the other group would be learning new plays or new d. Then we'd finish it off w/ a full field scrimmage usually.