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

Football Footwork Fundamentals

If you don't implement solid footwork drills and fundamentals as part of your practice plan then you are selling your players short in their football developement. A lot of minor coaches overlook this part of their practice elements but the reality is that they have to be able to move in order to be effectice football players. How many times have you seen a big lineman that looks impressive but cannot move their feet therefore are slow and ineffective. The same can be applied to your athletic wide reciever who cannot plant or cut and unless he is running straight down field is ineffective or covered easily as a result of his poor footwork.

Footwork drills are simple to run and can be implemented very easily in your practice plan. You can do either team footwork drills right after your warm-up or implement your footwork drills as part of your group team work. It does'nt take long maybe 10 minutes per practice. All you need is some cones and some bags.

Always start them off in their stance and on your signal get them moving.

There are lots of drills to choose from when practicing footwork fundamentals. Choose drills by position. For example, your defensive backs would focus a lot on back-peddling with change of direction. Your offensive linemen would focus their footwork fundamentals geared around their first step left, right, angle, etc . Work on your footwork each and every practice and watch your players improve.

Cheers!

Football Group Team Work

This part of your practice plan is committed towards playing segments of the offence against segments of the defence using small groups. For example, the OL and DL can practice with each other on run blocking, pass blocking, or block shedding while the QB, RBs, TE, WRs can be working with the LBs and DBs on a passing or tackling drill.

Usually, you schedule this combined group immediately after your individual group work and you mange your time effectively by working on specific game skills that involves offence against defence.

This is the ideal time to get reps in with your players. Begin by running drills at half speed and later in the season, when your players have solid fundamentals, you can run these drills full speed with light tackling.

Cheers!

Football Practice Plan: Individual Group Work

One of the elements of your practice plan should include at least 30 minutes of individual group work .Depending on the availability of coaches, groups can be divided by position such as offensive linemen, linebackers, quarterbacks, recievers, defensive backs,defensive line,and running backs.

At a designated time during the practice, individual group work would be scheduled and each group would go to their designated area of the practice field and work specifically on position orientated fundamentals and skills. Assistant coaches would know that their allotted time frame for individaul group would be for 30 minutes and they would manage their time effectively covering footwork, skills,and fundamentals associatted with their specific position.

If lack of coaches is an issue, then you can group together your linebackers and defensive backs, offensive and defensive linemen, and lump together your quarterbacks, running-backs, and recievers.

Use this time wisely. In other words don't just use the time to throw the football with your wide-recievers, spend specific time on open field blocking for example. You'll be happy you did when your recievers block hard and well down-field and give your athletic running back more time and space to score.

Cheers