2nd Grade Class - Pre-season Conditioning Program

[coachgregory]

Coaches,

I am going to log our practices this season and I will even try and get some vidoe on youtube for you.

Here is the first 4 practices (2 practices a week) starting in June:

This is all conditioning and athletic development work for them.  Get them used to our warm up progression and start driving home practice methods, effort, and what it takes to be successful.

2 hours -

Dynamic Warm up - 15 minutes (walk them through the routines and exercises)

STANCE - Offensive Line (see who can get into a 3 point consistently and who needs help) - 5 minutes

Blocking Warm up - (FIT and LOAD), (LOAD & EXPLODE), (LOAD & EXPLODE & FIT) - 10 minutes

Tackling Warm up - (FIT and LOAD), (LOAD & EXPLODE), (LOAD & EXPLODE & FIT) - 10 minutes

GROUND CONTACT/FALLING DRILLS - (start on knees for first 4 practices)) - 5 minutes

Running Form - 10 minutes

Sprinting Technique - full speed short distance (20 yards) 10 minutes

Push Up Pyramid - 1min/45 sec/30 sec/15 sec - 5 minutes

Competitive Drills (either Tire War/Four Winds Tug-a-war/Heavy Bag War) 15 minutes

Explosive Strength Ckt - Bunny Hops, Power Skip - Distance, Power skip - Height,  Rapid Broad Jumps, Frog Hops (each one time - 20 yards - jog back) 15 minutes  (looking to do 1 each first time and then eventually get to 2 each)

Crunch Pyramid - 1min/45 sec/30 sec/15 sec/- 5 minutes

Bear Crawl Ckt - Forward, Backwards, Left side, Right side, Forward, Backward - 20 yards and jog back - 10 minutes

Running & Recovery - 100 yards, 80 yards, 60 yards, 40 yards, 20 yards, 10 yards - recover between each/20 seconds/learn to take deep breath in, slow breath out, relax, head up - 15 minutes.

During waterbreaks discuss these topics:
1) EYES UP/HEAD UP during all CONTACT - no tolarance on this.
2) YOUR HELMET IS NOT WEAPON - no tolarance on this.
3) Learn to recover after each rep, drill, play the right way.
4) Hydration every day, all day.
5) Heat - acclimate, protect your self, know what can happen.
6) Nutrition - eat right, play right.
7) Personal Responsibility  (Honor, Courage, Commitment)
Team first
9) Push yourself, make yourself better.

Drive these points home for the first four practices.

Next four practices I will post shortly.

[Coach_Miller]

Competitive Drills (either Tire War/Four Winds Tug-a-war/Heavy Bag War) .....Coach can you explain these in detail? We are going to be implementing your pre-season conditioning program for our team, I'm pretty familiar with all the other periods of the practice. Looking forward to your next practice posts....we start on June 9th and practice 4 days a week. 

[coachgregory]

Competitive Drills (either Tire War/Four Winds Tug-a-war/Heavy Bag War) .....Coach can you explain these in detail? We are going to be implementing your pre-season conditioning program for our team, I'm pretty familiar with all the other periods of the practice. Looking forward to your next practice posts....we start on June 9th and practice 4 days a week.

'

Tire War - 4 cones formed in a square about 5 to 10 yards apart.  Place a small car tire in the middle of the square and have four players lay down on their bellys with their heads up and their hands on the ground by the tires.  Each player will pick a cone so that their heels ar facing the cone. The objective is to touch their cone with any part of their body while holding the tire. Coach calls GO they all fire off and get it done.  We put all of the players on one side and go four at time until there are none left, any odd numbers at the end we fillw with players that want to go again from the completed side.  We do this until time runs out.  We match up playes so the drill is as fair as possible.

Four Winds War - take two 20 feet pieces of 2" battle rope.  Lay them side by side duct tape the middle (1 foot) then use two c clamps and clamp both sides.  Then wrap and old towel around the clamps and duct tape them again.  Now using the same SQUARE above we place the rope so the X of the rope is in the middle of the square and each kid is at their corner on thier belly behind the their cone with the rope laying next to the them.  THe objective is to get the middle to their cone...this is not easy...   I have eight sets of XS and S work gloves to protect their hands. The winner is the first one to have any part of the TOWEL/DUCT tape touch their cone.  We run players through the same way as above. 

