Lockdown planning: Rebuilding lineout skills

If you are able to train, then you will be aiming to improve your players’ skills and tactical appreciation around specific areas of the game.

If you are in lockdown, it’s a chance to hone your session planning in readiness for your return.

In this planning for post-lockdown training, we are going to look at rebuilding your lineout skills. Specifically, we want to relearn the throw, jump and catch connection.

To enhance learning, you are better off focusing on an “arc” of learning for a specific area. This means spreading out the training over a number of weeks, rather than dedicating one session to this.

Here’s a four-week plan for the core lineout skills but you can split this up into more sections if you want.

Objective: Develop the connection between the throw, jump and catch.

Week one: Catching for everyone.

Week two: Lifting for everyone.

Week three: Throw, jump, catch for everyone.

Week four: Working as threes into a game situation.

Let’s say you dedicate 15 minutes each week to the activities and assuming you have warmed up before the start, you could use a mix of games and drills.

Each session may include all of the skills or tactic from all of the weeks. However, each week focuses on the specific skill/tactic, the reasons why there are important and how the players could improve their own contributions.

The mix depends on the skills of your players. Here are four ideas to help.

• Lineout throwing and jumping timing
• Catch at every angle
• Lineout threes – basics and game
• Introducing the lineout: Crouch, stand and lift

Here are the other plans in our lockdown series:

• Lockdown planning: Team games to rebuild understanding
• Lockdown planning: Better support for the ball carrier
• Lockdown planning: Bust the line
• Lockdown planning: Protecting against an overlap
• Lockdown planning: Exploiting a narrow defence
• Lockdown planning: Preventing quick ruck ball sessions
• Lockdown planning: Quick ruck ball sessions