On this brisk day, the winter is now officially upon us! For lacrosse players, winter is the season for personal development and improvement! Players and coaches alike begin to think about the spring and everything is geared towards starting your season in the best place possible. 

For coaches, they want their players to be in the best shape possible and to have their skills sharp and ready to go for the first day of practice. For everyone, this is like studying before the test. Are you going to prepare and study when the test is assigned or wait until the night before?

During the winter, the best way to help your team by having the singular focus of becoming the best player that you can be. Once you hit March, it is time to shift the focus solely off of your game and on how to be the best teammate possible with the goal of helping everyone create victory. 

For players that have aspirations of playing lacrosse in college, this is a great time to work on your skills. You are limited in the outdoor time that you have, so finding opportunities to learn new skills, hit the wall, and working on your athletism are a must. High School players should be hitting the weight room 3-4 days a week and running/sprinting 6 days a week. Every serious lacrosse player, youth and high school, should be hitting the wall for at least 30min per day!!!! 

Beyond these musts, you need to seek out opportunities to learn new skills and enhance your own game. In the team environment, focus is at a marco level, in the winter, players should be working on their game at the micro level.  

Examples of what you should be doing in the winter:

Defensive players should be learning new holds, stick positioning, body posture...

Offensive players should be learning the intricacies of shooting and dodging....

Goalies should be learning about angles, steps, and efficiency of motion....

The .... means that there are a lot more things that you can and should be learning. Making yourself a better player, only makes every piece of the team concept that much easier to implement and makes them much more effective. Just because the players are better, the system the coach puts in, is better.

The list of skills above are intricacies, but they are the important things, that some players learn and others have to figure out. 

This is also a time to explore the wonders of box lacrosse. A great way to play the game in a different way to continue working on skill and prevent burnout.