Lacrosse is a sport focused around agility, endurance, and strength. However, while athleticism plays a crucial part in being a good lacrosse player, equally important is a player's stick-handling. This program combines the fitness components of lacrosse, as well as the necessary wall-ball time to help improve a player's game in the weeks before a season. Each workout takes approximately two hours, including wall-ball and stretching. If you don't play a winter sport, try and set aside four or five days a week to follow the program; if you do play a winter sport, focus on the wall-ball aspect of the program. Download the booklet here.
Each day of the workout is designed to have a different warmup that focuses on a different aspect of lacrosse. Exercises like speed ladders, jump-roping, or cone agility drills work to improve your agility. When doing the cone agility drills, it's important to remember to push hard off of your back foot for the drop-step. Refer to the booklet for more information. The program will designate specific speed drills for different workouts and days. For stretching, refer to Coach Darling or Coach Holmes, as well as the BC Hip Mobility and Darling Shoulder Mobility packets to help strengthen your rotator cuffs and loosen your hips. If you have taken Darlings before, you'll know that tight muscles can't be utilized nearly as efficiently as loose muscles. Perform the Darling pre-lift stretch routine if you know it, or speak to one of them to learn it.
The Wall-Ball program will be the same each day. This program is created to improve your passing and catching; it should take approximately thirty minutes every day. If you can get a partner to pass with instead, the effects will be more translatable to your play. Incorporating a reward system into your wall-ball (i.e. a pushup for every ball dropped or forcing yourself to restart the exercise on a ball drop) can also be very effective. The following program should be done every day after the warm-up and before the lift:
Make sure to stretch before every lift, both foam-rolling the whole body (quads, lats, hamstrings, hip flexors, and back) and stretching the specific muscles of the day's lift. Follow the Mustang Power Flexibility Page and Mr. Darling's advice for stretching before a workout. Always consult him or Mike Holmes with questions about lifts; only do the lifts if you understand the form, and, more importantly, never keep lifting if you feel any pain whatsoever.
Like lifting and speed, conditioning will vary from day to day with the program. It's important to stretch and cool down after the workout and conditioning, before lactic acid builds up in your body. Some of these conditioning drills are based around sprints and anaerobic exercising; others will improve your endurance, helping you during the fourth quarter of a game.
Apart from performing the program in the weeks before tryouts, or elongating it and using it as a summer program, the last phase can be used as maintenance. When maintaining in-season, make sure to categorize lifting as your second priority. Taking a day off to focus on dodging or shooting practice will be more beneficial for your game. Moreover, remember that the purpose of this program is to improve your lacrosse skill, something that can only be done when supplementing the lifts with the necessary wall-ball routines.
The bibliography below was used for website design and lacrosse research, in addition to conversations with Coach Holmes on lacrosse lifting.