This article appears as part of the “Myth Busters”​ package in the September/October edition of US Lacrosse Magazine. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription.

People marvel at the stringing they see on Instagram or on YouTube. Coming from the lax nerd who created the Stringers Union, there are some awesome setups that have been posted on the internet, and most of us are capable of replicating them.

For some people, stringing might seem too daunting or time-consuming. And it just so happens that little Greyson from down the street will string up a head for you for $15 (strings included) because your kid plays varsity at the local prep school.

But for the parents of players living outside of the hotbeds, the stringing geek down the street is difficult to come by, as is a local lacrosse store that will string up your kid’s stick. However, you don’t exactly have to be employed by NASA or be a washed up Eagle Scout to figure out how to string a lacrosse stick. Sure, some patterns are more difficult than others, but for the most part stringing is tying a knot and wrapping it around some plastic.

Before jumping in head first, I’m going to give you a little bit of criteria for the dynamics of a well-strung head for a young player:

• Mesh is stretched tight across the top of the head.

• Pocket begins to form at top shooter.

• Deepest part of the pocket is in the middle of the head and is less than a ball deep.

• Top shooter is tightest, and each gets looser as you go down.

If one of these things isn’t true, you have some work ahead of you. But there’s good news for you: 1. You’re not alone in this; and 2. The internet.

You could do what I did, which in a roundabout way was to stare at grainy photos of players’ sticks to try to replicate their whack string jobs. Or, you could go online to many stick stringing tutorials to find out how to string the stick your young buck is playing with.

On the STX YouTube channel, you will find videos of some of my colleagues and I teaching people how to string, along with a map of what the heck we are doing, or you could watch other fantastic YouTube videos and learn techniques even I haven’t tried. It’s like you’re putting together a Nordli shelf from Ikea with a manual and bonus video instruction, but none of which are in Swedish.

My point is that stringing isn’t “daunting,” but another D word: doable. So, before you spend $40 on another string job, go order a spool of sidewall and shooters, and learn to string a stick. I will leave you with one tip that will save you a trip to the junk drawer for some bandages: Lick your fingers before touching hot strings.

Good luck, and hope to see you in January at LaxCon in Baltimore.

Cody Hornung is the category brand manager for men’s lacrosse at STX.