Open Practice: Team Oriented Drills and Station Rotation

Every coach wants to have players that are confident about their passing, shooting and defense while also having the ability to play fast and loose. Take this opportunity to go behind the scenes with a top D-I program and get a unique insight into how Lars Tiffany designs and delivers his practices to prepare his team to play fast, throw hard and play with confidence.

In this video, Coach Tiffany demonstrates six warm-up and stickwork drills to get players' hearts beating and bodies sweating before stretching. He then provides 10 station drills to be used by the team using a rotation format. Throughout, Tiffany describes not only the drills themselves, but the thinking and rationale behind them, with each live drill preceded with a comprehensive description on the whiteboard. His thoughtful tips help any coach or player watching to understand the keys to success behind each drill. Drills shown have variations to continue to develop the players and create continued interest in the player's development.

Pre-Practice Drills

Each practice begins with position work that prepares each athlete, mentally and physically, followed by dynamic warm-ups and stick work. Many of the drills incorporate multiple balls, keeping the action and pace at high levels throughout. Tiffany takes his players through a series of drills covering:

• Footwork
• Ground balls
• Approaches and communication
• Outlets from the goalie

Stations

Having progressed from pre-practice to a dynamic warm-up, Coach Tiffany goes on to describe a series of stations - an effective approach to practice structure that can be implemented by any program. Stations enables players to work on multiples skills in a short amount of time, and Tiffany demonstrates the progression from one drill to another. Throughout all of the stations there's a focus on decision-making with players on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball.

Coach Tiffany's progression mixes passing and feeding drills with quick shooting drills while integrating game-like dodging throughout for the offensive players. At the same time, his defensive skills and drill techniques provide opportunities to practice against picks, field ground balls, practice approach and get on the offensive player's hands. Stations include:

• General Drill working on off-ball defensive play, approaches and angles
• Ground ball drills in an unsettled offensive situation
• Free the Hands with a 1v1 below GLE, looking to get hands free to feed a late cut to the crease
• 2v2 Picks on Ball with an on-ball pick and both the defense and offense looking to make and execute effective decision.

Learn how to use stations to build a dynamic and challenging practice for your players. Tiffany has set up his practice stations so all players on the team rotate through all drills, including playing offense and defense. Stations last between 3 and 4 minutes and provide high energy and conditioning. The variety of the drills and the skills covered would suit any program.

Full-Field Face Off Transition

Help your team be more proficient at creating a fast-paced face off push on offense or defending a fast paced face off on defense. Tiffany provides a full field drill to work both sides of the field simultaneously, starting from a face-off.

• Off the face off win, a 6 v 5 is created and a fast-paced break to the goal begins.
• 4v3 in the opposite direction is created to keep both sides focused and create another fast-paced break.

With a quick reset and exchange of players, the drill begins again, creating tempo and conditioning.

From pre-practice to the stations, there are nearly 20 drills described in the video, each with variations and levels of progression. The final 5v4 'One More' drill ends practice on a high-note with players mixing positions to increase understanding and to develop skills.

Coach Tiffany does a great job of explaining the drills in this video, which contains everything you need to design and develop your own practices.

56 minutes. 2017.