This is a follow up to our last training video of the 3 most common shooting mistakes. If you shoot the ball hard and are accurate but still not scoring that many goals these tips can turn you into one of the best shooters on your team(youth, HS, college)! Remember it doesn't matter how hard or accurate you shoot the ball if you're aiming to wrong spots you're not going to score very many goals. In this video coaching blog were going to discuss the best places to aim while shooting which is a very rarely talked about skill but so important to scoring.
There are a ton of nuances when it comes to where to aim your shots for all different scenarios and goalies you're going against but we're going to talk about where you want to shoot the majority of the time. Scoring goals is really easy if you know the correct places to aim.
All goalies have different strengths and weaknesses but in general most goalies are weaker to their offside stick which is why it's the best place to shoot. The offside stick means the side their stick is not on, so if it's a right handed goalie, the offside stick would be over their left shoulder. This is a much harder save for goalies because they have to reach their stick all the way to the other side of their body to make the save. This should be your number one option when aiming your shots, high/low doesn't really matter just anywhere offside stick is a great shot. One extra note is don't shoot to the same spot 2 times in a row so if you just shot offside stick high go offside stick low next time.
Since goalies know the hardest save for them to make is offside stick a lot them leave more room on the stick side to shoot, so they don't have to make offside stick saves. If the goalie is blocking the offside stick with their body and you can't shoot there then you have to shoot to the stick side. When shooting to the stick side of the goalie it's best to aim either high or low and not anywhere between the goalies knee's and shoulders(stick side hip) as this is usually one of the easiest places for goalies to save the ball. Remember from our last article don't look at the goalie when shooting, you can always see where he is by looking where you're aiming because the goalie is in front of the goal. Also if you choose to shoot the ball low DO NOT SHOOT AT THE GOALIES FEET! It's the easiest save for the goalies to make, you want to shoot either beyond the goal line or out in front of the crease to make the ball bounce back up to the top.
After you survey the goal and decide where to shoot, you always want to "miss to inside" which means give yourself about 6inch of space from the pipes so if you do miss your shot it still goes on cage giving you a chance to score. If you aim too precise and close to the corners you're never going to put that many of your shots on goal, which leads to not scoring very many goals.
You must practice this stuff over and over if you want to be able to actually do it in the games, just because you know how to do something from reading/watching this doesn't mean you can actually do it. That comes from getting thousands of game like reps in your training sessions. To make your shooting sessions more game like and fun try to bring a goalie if they're available or our 11th man goalie dummy(link below) when you shoot to make it more realistic. A lot of players can be accurate with no goalie in cage, but once a goalie or an 11th man dummy is placed in there it becomes a lot harder to aim since they're taking up a lot of space visually.
If you have any questions about training, our equipment, or coaching feel free to reach out to Info@ElevateSportsEquipment.com and we'll get back to you right away.
If you have any videos of you playing in games or your training sessions and want feedback from D1/Pro players and coaches send us your films to the email above and we'll send feedback back on how to improve for free! We want players to become the best they can and get the most out of our training equipment, which is why we give away free online coaching.
Here's a link to our 11th man if you don't already have one, it's one of the most useful and fun training aids around that I use myself and for all my teams/private training sessions. We have a 30 day money back guarantee so there's no risk if you don't like it we'll provide a full a refund. https://www.elevatesportsequipment.com/lacrosse
- Tyler Simmons
President/Founder Elevate Sports
Stanford University Asst Lacrosse Coach
University of Denver Lacrosse 14'