Blog | Lacrosse Lab

Clearing and transition is arguably the most critical aspect of a successful lacrosse team and yet, likely one of the least practiced phases of the game of lacrosse. Practicing clears requires long reps, a whole field, and enough players to give a realistic look. All three requirements (time, space, full rosters) are likely not available at the early levels. What doesn't get practiced leads to a lack of preparation and a last-ditch game time plan: give the ball to your best athlete and let them run. This strategy usually leaves your top players completely gassed when it comes time to play in half-field situations.

Rather than expecting one player to beat ten, let's talk about the 5 keys to a successful team clear.
1. Proper Field Spacing Improper field spacing is the biggest contributor to failed clears at earlier levels of the game. As the clearing team, we want to make sure to spread the riders as far as possible. Good field spacing will ensure that an outlet is always avail…

Summary: We are excited to announce that we will be offering free, short workouts throughout the summer. Each workout will be approximately 20 minutes with a portion dedicated to developing lacrosse skill and another portion to athleticism or conditioning. With the right focus, we believe major progress can be made with only a short, daily commitment.
10,000-Hour Rule Have you ever heard of the 10,000-Hour Rule? It has been popularized in a number of studies led by Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State and went mainstream likely thanks to Malcolm's Gladwell's "Outliers." The rule states something along the lines of:

With 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, you can reach a level of mastery in any skill.

It's a Myth (Partly) I don't think anyone can deny that putting in deliberate practice is a bad thing. In fact, it is essential to developing skills toward a mastery level. Still, I think 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is overkill and …

Over the last year, we've built out the most complete lacrosse play designer available on the internet. We've helped teams across the country roll out their new plays so that their players can come to practice to apply their skills and knowledge immediately, rather than standing around and dry-running new plays. We've accomplished this while putting a lot of the team management and administration directly on the coach.

Now, we want to help you deliver your lacrosse play curriculum through your team's Schedule. Here's what you can expect from this new feature:

Create and Manage Game & Practice Events
The Schedule allows coaches and team administrators the ability to upload their game and practice schedules. In addition to the date, time and location of their lacrosse games and practices, coaches can also call out key objectives for that particular event.


__________________________________ Collect RSVPs As a coach of younger players, knowing what practice attend…

As our user base grows, we're excited to be receiving such thoughtful feedback on the main page application, LacrosseLab.com. We want you, our customers, to really drive where we take Lacrosse Lab. We've quietly pushed out a few releases over the last couple of weeks to help improve the ease of your interaction with our lacrosse play designer.

Here's an update on a few of the things you may have missed:
Box Lacrosse We have a really engaged group of users up in Canada that enjoys our play designer but has been waiting for Box Lacrosse to become available. Ryan really worked hard to include this in our most recent release, but you will now find Box Lacrosse available in the Create Play introduction screen. Thank you for the kind words from our fans up in Canada!


Playbook Views As a coach, you will now be able to see where your players are engaged. See which plays are being studied and by whom. As a coach, I've loved how much engagement I am seeing from my players and th…

The Two-Man game is been gaining popularity in lacrosse in the last two decades. It benefits through its simplicity and its success. Watch any college lacrosse game, and you'll likely see two offenses frequently running the Two-Man game.

There are three guidelines to keep in mind while implementing a Two-Man game offense:
Create space in the dodge setup.Make the appropriate read in the Two-Man game.Maintain good backside spacing and off-ball movement. Setting Up the Two-Man The offense can set up through any formation that you can create pairs. You're most likely to see the Two-Man created out of 1-4-1, Deuces (2-2-2) and as has become very popular recently, the 3-1-2. We are more used to seeing this offense run through an invert (bring middies behind), but it can really be initiated from anywhere on the field. 
In the Two-Man game, you will have, as you can probably guess, two players isolated. One will be our primary ball carrier and the other will be the picker.

Let's l…

Ryan and I have been hard at work defining what Lacrosse Lab will become thanks to your feedback. This release features some major UX enhancements, with a focus on your mobile experience. Here's a quick look at what you will now see as a Team Coach:

Consolidated Team Playbook/My Playbook View We've decided to simplify your experience with managing your playbook. Keep all of your work-in-progress plays in your personal playbook. When you're ready to share them with your team, you can share them to your Team Playbook.
Simpler Add/Share Play Experience

When you're ready to share your play with your team, you will now find that command under our new + action button. Expect a few new features to make their way into this slot. For now, we'll keep those as a secret!
As always, we greatly appreciate your feedback and support. We're very excited for some of these updates and some of the features that this will enable us to deploy to you in the very near future. For now…