Bottom Hand is the Driver

As the game has developed, coaches and players who have advanced the game have realized that time is the driver of passes and shots. When speaking of time, we are talking of the quickness getting the ball out of the stick. For years, coaches have worked through using a long shot stroke that finishes with the lower hand near the player’s bottom hand hip. This style is very solid when the sticks did not have the head slopes found in today’s sticks. This shot takes significant time to complete and becomes a problem when the player is around the eight meter with defenders close. As the manufacturers modified their heads to support a higher sweet spot, players found more success with the bottom hand snapping down on shaft.

With the ball seated in the top of the stick, a stronger bottom hand working as the primary engine and the upper hand being the Fulcrum, players can magnify the energy of their shots/passes.

There is a simple law of physics that governs the energy used on a lacrosse stick. As a player pushes with the upper hand and pulls with the lower hand, they magnify the speed of the head by the added difference in length from the upper hand (fulcrum).
Example: the bottom hand is at the base of the stick. The upper hand is 12” above the bottom hand. And the head is 24” above the upper hand. When the bottom hand is used to pull the shaft against the upper hand (fulcrum), the head will have 2X the velocity of the energy used to pull the bottom.

How do we understand how this works when we throw/shoot? Experiment: If a player holds the stick with the upper hand 6” above the bottom hand and sets up in the throwing position and they pull down with the bottom hand, the player will feel how the stick falls over the upper hand. As the player starts their throw, the player should snap back with the bottom hand and almost feel like they are catching their stick in their upper hand. Throws with too much bottom hand pull will take an arc toward the target (early release). Throws with too much upper hand push will land below the target, frequently into the ground (late release). We are working to add the bottom hand to our learned throwing style, so initially it is expected we will see the ball go down. One way of imagining it is to pull the shaft with the bottom hand and point the upper hand at the target.

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