Hockey Lesson Plans, Hockey Articles

Commit Defenders and Create Scoring Opportunities

This week we again bring you 2 great sessions, the senior sessions looks at key drills for this time of season, stealing goals on the break. The junior session progresses their development, looking at encouraging players to use the self pass and be confident in commiting a defender before passing the ball from a free hit.

Older Session: Break Hockey - Create Scoring Opportunities

A team that makes the most of break opportunities, can be the difference between winning and losing close games. Whether it be during an end of season race for the title, or battling relegation.

When the opposition make a mistake, you need your players alert and prepared to make the most of it. To make your team take the advantage of the break situation faster, we will work on support the break to create overload of 3 v 1 and we should be able to achieve the increase in speed of the break and therefore more goal scoring opportunities.

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Younger Session: Commit the Defender before you Pass

Self-pass practice to teach players to take the free hit and run at one of the defenders to then pass the ball right or left outside the reach of the defender.

To many times the players on the free hit just pass the ball and don't use the situation to try and take a defender out of the equation before passing the ball.

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Improve Attacking Down the Right

This week we look at session and skills which can be worked with players of all levels. As you know the players you coach best, adjust the intensity of the drills depending on the level of your players. This can spacing of the cones or width of the pitch. Or simply demand more of your players, the speed they execute key skills etc.

The aim of this session is to improve the attacking down the right wing. You need to work on passing and receiving the ball under pressure.

The reason we are doing this is because your team keeps going through the middle and we keep running into defenders. Attacking down the right is traditionally easy as it is the defenders weaker side, but also a cross coming in from the right is much easier for a team mate to run onto and collect and score.

So by doing this session we hope to pass the ball wide to the right and hope that we can use the space down the line to get behind the opposition and create some good opportunities to score.

Notes
Players in possession should look to commit a defender and then i.e. pass the ball past the defenders left foot in to thespace.

Try this session today - full members can log in download it now, or you can upgrade today.

Breaking Down a Defensive Zone - Indoor Hockey

STOP "I don't need this I don't play indoor hockey"
Think of indoor hockey as just a refined form of the game, as port is a fine wine, indoor hockey is a finer form of hockey. There are many lessons all coaches and players can learn from indoor hockey.

As the season is about to go into winter break, it's time for some of us to start focusing on indoor hockey. The Sportplan Hockey libray has some top drills and lessons plans to help your team get the tactical advantage in the upcoming indoor season.

The Dice Defense

The half court Dice defence is the most commonly used formation in indoor hockey.

Coaching Points
It moves as a unit across the pitch and sets it self infront of the players with the ball at the moment the ball is passed into the zone the defensive players will close in on the player with the ball and up the pressure forcing the player to make a mistake and give a bad pass which can be intercepted and allow the defensive team to break and score.

The key to breaking down the dice defense is to exploit common mistakes and practice by repeatedly doing the same pattern of pass against a realistic defence.

This week we tell you how to identify the common mistakes and build attacking patterns against to break teh dice defence.

Indoor Hockey Library has been extend and updated more great new content.
http://www.sportplan.net/drills/Hockey/Indoor-Hockey/practiceIndex.jsp