In youth football they're probably your most aggressive and best tacklers on the team that go side-line to side-line making tackles. Their attack is relentless and they are a big part of your defence, and no doubt, during the regular season they rack up the tackling stats.
But there's a problem developing among the many tackles that your youth football player is making. A problem that is lurking and waiting to be exposed, by the right offensive co-ordinator. You probably won't notice it until play-offs when the teams you face are better.
Now what's that lurking problem? It's called misdirection!
I have seen it a hundred times. Linebackers biting and bailing on plays, only to be taken advantage of by misdirection. All of a sudden your all-star linebacker is invisible and your in trouble in a hurray.
At the youth football level the misdirection would probably be in the form of a sweep reverse play or quarterback bootleg.
As you try to settle your linebacker down another problem usually follows. You soon discover that with your middle linebacker staying home that you have contain problems. Probably never seen much of it all year as your middle linebacker went side-line to side-line, but now it's there and at the worst time, and it's not an easy fix. Practice time is when you fix it, but it's a play-off game and you might not be practicing on Monday.
All in all, your linebackers need to be familiar with the terms misdirection and contain. They need to understand their assignments from within these terms and how things can go wrong if these two areas are ignored. It starts in your first linebacker group practice and is reinforced every work-out through out the season. They have to do respect it and most of all, they have to think it! If they have a contain responsibility then that's what their first and foremost responsibility is, making the tackle is secondary. If they are playing in the middle, then they are taught to stay at home on plays away from their side and to think of misdirection back their way.
Cheers!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Youth Football: Implement your System
A big part of your practice plan in youth football will be system implementation and doing it without sacrificing working on fundamentals. The best tool to begin introducing your system is to use your chalkboard or dry-eraser board in the locker-room or classroom.
Start off with your defensive system. Draw it out on the board for them and explain each and every assignment position wise to each player. Reinforce it over and over in practice time. Don't be afraid to blow the whistle, stop the play, and explain the do's and don'ts of your system, and start again. Give your players hand-outs or playbooks, something that is visual, that they can take out again and again and look at.
Repetition is the key.
Drill it in them and ask them to buy into your system, make a commitment to it, and make good decisions within it. In the coming football practices, go over and over it again. Challenge the players who veer out of it, and go over the importance of team play. You'll soon see the results and for the most part the majority will get it. Be patient with the slow learners; again, reinforce it until they get it. A good team has good systems and your better players will thrive in a team orientated system as they will get more support compared to a run and gun system. Your average players will gain confidence within the system and become better football players that in the end will make your top players perform better.
Praise their efforts at all times and when you get your wins, praise the team system!
Cheers!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Football Defence: Don't be too Predictable!
One of the downfalls of being good is that you do things well consistently. So good in fact that it can be easy for your opponent to make adjustments, to have a plan that they can use to exploit your strengths.
Football is a game of reads and adjustments. You learn to do this well and you will be alright. If you cannot read and adjust then you're in trouble.
A great game plan can become unravelled in a hurry!
One of the things that we like to do at halftime as a coaching staff is discuss how we think our opponent will adjust to out attack and how we will counter attack? What plays were they successful with in the first half and what plays we think they will run against us.
Sometimes we just change our look up a bit by running another front. Put more linemen in the box or even less linemen and have better downfield coverage. We still pressure but maybe with different personal.
We read each play and try to figure out what the halftime adjustments were: Did they change their front? Is there a Tight End? Or have they switched to a spread formation? Are they trying to establish the running game? Or have they adjusted at all?
As an aspiring youth football coach, with plans to go up the coaching ladder. You need to learn how to read and more importantly how to adjust.
Cheers!
Football is a game of reads and adjustments. You learn to do this well and you will be alright. If you cannot read and adjust then you're in trouble.
A great game plan can become unravelled in a hurry!
One of the things that we like to do at halftime as a coaching staff is discuss how we think our opponent will adjust to out attack and how we will counter attack? What plays were they successful with in the first half and what plays we think they will run against us.
Sometimes we just change our look up a bit by running another front. Put more linemen in the box or even less linemen and have better downfield coverage. We still pressure but maybe with different personal.
We read each play and try to figure out what the halftime adjustments were: Did they change their front? Is there a Tight End? Or have they switched to a spread formation? Are they trying to establish the running game? Or have they adjusted at all?
As an aspiring youth football coach, with plans to go up the coaching ladder. You need to learn how to read and more importantly how to adjust.
Cheers!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Static Versus Dynamic Stretching in Youth Football
Back in the day when you did your warm-up and stretching routine prior to practice your stretching consisted of a stationary routine where you stretched your major muscle groups by leaning, bending, and twisting your body, in a slow controlled movement to slowly stretch and warm-up each of your major muscle groups. Probably, the team lined up in rows and in your individual spot you did your warm-up. Probably, the team would count out aloud for each individual stretch.
Sound familiar? This type of stretching would be referred to as static stretching and is an old school way of warming up. Simple but effective!
During my youth football coaching days I grew to hate this routine. I found that at the youth football level it was time consuming, became social time, had no flow, and was overall just plain boring. With practice time at a premium I decided to find a way to do change this warm-up. I wanted something that was going to be just as effective, but have more flow, and more importantly, take up the same amount of time consistently each practice.
So curiosity got to me and I decided to find a better way. Of course I started with researching the internet and after endless searching I finally stumbled across dynamic stretching. Now dynamic stretching is a series of agilities done at a controlled pace that is designed to stretch all of your major muscle groups, get the blood flowing through the body, has good flow, limits the fooling around and social time,and accomplishes the same thing as static stretching.
Dynamic stretching is basically agility drills done in a controlled fashion that targets specific muscles. Some of these agilties would be high knees, push-offs, lateral shuffles, carioca, and back-peddles. Each agility would require the football player to conduct each agility for about 15-20 yards at least twice and then do the next agility. When the players are done their dynamic stretching I usually lead them into their conditioning by doing light sprints and slowly ease them into full sprints. I found it to be a much more effective and efficient way to warm-up the team.
Cheers!
Sound familiar? This type of stretching would be referred to as static stretching and is an old school way of warming up. Simple but effective!
During my youth football coaching days I grew to hate this routine. I found that at the youth football level it was time consuming, became social time, had no flow, and was overall just plain boring. With practice time at a premium I decided to find a way to do change this warm-up. I wanted something that was going to be just as effective, but have more flow, and more importantly, take up the same amount of time consistently each practice.
So curiosity got to me and I decided to find a better way. Of course I started with researching the internet and after endless searching I finally stumbled across dynamic stretching. Now dynamic stretching is a series of agilities done at a controlled pace that is designed to stretch all of your major muscle groups, get the blood flowing through the body, has good flow, limits the fooling around and social time,and accomplishes the same thing as static stretching.
Dynamic stretching is basically agility drills done in a controlled fashion that targets specific muscles. Some of these agilties would be high knees, push-offs, lateral shuffles, carioca, and back-peddles. Each agility would require the football player to conduct each agility for about 15-20 yards at least twice and then do the next agility. When the players are done their dynamic stretching I usually lead them into their conditioning by doing light sprints and slowly ease them into full sprints. I found it to be a much more effective and efficient way to warm-up the team.
Cheers!
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