Hurling drills — GAA Pitch

What the library covers

GAA Pitch has 36 hurling drills in its core catalogue, and every one of them is built around striking off both sides, lifting cleanly at speed, and getting the hurl in front to hook or block. Each drill carries a pitch diagram showing where players, cones and the ball go, the skills it works on, the equipment you need, and the coaching points worth calling out, usually with an easier and a harder variation.

They are not a PDF to print and work through. GAA Pitch uses them to generate a full training session around your sport, age group and the skills you want to work on, then lays it out on a pitch you can share with your players.

The skills these drills work on

Every drill is tagged, so you can build a session around one skill or mix several. The hurling drills in the library currently cover:

agility: Sharp changes of direction off both feet, and reacting to a breaking sliotar.
balance: Holding body shape in contact and recovering position quickly afterwards.
blocking: Getting the hurl in front early to hook or block, without giving away the foul.
catching: Catching overhead and in the air, with and without a man on your shoulder.
hand-pass: Short, accurate hand-passing to keep the ball moving out of a crowd.
lifting: Jab-lift and roll-lift at pace, then getting the ball into the hand under contact.
soloing: Carrying on the hurl at speed while protecting possession and staying balanced.
striking: Striking from the hand and off the ground, off both sides, under rising pressure.
tackling: Front-on and side-on tackling that wins the ball rather than conceding a free.

Choosing drills for your age group

The same drill can be right for an U12 team and wrong for a senior one. What changes is the constraint you put on it, not usually the drill itself.

U6 to U10: Keep everyone touching the ball. Favour small grids, short queues and plenty of repetition on the basic skill, and treat games as the reward rather than the warm-down.
U12 to U14: Start adding a decision. The same skill drill with a defender, a time limit or a second ball teaches players when to use it, not just how.
U16 to Minor: Build to game speed. Chain two skills together, keep the numbers uneven so players have to read the space, and finish on something competitive.
Senior: Short, sharp and specific. Pick drills that rehearse a pattern you want on Sunday, and keep the volume low enough that quality holds.

Building these into a session

Pick your sport, age group and focus skills and GAA Pitch assembles the session for you, with timings that add up to the length you have the pitch for. The building a session guide walks through it, and sharing and exporting covers getting it to your players.

Browse the drills

The catalogue is free to browse with an account. The library has been curated over time, so the full set of diagrams and coaching points sits behind a free sign-in rather than out in the open. Open the drill library to see a sample, or create a free account to browse them all.

Coaching the other code too? There are Gaelic football drills in the library as well.