Becoming a champion doesn't happen overnight. You can't just snap your fingers and be in the Ohio High School Championship game. Winning comes as players develop a complete understanding of the game both mentally, emtionally, and physically. Being in that championship game is the result of a decade's worth of focused practice honing skills and increasing your abilities.
Therefore, we need to get the most out of our time with the players during practice. Having a well thought-out practice plan is one of the keys to practicing to become a champion. Obviously the flow, intensity and goals of football practice depend greatly on the age and skill level of our players, but what follows is how we as coaches approach putting a practice together.
Preparing For Practice
No matter what a player's skill level you always need to be well hydrated and warmed up. 32 to 64 ounces of water a day is a rough guide to the amount of water an athlete needs when they are in training. At the beginning of each practice a good brisk jog for two to three minutes coupled with thorough stretching is a great general start.
The Team Talk
Every practice has a goal. It's our job to state that goal and keep the team on point. In our first few practices, for example, our goal will be to evaluate our players' abilities. This Team Talk allows us to share this goal with them and encourage them to do their best. Also throughout the year we will bring in community leaders to talk with our players about key issues. Our goal is to make them better citizens, students, teammates and athletes.
When We Get To Work
Using the example of a first practice, we will get the kids to run a 40-yard dash and time it with a stopwatch. This will help us evaluate where to best place each player. Then we will get them started on other drills to determine how well they throw, how well they catch and how agile and comfortable they are in action. The pace of our drills will be up tempo to increase their conditioning level.
Introducing In New Skills
Because we're coaching youth football, our job is to get players comfortable with and knowledgeable about playing the game. As weird as it might sound winning is not our primary goal at this level. Every practice is dedicated to incorporating new skills: handoff drills, passing drills, running patterns, agility, proper technique, proper posture, etc. and making sure those skills mesh as a team. Extra time will be taken to instruct the players on how the drill is properly run to learn this new skill.
Planning Our Drills
Typically youth football athletes don't have a proper understanding of the game, and so much of our initial time is spent developing this. As their knowledge base grows we can begin to see our team's strengths and weaknesses, and it becomes our job as coaches to champion our strengths while finding ways to improve on our weaknesses. Skill-building drills will make up the bulk of our practices. While there's no set rule for the amount of time we'll spend on practice drills -- typically we'll allow enough time for a good warm up at the beginning and a 20-minute scrimmage at the end. The difference will typically be filled with specific skill drills.
Practice Makes Permanent
We will plan our drills so that our players are always working on a skill they need to develop. Our goal is to learn to do the drill to perfection. Young players will always need more reps at drills to train their bodies the skills necessary to play with confidence. This is a requirement that takes great patience as a coach. Therefore, it will not be uncommon to do a drill at least 4 or 5 times to help establish perfect habits. The pace of drills will start out slow at the beginning of the season to allow athletes to learn what's expected of them but as the season progresses drills will pick up in frequency and intensity to encourage conditioning of the athlete and to give them an opportunity to respond correctly while their body is being stressed.
Keeping Players Hydrated
THIS CAN'T BE STRESSED ENOUGH!!! We suggest drinking between 32 to 64 ounces of water during the football season. Football practice is hard work, and it often takes place during warm or hot weather. While we have planned water breaks into the schedule and monitor players closely to see if they are getting overheated or exhausted, BEGINNING PRACTICE WELL HYDRATED is always the best policy.
Your body needs time to thoroughly become hydrated. Your body can't instantly take a liquid and apply it to your dehydrated muscles and other tissues. Therefore drinking a 32oz Gatorade just before practice will only adversely affect the player's performance as the liquid sloshes around in their stomach waiting to be processed over the next several hours.
All that being said, we realize that it's more important if a player is overheated to cool off and rehydrate than it is to try and power through a practice. However, we want to make sure the players understand the importance of hydration, what causes dehydration, and how to avoid it, so that we can maximize the practice time we do have. Please drink water throughout the day, especially 2 hours before practice.
Planning Around Attention Spans
Young children have shorter attention spans and tons of energy and a huge desire to romp around (especially if they're wearing football pads.) Because 60% of practice is spent doing individual type drills, and we need players to focus and learn new skills, their attention span is critical. Players must learn to discipline themselves to stay focused on the drill where they are stationed. The first few weeks this is hard for new players but they soon pick it up. As coaches we schedule these drills just after warm ups while the players focus is best. Drills move from completely individualized to multi-player drills to full out 11 on 11 scrimmages.
Scrimmage Time
This is where practice is typically the most fun because the players actually get to participate in simulated "game time" action. We will always schedule 20-30 minutes of Scrimmage Time at the end of each practice. It is during this time that we are making sure that players are using the skills we taught them during our practice drills. Coaches will be looking at footwork, posture, alignment, technique, execution, etc. during Scrimmage Time.
Cool Down/The Team Talk
As coaches we are motivators as well as a teachers. It's important that your child had fun during practice while at the same time worked hard and learned something new about the game. We will congratulate them on their participation and remind them that the team has a lot more work to do and a lot more fun to have at the next practice in preparation for the next game.
It's during this time that we will comment on the team's performances: for example, “You all tackled better today, some of you tackled better today, or we still need to work on our tackling.” We will make all comments (both positive and negative) about the team, not about individual players. That, more than anything, reinforces the team spirit.
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