Last weekend I was at a Team Germany practice camp and one of the announcements of the coaching staff was, that they are looking for players who make smart and simple decision all over the field.
A lot of coaches, especially at all kinds of try-out camps, tell their players: make the easy decision; we are looking for good decision makers; or players who can step up at the right time. Then practice starts and everything looks as always and it often seems people are not even trying.
Hi,
this week we have a basic 2 on 2 drill, which we use mostly for fun. We rotate everybody through offense and defense, and focus on a high pace and only the most basic teaching points. For us this is proper crease movement. Your crease guys need to follow the slide, even though in a 2 on 2 scenario it might look much more appealing to pop out in a 45 degree angle. The problem with popping out is, that you close down a through lane. So unless your 6 on 6 offense works with crease guys popping out, make sure you teach your crease guy to follow the slide.
The PDF of the drill to print out and bring to practice can be found here: Drill of the Week: 2 on 2
If you want to work on a certain skill and struggle with finding suitable drills to teach it, please comment or write us a message.
In our last blog article we mentioned plays and why it is rarely worth to spent time practicing them. In this article we want to introduce a concept we call „scripting“. This will most likely heavily overlap with what a lot of people see as a little play.
But first we want to thank Kuni for his great comment on our article about plays.
„One big thing is because they assume a certain level of play both from the attack and the defense."
This is a very important aspect you need to consider when teaching players the game at our level. From a theory point you assume the opponent does his job well and you try to teach players how to counter that and what to look for. Continue reading
We just finished our season, took a step back and reflected. Last week we started brainstorming about the next year. Probably some more teams will use the summer break to start the planning for next year. So we figured it is a good time to get back to our blog and share some insight about basics and plays, which is long overdue anyways.
We also had some fruitful discussions with other coaches in Stuttgart about plays and how great they work and how easy you could score a goal with it, if everybody knows what to do. Continue reading
Hi everyone,
we are happy to have our first guest post on the blog. We hope that many will follow Wolfgang “Wolfie” Grießl (Coach Munich Lacrosse) lead and help us to get more content on this site. Many thanks to Wolfie.
It is a half field passing drill, which can also be used for warmup. To those that attended our coaching camp, this drill is perfect for early work. Continue reading
In January we spent some time in the U.S. While Eric was doing sightseeing in New York City, I spent time visiting friends in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. But that is not what this blog article is about. The main destination of our trips was Baltimore, MD to attend the U.S. Lacrosse Convention.
Welcome to #laxcon – We forgot our selfie stick, which is why we are not in the picture.
Hi everybody,
checking in from the Stuttgart Lacrosse East Coast Club House, we have another drill of the week for you. We found that drill on the internet a couple of years back, but I cannot find it anymore otherwise I would post the source.
We use that drill quite often in the beginning of practice to set a high-pace for the rest of the session. It is a fun drill to get players moving, communicating and focus on the practice while still having fun. Make sure you keep the pace very high and put pressure on the players to switch from offense to defense very fast.
The drill description can be found here: 3on2 into 4on3
Following this drill of the week, we will post a report from the U.S. Lacrosse Convention (#LaxCon) and afterwards finally finish our article about whether to work on plays or basics in practice. So make sure to check back or subscribe to the site.
We wish you a Happy New Year and good luck for your upcoming preseason.
This week’s drill is the very basic boxdrill. If this drill is done properly, it teaches your players a lot of very important fundamentals (communication, approaching the ball, covering passing lanes, passing & catching, offball movement, stick protection – just to name a few). Sadly the drill does not have a good reputation among our players and can be quite exhausting. Because of that players often just fight through it and execute the drill very sloppy. As a coach make sure to watch for proper execution and rather cut down the time for each repetition. Conditioning is just a bonus in this drill as there are more effective conditioning drills.
The drill description can be downloaded here: Boxdrill
With a little bit of delay due to christmas markets, lacrosse x-mas party, Ski & Boarderweek and end of the year work stuff (in short we spent the last weeks either at work or drunk or both 🙂 )
So now our next drill of the week is ready. It is one of the most basic lacrosse moves and everyone knows it, but we do not know if everybody knows how to execute it properly and how to coach it properly. From what we see as coaches on the sideline, we believe there is a lot of room for improvements.
Our newest drill of the week is about the alley dodge. In our opinion, this is the bread and butter move in lacrosse to initiate offense and if it is done right, it is one of the safest ways (very low risks for turnovers) to create offense.
The drill description can be found here: Alley Drill
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Eric and Jan
We are happy to finish our template for the drill of the week series and publish our first drill of the week. You can print it out on an A4 page and bring it with you to practice. If you feel that more or different information is needed to run the drill properly, please comment on the post or write a message to jan.miofsky[at]gmail.com.
Drill of the week – Template (A PDF Version of this drill of the week can be found at the end of this post.)
Our first drill in this series is a clearing drill we developed for our team this season.
For young teams it is hard to find the right balance on how much time to spend in practice on clearing. It is often an area that is overlooked, because it will work well until you play a team on your level or better that is actually riding aggressively. That is when younger teams often struggle badly with clearing and rarely get the ball into the offensive half. (I am pretty sure that the team which played against us a few weeks ago will agree here.)
Being a Player-Coach 