Football Pre-Game Preparation

Football Player Pre-Game Routine


Every football player should have a pre-game routine. When a player consistently gets nervous in front of a crowd or gets psyched out after making a mistake, a solid pre-game routine might be the start of getting their head space right prior to the game.

Pre-game preparation should be a routine that the player chooses that helps them focus and calm themselves before a game. For some players, this could be listening to music or meditating. For some, it involves warm-up drills or mental visualization. For some just chilling out or just plain quiet time. Whatever it is, encourage your players to get into a pre-game routine that gets them prepared, focused, and confident and most importantly relaxed.

Mistakes are going to happen during any football game. The players that have a plan for getting back on track are more likely to bounce back and succeed. The players that don't will dwell on their mistake lose confidence and play poorly. It's important that as a football coach preparing your football team to compete that they know that mistakes will happen through-out the football game, that it just the nature of any sport. The point you want to make as a youth football coach is to limit their mistakes as much as possible. You want them to play aggressive, not passive, as if they are afraid to make a mistake. You want them to compete hard at a high level at all times and sometimes during the heat of battle, a mistake will be made. So be it! Personally, I'd want my team competing hard making a few mistakes than not competing and making no mistakes!

Finally, help players avoid the stress of competition by taking steps to eliminate the unknown. Explain what players should expect during every game. Talk about it leading into the game and how they should handle it. Nerves are a natural part of competition, but those players who learn to control those butterflies in the stomach are the ones who come out as winners. When players tell you that they are nervous, turn it around and tell them they're not nervous they're just excited about playing the game of football!

Cheers!

Coaching Youth Football: Player Selections and Football Systems

Well its time. The try-outs and training camp are over and you've selected your football team. Now, as a youth football coach the work comes to shape and mould the team in your image. Remember you picked the team and it will be a reflection of you and ultimately you will be the face of the team, accepting all the good praise as well as criticism that comes with the job of being coach.

As football coaches, we all have our favourite systems and philosophies in how we want our team to play. However, all things aside your player selections will dictate what kind of football team you will have. The worst thing you can do at this point is to implement a football system that your team doesn't have the tools to execute. You need to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your team and develop a system based on these traits. For instance, maybe you have good size and good football fundamentals but lack team speed, or maybe your undersized but have good speed and football skill. Ideally, you would like to have a combination of both types of football players; however, the reality is that this is not always going to be the case.

The other point to consider is that you might be strong defensively, but lack the scoring in the offensive zone or vice versa. The whole point of this is to evaluate your football team and come up with the system that reflects their abilities and strengths. Maybe your football team will be one that plays ball control and grinds it out or perhaps you will be very skilled and explosive. The point being select a system that reflects your team's strengths. One of the biggest problems in youth football is that we select a system that our players are not capable of performing. This creates problems as far as player frustration as well as chews up football practice time. Bottom line, don't ask then to do something they are not capable of doing and for the most part keep it simple, and do it well!

Cheers

Football Coach: High School Football Training Camp

A football training camp can be a complicated process. Football player evaluations can be tough at times and stressful for both the parents, players, and football coaches involved. But, it is part of the process needed in order to choose and shape your team. As a youth football coach you have to be prepared and organized.
Meet with your football coaching staff and manager prior to the first practice. Assign one or more the job of running the practice sessions. During the football training camp, plan to either sit up in the stands or on the bleachers with your pen and clip-board. Pay attention closely to the each football player's skill level by evaluating them when they do drills emphasizing fundamentals.

Evaluate how hard they work in drills. Pick out the ones that seem to struggle in the different individual skill drills that you have scheduled and make a note of them, as well as the ones that do the drills with ease. Watch them closely during team drills when they have to work in tandem with other players. How do they respond? Does it appear that they could play within a system or do they struggle? As well, note their effort in drills where they are pressured and have to battle, do they battle hard, or do they shy away, this will measure their character.

 Do they take plays off?

Finally, after practice, meet with your football coaching staff once again and discuss each player individually. Some will stand out immediately while others will have you wondering what they can do. Talk about their strengths and their weaknesses and what they would bring to the football team. In the following practices pick the tempo up and evaluate them once again. You should soon start to see the separation begin and you will start to get a pretty good idea of how the team will shape up.

Keep a log of your players during this process. This will help you in the end with your selections. Also, if you are challenged by a player or parent on your selections you can refer to your log on the player in question.

Cheers!

Football Practice: Eliminate Interceptions and Fumbles

Football statistics are a big part of the game. First downs, penalties, time of possession, yards rushing, yards, receiving, tackles, all are a big factors in the football game and poor statsistics usually results in a loss or a poor performance.

But at the same time great football statistics don't always mean that you will get the win and be successfull on the football field either. The biggest killer in a football game is turnovers, that is, when a football team turns the ball over to the opposing team via a fumble or interception and as a result gives up a quick score. These quick scores can be game breakers no matter how good statistically you are on the football field during that game.

Your team can be playing great, rushing the football, passing the football, and even stopping them with your defence and then "boom" a turn-over happens and worst of all a touchdown results. Not only does it deflate your team but it gives the opposing teams the momentum and confidence and turn around what was a great game statistically into a disaster. So it really is possible to outplay a football team statistically, lead all the categories and despite this lose the game as a result of turn-overs.

For the most part the rule of thumb is that if you turn the ball over a minimum of three times per game your chances of winning that game are diminished severely.So as a coach how do you eliminate turn-overs in a football game? The fairest answer to that question is that you probably will not eliminate turn-overs completely from your game, but if you practice football fundamentals effectively in practice, then you can manage the turn-overs and reduce them significantly. Most turn-overs are mental errors caused by poor fundamentals or poor judgement. For example, your star running back does not hold the ball properly as he runs through the line of scrimmage. An opposing defensive linemen slaps at the ball as he runs by and causes the ball to pop out and create a turn-over.
To sum it up if the running back had good ball carring fundamentals and protected the football then it would have limited the chances of being stripped out by the slap of the defensive linemen. This mistake could have been prevented in practice.
Secondly, your quarterback trys to jam a pass in to your reciever downfield who is running a poor pass pattern. The quarterback  makes a poor throw resulting in an interception. Now, we have two mistakes that occurred which resulted in a turn-over. First of all, a poor route by the reciever as well as a poor decision by the quarterback to throw the football resulted in the interception. Both mistakes are mental errors that can be easily fixed in your football practice. All in all turn-overs can be a big factor in any football game. One of your goals through the football season is to efffectively minimize your turn-overs. This can be done mainly by practicing good football fundamentals as well as working with individual players and groups during your football systems time on either offence or defence and coaching them up to be solid fundamentally as well as to make good football decisions on the field.