Teaching Correct Fundamentals

This year I coached a high school team, and not one single player on the team had the correct fundamental mechanics. I ended up having to spend most of the season teaching fundamentals, which also meant learning how to coach and teach correct mechanics and movements. It's surprisingly difficult to teach fundamentals since once you have mastered them, you take them for granted. I wanted to start a topic in here to see if anyone else had some unique ways of creating good habits or correcting bad ones.

One of the unique things I did was with ground balls. I noticed that all of my kids were scooping with their bottom hand on their stick, which meant that their stick always ended up hanging out in front of them rather than in a protected position. I told everyone to start scooping with their top hand like I've always done, and the ground ball drills began going a lot more smoothly. I also had them do a drill where two guys are 10 yds apart with a ball in between them, and one kid runs in and scoops up the ball. Once he's touched the ball, the other guy is released to come in and body check him. The guy who scooped the ball was to turn his shoulders so his stick was protected and then absorb the hit and roll off it. After we did this drill a few times in practice, we stopped dropping the ball every time contact was made.

I also realized that if I told the kids to puff out their chests on passing and shooting drills, it forced them to raise their front arm up to the correct position. This saved me a lot of headaches.

Just wondering, but what exactly do you mean by scooping with their bottom hand vs. top hand?

Probably getting your hand to the plastic of your head, and getting low, as opposed to being lazy and having your hands at the end of your shaft.

Alright, thx for clearing that up for me.

it's the difference between pushing the ball around on the grass and actually scooping through and earning your groundball

I have noticed alot of kids have horrible mechanics on shooting. Most of them either dont know how to position there hands, drive their legs into it, snap their wrists, etc.

I used to teach youth players and make them go through the motions multiple times with out balls in their sticks to teach muscle memory. It ended up working for the better.

by scooping with the top hand, I'm describing where the majority of the scooping motion comes from. You should be able to go down for a ground ball and release your bottom hand as you make the scoop and still get the ball. The top hand should be predominantly the one that's making the scoop.

i think insidelax mag has a section with drills for coaches, i remember seeing a drill in there to teach players to shoot overhand, like shoot over a cage near you into one 10 yards away or someting, it was more complicated, but that was the important part. they involved like a V cut, and a dodge in there somewhere, i think it may have been the may issue of this year.