Childhood Football – The First 7 days of Practice – What should you do?

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The First Week of Soccer Practice

Youth soccer coaches reserve the first week of practice for “conditioning” with no pads. For a few, this is a league rule; for some, this is a traditional preference.

The reason why Many Do What they Do

For several youth football coaches, this first week is related to what they did as a kid once they played youth football or possibly how they practiced in Senior high school 20 years ago. I know I started coaching; I just used the same practice drills and the approach I had used as a youth football player more than 20 years prior. We did everything I had suffered: goof rolls, hills, crab exercises, grass drills, firemen carry, butt rolls, laps, push-ups, sit-ups, squat thrusts, gassers, line drills, etc., and many others. We were a team that had never been going to be out-conditioned. I was going to win that last quarter, blah blah blah.

Why We Changed

That changed about ten conditions ago after I had typically the pleasure of coaching a former High School coach, J Smith, who had taught at Canyon Springs Secondary school in California. His squads had won two USA Right now National Championships. This instructor did things significantly unique from what most of us had been used to, zero grass drills, no goof rolls, no crab tools, no gassers; if it has not been football related, he doesn’t do it. This coach required a 2-8 team and turned them into a 10-0 team in one season within the most competitive division in the group I had teams in. While many of us were initially skeptical of his techniques, the results could not be contended with. He took the same kids and had very different outcomes than his predecessor utilizing a different approach to football exercise.

The Results

It made me analyze everything we were doing. We all looked at our practices to find precisely how every drill or even activity was helping all of us reach our goals. Ultimately we gutted about 85% of what we were performing in favour of an entirely different exercise methodology that focused on building football skills and youngsters football teams, not push-up or monkey roll champs. In the first year associated with going to this at the time innovative process, the aggregated successful percentage of the program went from the 30-40% area for you to 61%, in the following time, it rose to 81%, and our program earned the “A” League Champion in all three age groups ( had never been accomplished before or since), age ranges 8-10, 11-12 and 13-14. In addition, our “B” courses did exceptionally well, using several division and Category Championships.

Your First Full week’s Goals SHOULD be:

Consider undertaking things a bit differently in 2010 if you are looking for different results compared to what you’ve had in the past. These are typically our goals for the first days of no pads process:

Evaluate players for roles and put them into the appropriate position on offense and defense that best fits the player’s abilities and the squad’s needs.

Teach the members how to interact appropriately while using coaching staff and other people. This is what many people refer to while learning how to be “coachable.”

Produce an enthusiasm within the little ones for playing football along with playing on our team.

Instruct the fundamental building blocks of bottom part blocking and tackling (yes, without pads and without having contact)

Teach the base numbering system and play phoning system for the offence.

Train proper stances and divides.

Teach the explosive, very first step, and for the offensive linemen, their explosive first two steps.

For backs (we determine who our shells are at the first practice), seats the ball, and golf ball security. Learning proper entire body lean and accelerating via contact (dummy contact).

Train the base defensive formation, the actual goals, and the base viewpoint of the defense.

At the end of 7 days 1, all players will be in their offensive and protective positions; know what positions they may be in and what it is known as.

Key Concepts Used to Achieve These Goals

Some of the points we do to make sure all of us accomplish these goals:
Maintain all movements in the 6-7 second range with optimum effort. Allow 30-50 secs (depending on strenuousness associated with movement) for recovery. About things like fit and deep freeze reps that require just a couple of actions, there is no reason for going in a pace slower than one particular rep every 12 moments for linemen. For initial 2-step drills, you have to be able to do a team individual every 6-10 seconds. Typically the keys to this methodology are a fast practice pace, zero

wasted time or activities, small groups, lots of strategy perfecting from instruction/drills, and quite enough fit and freeze distributors. To teach all the above many of us don’t have the time to set aside to complete traditional conditioning. Like schools and High School teams, we all condition within the fast-paced constraint of our regular practice or perhaps within the context of an exciting evaluation or team-building online game.

We were somewhat nervous the first year we attended this methodology; we had always been health and fitness fanatics. We were always gonna win through better physical fitness, but our results were put together. Our first game applying this methodology was Labor Morning weekend eight seasons previously, and it was about 92 degrees out and about 80% humidness; it was a steam bath. I was concerned about our kid’s ability to play four quarters connected with football in those conditions as we had no gasser or seat in the four weeks leading up to that game. Our youngsters won that first activity in a blowout after foremost by just two touchdowns within the half. As it turned out, they we beat ended up with 2nd place at gardening season end behind my workforce. We are a new no-huddle team, and the activity typically goes that much faster and usually results in about 29% more offensive snaps in the majority of games.

Kids Need More Physical fitness? Really?

The thing that happy me from this game seemed to be what happened after the item. Many boys in this workforce had older brothers performing in the following game to ensure the kids stuck around. What have these kids done next game in the 95 qualification heat? They guided the game field in the heated area and performed full-speed touch sports, including kickoffs and punts on a 60-yard arena. These kids weren’t relaxing under a tree weary from the game; they intended all out for another 60 minutes, pretty much nonstop in 90+ qualification heat!

While our level of competition may be practicing five days a week and conditioning all their brains out, we are rehearsing just three nights each week, and our kids were not solely having fun, but they were finding out the game.

The moral in this youth football story is always to seriously consider everything you do in training to see if there is anything that must be cut out so you can concentrate on establishing great fundamentals as well as a adore and appreciation for the online game in your players.

These soccer drills for kids and games, as well as everyday minute-by-minute training plans for your entire period, are in the book “Winning Junior Football a Step by Phase Plan” by Dave Cisar.

Dave Cisar-
Dave includes a passion for developing junior coaches so they can, in turn, build competitive and well-organized teams. He is a Nike pas cher “Coach of the Year” Specify and speaks nationwide from Coaches Clinics. His publication “Winning Youth Football one step by Step Plan” has been endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

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