Youth Football Fundamentals

While participating in a youth football camp last week I heard an interesting comment from a youth coach while he was running offensive plays with his players. " You fellows have to learn how to tackle". I stopped what I was doing at the time and watched a bit of this group and the phrase" You guys gotta learn how to tackle" has been with me since.

Spending time on football fundamentals such as blocking,tackling, and footwork will pay dividends with your football team. Runnning plays with players who have poor fundamentals will be frustrating, sloppy, and ineffective come game time regardless of whether or not you play offence or defence.

You will not be successful!

Once again as I watched them try and run plays I noticed that the coach was spending as much time correcting stances as he was running plays. He would have been better off just canning the offensive plays for the day and work on their stances and first step, then a session on basic blocking. Once his players had basic fundamentals his offensive plays would have been a lot smoother and his players would not have struggled so bad.

A lot of youth coaches jump the gun too quick and try to implement their systems with players that have poor fundamentals. One thing I've learned is that they will never get it unless they are fundamentally sound. Again, it comes down to implementing a solid practice plan. Training camp is the ideal time to begin to develope football fundamentals and as they progress, introduce slowly some of your basic schemes and do not move on until they get it. If the stances are poor or the blocking is brutal, then schedule in stance and blocking segments in your next practice. Sometimes its necessary to take a step back in order to gain two steps forward.

Cheers