How to Train Pressing Triggers

If there’s one point every field hockey coach should walk away with from this pressing triggers workshop, it’s this: recognizing and training pressing triggers is not just for football coaches, and not something to brush aside in hockey. Understanding and embedding the principles of pressing triggers into your day-to-day approach can transform how your team defends, attacks, and manages the transition moments of a match.

Why This Matters

Pressing triggers aren’t a system, they’re a set of principles. This means you can layer them onto any press—zonal, man-to-man, running, box, or even a low block. You might prefer a running press, or your team composition, or opposition dictate a deeper block. Regardless, the art and science of recognizing moments (the “triggers”) when your team should engage is universal.

As Russell Coates put it:

“What I like about pressing triggers is that they are more a sort of set of principles that basically apply to any type of press... Even in a sort of low zonal block.”

If there’s a single idea to stress, it’s the need to make pressing intentional, not habitual. Too many teams “press” as a default, chasing ineffectively and getting played through, instead of having a shared, trained understanding of when and why to pounce. A coaching staff that drills pressing triggers is preparing their team to “hunt in packs”—in sharp, organized bursts, instead of getting stretched and picked apart.

Applying This Tomorrow

So, how do you turn this into practical coaching? The key is training your players to recognize triggers collectively, and then act as a connected unit—not as individuals pressing on instinct. Start with small-sided games (think 5v2, 4v3,…), but instruct your pressing group to wait for agreed triggers:

• A pass to the sideline

• A backward pass under pressure

• A ball receiver with back to goal

• A poor (bad) first touch

Russell Coates emphasized this in his session:

“It’s very important that they learn to press together so that they stay connected... If you’re pressing with one person then it’s going to be very hard to win the ball back.”

Developing your team’s ability to spot these cues isn’t about tricks or secret drills. It comes from game-realistic training, video feedback, and rewarding/punishing with tailored scoring rules (e.g., double goals for turnovers forced from a trigger, or restricting touch counts to raise intensity). Every session, ask your players—why are we pressing now? Which trigger do you see?—so they build anticipation, not just reaction.

Why Watch the Full Masterclass?

This workshop doesn’t just cover the theory but gives you drills, video examples of when triggers are missed and won, and frameworks for how to segment, progress, and individualize pressing training. If you’re serious about making your team harder to play through (without just telling your players to “work harder”), you want to see these sessions, the tweaks, and the nuanced adjustments that separate effective presses from futile sprints.

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Dig in below for the deep dive—including the core takeaways and step-by-step breakdowns behind the training structure and watch the full video above.