My players throw too many aerials. How do I teach them when it’s the right ball?

Quick answer. Treat the aerial as one pass among several, not a get-out. It is the right ball when it is the safest, most penetrating option: on a quick counter, into space a high press has left behind, or against a team that marks player for player. It is the wrong ball from a static restart in your own defensive zone, or when it flies over your best midfielders every time. Coaches stop the habit with clear rules for where it is allowed, a definition of what a successful aerial produces, and video, rather than a ban.

That is the short version. Here is how the coaches on The Hockey Site actually handle it.

Start with what the pass is for

Glenn Simpson gives the simplest test in Aerials in women’s hockey today. Whatever the pass, ground or air, “It’s to search for the safest, most penetrating pass possible.” The aerial is not a separate category of decision. It is one answer to the same question every pass has to answer.

What he wants from it is a choice the opposition has to respect: “our view towards it was to be able to attack by air or by the ground. And if we had that double threat possible, then we felt we were really dangerous.” A team that can only go long has lost the double threat as surely as a team that never goes long.

When the aerial is the right ball

The coaches give a short list of moments. Tin Matkovic, in Aerials, why, when and how, uses it “when we have a quick counter or we want to skip quick game. But from the static buildup, when we have a foul, we’re not gonna do that anymore.” Russell Coates, in Outletting, picks the moment a press commits: “if a team is, is pressing really high and they are leaving up pockets of space that you can aerial into, I would say yes, I think that’s a really good way to relieve yourself from pressure.” Tsoanelo Pholo reads the opposition’s marking: “if I am playing against a team that is really good on man to man marking, I want to go in there, I want to go aerial.”

The receiver is part of the decision too. Matkovic’s warning is that a perfect throw is wasted on someone who can’t bring it down: “if there’s a receiver that is not capable of stopping a high ball or has problems stopping, then you might also have a perfect high ball and it will stop in one moment”.

What a bad one costs

The obvious cost is the turnover. Matkovic points out that against a deep defence, with your own team pushed up, a failed aerial is “a potential risk for a high turnover yourself.” Coates describes the worse version, an aerial dropped into a pocket the opponents control: “you just get a foul called against you and they can take the ball quickly, I feel like you’re going to be, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

The less obvious cost is what it does to your own team. Simpson saw it in his own side: “there were moments where we started to overuse the high ball, and that was because the threat was there. And people start to anticipate and move away from the ball carrier that the ball was going to go long and we didn’t provide short options.” Once teammates expect the long ball, they stop offering the short one, and the habit feeds itself. He also points at the waste: build up with “our best players in the contacts 15 meters away from the ball and we flick the ball over their head for the entire game, then we’re losing the most optimal setup of our team.”

How to stop players defaulting to it

Ask Matkovic about the one player who throws them too often and the answer starts with geography: “if it’s in our Zone 1, then we stop him immediately of doing this, or immediately we try to communicate with him it’s not working and we would like to play a little bit so the mids can touch the ball”. Further up the pitch, the rule is about results, and the player should know what counts as one. In the attacking zone, “The positive outcome should be like… either a foul, so a foul, long corner, short corner, 7 meters, or a goal.” When it stops producing those, Matkovic frames the change around the other team rather than the player: “they are doing a really good job. So this is not working anymore.”

The longer fix is awareness. “I find that with showing a lot of video and showing a lot of individual clips and talking through the years, team gets more and more aware of what they’re doing.” The aim, in Matkovic’s words, is that players “recognize, and then also see the patterns when to play it, when to not play it.” Concrete feedback beats volume: being told that the diagonal failed five times in a row, and why, “Is much more helpful than screaming at him.”

Two more causes are worth checking in your own coaching. Coates sees aerials used as an escape at youth level: when players under pressure hit or lift the ball away every time, “you’re missing out on a chance to develop”. And Robert Noall, in Outletting vs zone marking, warns against what Noall calls joystick coaching: a player told to play one pass every time stops thinking and keeps playing it even when it is defended. If your players throw the same aerial every time, it is worth asking whether they were told to.

Build it in training before it appears in games

Simpson’s order is training first, then matches: “the first step is to develop in training and to bring confidence first on the pitch while you’re safe.” Then introduce it gradually: “encourage them, not force them, encourage them to think about putting it into their toolkit. Maybe today you can play one highball in the first half”. For younger players he redefines success completely: “A success at a under 13 level is maybe girls 6 meters away from each other with a small obstruction obstacle in the way that they just try to flip the ball over and we just extend that out over time.” Technique comes before strength, starting with driving from the back leg.

Matkovic varies the distance on purpose, “5 meters, 10 meters, 50 meters”, because a player who only practises the long one misses when a short one is needed. Noall’s junior games reward the attempt: “if they try the high ball and they’re able to get it, or if they do a good pre scanning, give that team a point.”

And train the catch, not only the throw. Noall: “the aerial ball most important is the player doesn’t lose sight of the ball while receiving it”, with the ball taken “in front of us, front to the right” rather than on the back shoulder. Pholo puts it as the condition for throwing at all: “backhand receives on the, on, on the aerial. Forehand receives on the aerial. We need to be very sound on that because then I can know that I can throw it at you.”

So, before your next session, the useful question is not “how do I stop the aerials”. It is “do my players know where and when the aerial is allowed, and what it is supposed to produce”. Set the zones, define the outcome, show them the clips, and keep the short options alive so the long one stays a threat rather than a habit.

Two questions this usually raises

At what age should players start throwing aerials?

Glenn Simpson introduces it in training around the first year on the big pitch, roughly under-14, and encourages it in matches from around under-16. Before that, success can be as small as two players six metres apart lifting the ball over a low obstacle, with the distance extended over time. Technique first, strength much later.

Should my players throw a high aerial or a flat one?

Tsoanelo Pholo uses both. From far away she likes a very high ball, because the receiver can get underneath it and settle. In the attacking half she throws it as flat as possible, because the speed of the pass matters more there. Either way, the receiver’s skill decides whether it is worth throwing.

The sessions below are where these coaches go into the working detail. Every masterclass opens free so you can see what it covers; the full session sits in the Coach subscription.