Gettysburg Builds ‘Heart’ w Lacrosse Drills
I always enjoy our conversations with this great coach. With more experience than most two or three coaches combined, yet he is always studying and searching for way to modify his practices. In this case, I believe coach is really implementing scenarios directly at the end of practice to develop the heart and resolve of his team. Perhaps — coaching intestinal fortitude is not as easy as we might expect, however… Coach Janczyk now often closes his lacrosse practices with these two interesting lacrosse drills designed to measure and teach the kind of toughness and resolve it may take to win big games coming down to the wire.
As coach mentions, we must, must be a little strategic in how we present these lacrosse drills to our players. Thus questioning a team’s ‘toughness’ (especially months or weeks before the season) can be really counterproductive. But, adding an increased focus of the word “Heart” and playing harder, as an inherent characteristic of our teams, in fact more heart than our opponents, can be an interesting cornerstone to build from. Thus the important to note use of the term ‘Heart’ at Gettysburg, rather than toughness.
The intent of both of these lacrosse drills is that they need to run perhaps a little longer per rep than you might expect, especially the second Heart Drill. I also recommend you have as many stations as possible. If we have most of the players just standing around then the entire purpose of the drill is diminished in a huge way. And remember, these drills are designed to be run at the end of practice when the players may be winded or tired and need to focus and play with Heart.
Although the lacrosse drills are really about conditioning and playing with a never-let-up attitude, they are also developing skills sets and attitudes that will serve us well if we are down a goal or tied up with a minute to go…