It’s always a good idea to keep up with conditioning in the offseason. You don’t want to get to spring and have lost your stamina and strength practice. As long as you don’t overwork yourself and burnout, staying in shape will only lead to a better lacrosse season. Different sports offer different benefits, so it depends on what you’d like to gain over the off-season when choosing a sport to play. At the end of the day, I believe that as long as you move your body regularly, you can’t go wrong.
My Experience with Cross Country
In high school, I ran cross-country in-between seasons of lacrosse, that is until off-season lacrosse was offered. When I was on the cross-country team, we trained for both speed and stamina. The cross country races were 5 kilometers long, meaning our goal was to run 3.1 miles as fast as we could. Over the course of the season, we would run a wide range of lengths in order to increase our endurance. The runs ranged from 10 miles to short sprint workouts. This worked perfectly with lacrosse. As a mid-fielder, I was running for most of the game, so the stamina workouts were a huge help, while the sprint workouts helped with cutting in offense. It also helped form my love of running. Lacrosse became a lot more enjoyable for me once running became a love too.
Lacrosse and Soccer
While I ran cross country, the majority of my teammates chose to play soccer. Soccer was simply the most popular sport when I was growing up. Not only was it something they loved, it was relatively similar to lacrosse. Cross country is a very individual sport, while soccer is a field team sport just like lacrosse. For the entire year, my teammates were in similar mindsets all three seasons. Maybe that was a plus for them, maybe it wasn’t, I guess it just depends on the player.
The workouts are generally the same in soccer as in lacrosse. There’s a similar amount of running, and there’s also a similar amount of communication, which never hurts. There is no hand-eye or foot-eye coordination in cross country, like there is in lacrosse or soccer, so I might have lost out on some coordination practice. I felt pretty confident in the practice I put in during lacrosse practice, so I never truly felt like I was lacking in my stick skills during lacrosse season.
Lacrosse and Basketball
While some of my teammates played soccer and while I ran cross country, I had a couple teammates who came from the basketball team. Though it’s not a field sport, there are a lot of similarities to lacrosse. As mentioned in our Zone Defense vs Man on Man article, how the zones are set up in basketball and lacrosse are relatively similar. This can definitely help when you switch teams over the seasons. It’ll help you get comfortable with zone defense and with the amount of cutting on the offense. However, if you do choose to play basketball and lacrosse, make sure to go easy on those knees, cutting like that for too long might be unhealthy for the joints.
Another thing to keep in mind when playing basketball, is to practice some long distance running during that season as well. The basketball court is relatively small, so make sure you’re prepared for the large lacrosse field come spring.
Strength Training?
Best Off Season Sport Wrap Up
So many of my teammates played another sport like I did, and it definitely helped with our transitions into lacrosse season. Some sports were endurance focused like cross country, and some were play focused like basketball. No matter what you do, just make sure you move around. It also doesn’t hurt to pass the lacrosse ball around here and there during the off-season as well!