Lacrosse Skeleton Drills to Improve Your Offense!

 

Lacrosse Skeleton Drills to Improve Your Offense! 4

By Mike Muetzel, LaxCoachMike.com

Do you get frustrated trying to teach offensive plays to your lacrosse team? Or perhaps even more frustrated when you see the players and the plays break down when they try and implement your plays in a real game? First, lacrosse games are extremely fluid so running static plays with success in games rarely works out the way we planned. But it is also critical that our players also need to learn to play with a certain degree of "free-lance" especially off of transition. Perhaps the best is a free-lance style, with a degree of offensive philosophy… If your offense occasionally looks 'lost' or confused in games then running more "Skeleton" drills with your offense might be the answer.

A "Skeleton" drill is simply a drill with only offense, or only defense. In this case we are working with our offensive players, without any defenders on the field or in the lacrosse drill.

I understand the benefit from running different skeleton drills, and the tremendous opportunity to teach and coach in this setting. My ongoing concern and reluctance with skeleton drills has to do with the pace of practice. By now you know I am pretty committed about the pace of practice, fast drills, a lot of touches, and nobody standing around.

This lacrosse drill combines pace and teaching all at the same time, even on the offensive end. In essence it is a very fast paced passing drill, but not in a star formation, but a drill that very directly emulates our offense on the field. And perhaps in some of my zeal to quicken the pace of every drill, and focus almost exclusively on 'touches' through shooting drills I missed the forest for the trees.

This is a skeleton passing drill for your offense. The term skeleton simply means that this drill is done with no defensive players on the field, or in this case without a goalie in the cage as well. It does not mean that the drill is not done quickly or a lot of players are standing around. In this scenario we are running a drill with five offensive players, set up as a 2-3-1 from up top, only without a crease guy. You would want to run the drill out of your base offensive set, or from a number of different sets, possibly on different days.

We begin with five lines of offensive players who are really spread out in the offensive end. Basically when the five players sprint into position, and the coach passes a ball, or one player begins with the ball, the players are passing the ball around the perimeter very quickly, very much like you might coach Man Up. The players are moving the ball for 25 to 30 seconds, without shooting, then bang the whistle blows, and the next group enters, and the exiting players rotate to fall into the next line around the outside. But….

The drill is a coaching or teaching drill in a big way. For example – Points of Emphasis…

We as coaches really need to focus and teach on 'run to pass' as well as 'run to catch.' In addition, from tips we learned from a great basketball coaches, we want our players to increase communication by not only calling out for the ball, but calling out to the pass as well. Coaches have been encouraging players to yell out "Here's your help" since the beginning of time, but we also want to encourage our players to call the name of the player they are actually going to pass the ball to, as well as all other players even on offense communicating all the time.

For example, they have a call for me to pick for you, or a call for you to pick for me, or a tap of the glove or helmet to signal a drive. I thought it was amazing, but back to the drill,

Rep One — Big Turns

The first few times through the drill we are teaching or focusing on strictly outside shoulder catches with a 'Big Turn' for the next pass. In every scenario the focus is on protecting the stick and throwing and catching with the outside shoulder, away from the defender. Use the drill to coach the fundamentals of being outside and attacking the pass. I loved this metaphor, "attack the pass' and never catch going backwards or in retreat.

The group on the field might make five; six or seven quick passes off of the big turn and then reverse the ball or bang it the other way. Remember this group of players is only on the field for a maximum of 30 seconds or less and very quickly focusing on the fundamentals and moving the ball.

Rep Two — Push the Ball

After a few sequences of Big Turns, the skeleton offensive group now focuses on pushing the ball in the same direction around the perimeter for again five or six or seven passes and then 'throwing back' with the sticks in front. Again very quick for just 20-25 seconds and out comes the next group as the previous groups goes back in line, in a different or the next line.

Rep Three – Five to Seven Passes to Skip or Back Door

In this repetition of the drill we begin to step it up a notch. Now we are going to have the players quickly move the ball with big turns and re-directing the motion after four or five fast passes to a back door look or a skip pass. If your team is new to this type of drill the coach might make the call, "Next pass, Skip pass' or "Next pass, Back Door".

Rep Four – Incorporate Your Motion/Offense

In this rep, at one point after moving the ball quickly around the perimeter focusing on being wide, 'attacking the pass' and re-directs, and after 20 or so seconds a player then might drive. Or the coach might call out, "Next pass, Drive!" As the player begins to drive the other players then react. If you are like me, the adjacent player in the driving area clears out, while the back adjacent player 'fills' the space for a pass back.

Or maybe you are looking to practice a pick on ball or off ball, back door, and in the skeleton drill you call out "Next pass drive off a pick" or 'Back side pick" incorporating your offensive motion into the skeleton drill following a drive off a pass. Again each set of five players is moving the ball quickly, and then the next group enters just as fast.

Perhaps to keep your practices different and fun, run two of the segments a day, keep it moving, and have a ton of balls available if they drop!

Love to get your thoughts, mike@laxcoachmike.com