All Access Northwestern Lacrosse Practice with Kelly Amonte Hiller

Kelly Amonte Hiller's success as a player and coach has been achieved through her commitment, hard work, innovation, and positive approach to teaching the sport of lacrosse. Amonte Hiller is renowned for being on the leading edge of coaching techniques.

Now, for the first time ever, Coach Amonte Hiller opens her practices to you, allowing you watch three Northwestern lacrosse practices as though you were sitting on sidelines. You will get a first-hand look at the practices, drills and training techniques that make the Northwestern Wildcats a national title contenders year-in and year-out.

Practice Day 1, Multi-Station Situation Drills / Weight Room
Coach Amonte Hiller introduces her positive coaching techniques and discusses her strategy for designing the team's practice. The team runs through a quick succession of warm-up drills that focus on stick and footwork skills with a conditioning element added. She then divides the team into groups that run through multi-station drills in 7 minute segments that focus on individual skills like stick work, ground balls, transitional play, feeding, shooting, faking and 1-on-1 defense. Each skill is taught and practiced in a way that is directly transferable to the field of play.

Practice is followed by a workout with the team's strength and conditioning coach. The Wildcats are put through a strenuous workout regiment that includes free weights, medicine balls, and resistance bands.

Practice 2: Transition Drills / Alternative Workout
Day 2 starts with another strength and conditioning workout. Modeled on a boxer's training routine, this workout helps build upper body and core strength, while integrating a tough cardio regime. Amonte Hiller uses these techniques to increase the hand-eye coordination and conditioning of her players. In addition, the players engage in stationary cycling to improve conditioning and strengthen leg muscles.

During the practice session on the field, Amonte Hiller has the players work in larger groups in order to build settled and unsettled concepts. The primary focus is to get the group of individuals to work together as a team.

Drills feature:

• A feeding drill from behind the cage, challenging the feeder with defensive pressure while forcing the cutter to time her cut and positioning for help.
• 4 v 3 into a 4 v 4 full field transition drill to force good decisions by both offensive and defensive players.
• 3 v 3 from behind drill has the defense provide pressure on offense while the offense works not to forcing passes out of desperation.

7 v 7 from midfield drill provides opportunity to see how the team works to keep a numbers advantage to move the ball quickly before being forced to settle into even numbers.

Practice 3: Stickwork and Defensive Work
In the final practice session, Coach Amonte Hiller brings together the lessons of the week, focusing again on stick skill development, working on groundballs, reinforcing defensive concepts on double teams and footwork, and practicing draws. Drills are designed to force partners to constantly communicate in order to be successful. More emphasis is placed on defense, draws, and unbalanced and transitional play. The coaches work on these skill sets both in the team setting and in the small group setting to maximize the number of repetitions for each player.

Finally, the Wildcats head back to the weight room for another round with the free weights and medicine balls. Here the players go through a different set of innovative lifts and movements designed to prevent injury, improve strength, and increase the conditioning level.

This video will give you a glimpse behind the scenes of one of the best all-around coaches in college sports. There are over 4 hours of practice footage where Coach Amonte Hiller practices her craft. Her innovative concept drills are designed to progressively build toward full-field game play. By reducing larger full game concepts into smaller pieces, players are able to successfully build on basic fundamental skills. The concept drills are designed to focus player and coaching efforts on mastering ever increasing skills developed through individual commitment and encouragement from peers in a team-learning environment. Several different evolutions of station drills combine to fully engage player participation and maximize practice time.

229 minutes (3 videos). 2012.

All Access videos are designed to allow viewers from all over the world to see how successful coaches run their practices in a "live" practice setting. All Access videos allow viewers to see the practices un-edited and in real-time. You will see how top coaches run their drills, interact with their team and staff, how they motivate their team, the cue words they use, the atmosphere of the practice and how practices are structured from day to day. Many coaches visit successful colleges and high schools to watch practice. But if you live out of state or out of the country, visiting another coach's practice can be costly. That's why we created the All Access Practice Series of videos -- to bring the practices to you! <