Key Elements to Football Defence

As a youth football coach when you begin to plan and put the dynamics of your defence together you should consider the following: Pressure, Contain, Filter, Force, and Cover.

With these elements in mind and within your defensive system make sure that you have these areas or keys covered and that your players know their assignments within the keys. Let's cover each item: Pressure- it's important that you pressure the offence into hurrying in order to take away their time and space and possibly put them in a position with your pressure that they make mistakes and as a result create turn-overs.

Contain: - its important that within this pressure that you have good contain so that they cannot get outside the pocket or the box and that everything is contained or bracketed inside. Filter- it's important that within the Pressure and Contain that every play is filtered back inside where you have your strength and more help. Force- it's important that within this filtration that you have solid run support and that your players come in force, aggressive to the ball, some coaches refer to this as gang-tackling. Finally, Cover- it's important that within the keys of your football defensive system that you have good downfield coverage.

Regardless of the front or defensive football system that you want to play these elements are the keys and your players should know their assignments within the defence.

Cheers!

Football Practice Plan: Be Organized!

Your first practice is a few days away, you're excited about getting out there and getting things going, working with the youth in the hour plus time allotted. Wait a minute... an hour... how do you fill the time in? Well, let's get started. You need to be organized and you need to have a practice plan. You cannot do it off the top off your head. You need to have a practice plan that accounts for every minute of your planned practice. A good practice plan will cover all aspects of your specific sport: warm-up, conditioning, fundamentals, skills, team play and systems. Account for at least a minimum of 10-15 minutes per category. Too much in one area and the players will lose interest and you will lose out in the other areas that you want to cover. By having a practice plan and following it, you will have good flow to your practice, maintain player concentration, and get the most out of your practice by covering all aspects. A poor practice plan and you will have down time which invites fooling around and lack of focus especially at the youth level. Follow your plan! If you are working on a specific fundamental or system and things are not working out after your allotted time frame, move on to the next scheduled assignment, and after practice make a note of how each session went and what you need to continue to work on in practice. Keeps a practice log recording your thoughts, ideas, and player evaluation and development. Refer to the log prior to planning the following practice so you know what you need to schedule. It's important that you work on fundamentals of some sort for each and very practice, do not omit this in order to work on something else. Solid fundamentals such as passing, shooting, tackling and blocking are very important. You need to do fundamentals well in order to be good in your systems. Remember you play like you practice!

Cheers