Learn to Use the Force: Basic Lacrosse Cradling

When you are playing lacrosse, one of the most important skills you will need to develop is the ability to keep the ball in your possession while you are running so that defenders are unable to steal it from you. The effective way to accomplish this task is by cradling.

Lacrosse's equivalent of dribbling in basketball or soccer, you cradle the ball in your stick's net by always keeping it in motion. The motion of your stick produces a centripetal force on the ball, which forces it to stay firmly in place no matter what else is going on in the game. Cradling is a learn the basics properly, it will quickly become muscle memory. Here are a few tips for learning how to cradle.

1. To start cradling correctly, you have to hold the lacrosse stick with the proper grip. When you are first starting, you should learn how to do the two-handed cradle and your dominant hand if you are a right-handed stick. Remember to wear your gloves whenever you practice cradling because the feel of the stick in your gloved hands will be entirely different than in your bare hands.

2. Grasp the stick with your left hand, but allow it to rest more loosely in the fingers of your right hand. The actual cradling motion will be accomplished by rolling the stick back and forth in the fingers of your dominant hand. Your right-hand does all the work while your left hand simply provides support. While you are cradling, the butt of the stick needs to be able to pivot back and forth in your left hand as you use it to guide the stick. Once you get very advanced at cradling, you can begin to try a one-handed cradle, in which the top hand is the only one touching the stick.

3. Begin to roll the stick in your right hand. When you look at the movement of the ball in your mesh, it should resemble cradling a baby (which is where the term came from). Start slowly with the stick in front of you and parallel to the ground. Eventually, you will want to start holding the stick higher with the ball slightly behind you, but you want to master the basic moves first.

4. Once you feel like you are doing a good job using your fingers to cradle, you can start to involve the wrist of your right arm as well. As you get even more advanced, you will also involve your forearm. The point of the cradling is to try to apply as much force as possible to the ball to keep it glued in place in the mesh of your stick. Think of the force applied to the ball as the same type applied to you when you ride a rollercoaster with an inversion. Even though you get turned upside down, there is always enough force to make it feel like you're glued to your seat, and the same is true of the lacrosse ball when you cradle it.

5. As you cradle, you should always try to feel the ball in the net and have an idea of what it is doing. Ideally, you want to ball to be perfectly still instead of rolling around at all. If you do notice the ball is moving back and forth while you cradle, try to make the motion smoother to keep the force as even as possible. When you are just starting, you can cradle as slowly as you need to to make sure you are applying the right technique. As you get more advanced, however, you will want to stop focusing all of your attention on the cradling motion itself and rely more on muscle memory.

6. Try to start running while you cradle so that you are forced to split your focus between cradling and watching where you are going. Even though you will cradle with your dominant hand whenever possible, you should also try to start learning how to cradle with your other hand when you are still a beginner. Getting used to mixing up your cradling hand depending on the situation you find yourself in can be a very useful skill. Don't worry if cradling doesn't come easily at first. Like dribbling in basketball, it is a skill that looks much easier than it is.

The more you practice cradling on your own, the better you will get naturally. Before you know it, you'll be playing lacrosse like a pro.