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1000 Ways To Train For Lacrosse

As lacrosse players, we love to stay in great shape and train ourselves in new ways that push our limits and help us stay competitive. In an effort to give you the upperhand, we’re working to supply you with a list of 1,000 training methods that will assist you in your quest to be the next Lacrosse All Star. Whether your goal is the Tewaaraton winner or Summer League MVP, add these workouts to your repertoire and prepare the best.

1000 Ways to Train 11-20

Training for lacrosse is a little different than training for most sports as you can’t rely SOLELY on your strength or ONLY on your speed. To be an elite lacrosse player, it’s vital that you train hard in several areas: strength, power, speed, agility, and endurance.

The best players in the game move constantly while on the field, running from one point to another as each play progresses. Lacrosse is a very peculiar sport in that way because it requires players to have extreme levels of endurance and the strength to muscle through a check or body up on an opponent.

Simply put, you need to be able to run fast, run all day AND be a beast.

And so 1000 Ways To Train For Lacrosse continues…

11. Burpees

A classic, I feel like any athlete over the age of 8 knows what a burpee is and most likely hates them when it comes to conditioning. Burpees combine four main movements to make a complete workout that helps you build strength and increase your endurance, which makes this workout perfect for lacrosse.

The best part about burpees though, is that there are many different variations of the original that you can do to help push yourself a little harder – jump up burpees, dumbbell burpees, one leg burpee, double burpees, the list goes on.

12.  Step In/Step Out (Speed Ladder)

While facing one side, you simply move sideways down the speed ladder stepping in and then out of each square with both feet. Your lead foot never changes and the key is to move as quickly as possible while staying as close as you can to the either side of the edge.

Speed Ladder - Step In/Step Out

13. Middie Runs

I was really disappointed to find out that Google didn’t know what a ‘Middie Run’ was. These have been a staple in  conditioning through my entire lacrosse career. These are great for not only building up quickness but also a little endurance as well.

Depending on how much you want to punish yourself, set-up two cones 10-20 yards apart and start at one of them. The distance from one cone to the other is one sprint or leg of the sprint. From here it’s a piece of cake, sort of. You start out with one and just sprint to the other cone and rest. Then you do three and rest, then five and rest, then seven and rest… you get the picture? Normally you work your way up to 11 or 13 before coming back down.

The picture below shows how we run this as a team, but as you can see it isn’t hard to change it so you can do it alone. As a team you can split everyone up by position and have them just go one after the other. Attack would start out and sprint their one, then middies would go, then the defense, and then attack would sprint their three and so on.

Middie Runs

14. Ball Transfer Crunch

When I think of these, I think of my Fitness teacher from high school. Whenever we were in the weight room he would always be doing some sort of extreme ab workout to pass the time and this was always one of them. The guy was a beast and these were a big indicator of that.

Start flat on your back with a Swiss ball between your legs and your arms straight out over your head. Lift the ball up with your legs and raise your arms to meet it like your trying to touch your toes but grab the ball instead. Extend your arms back down to the starting position with the ball and your legs without. Now you just transfer it back and forth, restarting flat each time. Feel the burn!

15. Front Squats

Front squats are always great for changing up your leg days when you’re tired of doing normal back squats. They are really effective because they give your back a rest from all the strain of back squats and force you to keep a more upright torso. This allows your quads and upper-back to engage a lot more.

Here is a great article on proper front squatting form and technique.

Borrowed from games2010.crossfit.com

16. Calf Raises

They aren’t just for looks. While those of us with bird legs add these in hopes of a little more definition in our calves, these actually help quite a bit with lower leg strength. Make sure to add these as a supplement to your leg days, while calf raises are helpful, it is more important to look at the big picture of overall leg strength.

17. Wrist Curls

Wrist strength is very important in lacrosse, from simply holding onto your stick to snapping your wrists in your shot to give it that little extra oomph. That’s where lifts like wrist curls come in. There are several variations of wrist curls that you can use to help target your wrists and forearms but when you have a firm hold of your stick as you dodge through barraging checks from defenders you’ll be glad thought about your wrists. I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been a good defenseman?

Borrowed from www.emusclor.com

18. Dips

Dips are a great body weight exercise that hit three major areas used in lacrosse – the chest, shoulders, and triceps. If just your body weight isn’t enough, than grab a weight vest or dipping belt to help add some weight to it. Don’t have access to a gym? No problem – use a chair or the edge of your desk to get your reps in.

Dipping at Home

19. YOGA!

Yoga was a Godsend for me in college. One semester I needed an extra credit so I figured “why not?”. I signed up for a Yogalates class with my roommate and teammate on the lacrosse team. While the pilates part of class sucked (it was tough!), the yoga part was amazing and became such a nice reprieve after two-game weekends and very little time to recover between practices and games. It gave me the chance to stretch out those tight hammies and give my shoulders some much needed recovery through working out any soreness.

The best part about yoga is that all you need is some floor space and a little time to yourself. There are so many different types of yoga too, from the individual poses to the actual type of yoga you are doing. One of my favorites for in-season is called ‘Power Yoga’. It is a little more fast-paced and gets your muscles nice and warm while still allowing for all the stretching of normal yoga.

Yoga
We even brought it with us on roadtrips!

20. Shoot 100 ball before/after Practice

One of my favorite quotes of all time is, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”Aristotle dropping knowledge on you with that one. I couldn’t find the video, but Paul Rabil used to have a great shooting routine that consisted of something like the following:

– 10 shots right at the 5×5
– 10 shots left at the 5×5
– 10 shots right at the 10×5
– 10 shots left at the 10×5
– 10 shots right down the alley
– 10 shots left down the alley

I took this and always did each group of shots twice before I moved on to the next set and then added in a couple different ones at the end. This was an exhausting shooting routine, but it helped my game so much.

The whole idea in my opinion is to develop muscle memory of hitting the exact same spot with the exact same motion each time you shoot. That way, when it comes to those in-game situations in which your adrenaline is pumping, your body already knows what to do and it is basically second nature.

Whew, only 980 to go. I hope you can take some of these and add them to your daily or weekly workouts. Until next time!

1,000 is a big number. Please share your favorite lifts and exercises in the comments section (or email us at info@lacrosseallstars.com) so we can add them to our list and reach the big 1-0-0-0!

An important note about trainingYou should always consider your own goals and decide what you want to accomplish during training. Most importantly though, always learn how to properly do an exercise before you start doing it. As very few of us are experts in Sports Science or Medicine, we always recommend doing your own research and finding credible trainers to teach you how to train. Train smart, train safe, train hard, lax on.