Lacrosse Video Tip
Presented by Brian Lalley, Camp Director
St. Olaf College - Boys Lacrosse Overnight & Day Camp
Inside Roll
Xcelerate Nike Lacrosse National Program Director, Brian Lalley, discusses fall development:
As the month of August concludes and we approach the fall and winter seasons, it’s common to reflect upon your previous season and put a plan in place for these critical off-season months. The spring and summer seasons tend to be characterized by performance and team development through spring and summer team play. While there are generally many competitive opportunities in the fall and winter months, your main focus as we approach the spring 2020 season should be development. The first critical pieces of development, we believe are love of sport and team and character.
LOVE OF SPORT AND TEAM
It’s very easy for everyone and anyone to say, “I want to be better.” Wanting is easy and it’s free. Before you really decide to develop, you should ask yourself, “Do I love the sport of lacrosse and being a part of a team?” If so, the effort towards your development will have a much higher level of quality and impact. If you don’t love lacrosse but still want to be a part of it, manage your expectations for playing time. If you don’t love lacrosse, don’t love being a part of the team but know you will only be happy if you play, you may want to re-evaluate and attack something that you truly love. Elite performance requires a lot more than talent and ego.
CHARACTER TRAITS FOR DEVELOPMENT
If you feel you are truly motivated by love of the sport and love of team, it’s time to put a plan in place to develop. At Xcelerate, we strongly believe in the role of various character traits that have a massive impact on one’s ability to make improvements. Ben Bergeron, a well known CrossFit trainer wrote in his book called, “Chasing Excellence,” “Committing to a process requires a set of character traits - things like grit, resilience, accountability, confidence, optimism, perseverance, and passion.” Two of them that we talk about a lot are patience and humility.
Humility
To have humility means that you are able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you have deficiencies. This feeling does not diminish the actions that those with humility take, but enhances them. Real functional humility looks for areas of current weakness and seeks to turn them into future strengths.
Patience
The thing about real development in anything is that it takes time. Progress in anything is never immediate. If making improvements in the sport of lacrosse is important to you, be certain of the fact that the process of improvement will take time, it won’t be constant and it will involve adversity. Patiently continue to put in daily effort towards the areas you know you can be better and stay with it.
The next post, we will be going over areas of development & formulating a plan. Best of luck to you in your off-season development season. Feel free to contact us with questions / advice for developmental exercises at Coach@XcelerateLacrosse.com.
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