HEAVY BAG WAR - two ways we do this...

2 Players - First we use a HEAVY BAG (boxing bag with small kids 60 to 70lb and with big kids 90 to 100lbs).  Same square as above with two players and the heavy bag laying lenth wise between them.  They are both on in six point position with about 1 foot from the bag.  The bag in the middle of the square.  The objective is to drive your opponent beyond the square.. THe only thing you can do is PUSH using your hands, shoulders, or a combination of the two.  Head must always be up if it goes down you are disqualified... (reinforces head up...).   

^------------------^
-
-   P1 ---------P2
-
-
-^-----------------^

4 players - Second is team we pair up two players facing two players on each side of the bag in a six point position facing their bag.  The objective is the same push the other team out of the square.  Head must by up at all times. First team that has a player touch outside oft the square loses.


^------------------^
-      P1   P2
-      ---------
-      P3   P4
-
-^-----------------^

[Coach_Miller]

Thanks Coach...as always above and beyond.

[coachgregory]

Next Four practices -

This is all conditioning and athletic development work for them.  Get them used to our warm up progression and start driving home practice methods, effort, and what it takes to be successful.

2 hours -

Dynamic Warm up - 10 minutes (walk them through the routines and exercises)

Blocking Warm up - (FIT and LOAD), (LOAD & EXPLODE), (LOAD & EXPLODE & FIT) - 10 minutes

Tackling Warm up - (FIT and LOAD), (LOAD & EXPLODE), (LOAD & EXPLODE & FIT) - 10 minutes

GROUND CONTACT/FALLING DRILLS - (standing) - (two days)  next two days Scoop and Score Warm up for 5 minutes.

Running Form - 10 minutes

Sprinting Technique - full speed short distance (20 yards) 10 minutes

Burpee Pyramid - 1min/45 sec/30 sec/15 sec - 5 minutes

ENDURO Drills (either Tire War/Four Winds Tug-a-war/Heavy Bag War) 15 minutes

Explosive Strength Ckt - Bunny Hops, Power Skip - Distance, Power skip - Height,  Rapid Broad Jumps, Frog Hops (each one time - 20 yards - jog back) 15 minutes  (looking to do 1 each first time and then eventually get to 2 each)

Crunch Pyramid - 1min/45 sec/30 sec/15 sec/- 5 minutes

Bear Crawl Ckt - Forward, Backwards, Left side, Right side, Forward, Backward - 20 yards and jog back - 10 minutes

Kick Off Drill - ONSIDE/BONT/TOP, ONSIDE BOFFT/SPIN, HIGH BEHIND 1st LINE - 15 minutes.

During waterbreaks discuss these topics:
1) EYES UP/HEAD UP during all CONTACT - no tolarance on this.
2) CONCUSSION AWARENESS
3) KEEP YOUR JOINTS BENT ON ANY CONTACT
4) Hydration every day, all day.
5) Heat - acclimate, protect your self, know what can happen.
6) Nutrition - eat right, play right.
7) Personal Responsibility  (Honor, Courage, Commitment)
 Team first
HEAD AWAY FROM GROUND WHEN YOU FALL
9) Push yourself, make yourself better.
10) Work hard on the practice field so you have fun on the game field

Drive these points home for the next four practices.

After these eight practices we go into CAMP WEEK.  BLOCKING CAMP/TACKLING CAMP/ BALL HANDLING CAMP/SPECIAL TEAMS CAMP

[Coach_Miller]

bump bump?

[angalton]

Coach I really enjoyed the tackling dummy circuit. The one where they flip, roll, slide and carry. Awesome drill for conditioning the kids at camp this year. Thank you

[coachgregory]

Coach I really enjoyed the tackling dummy circuit. The one where they flip, roll, slide and carry. Awesome drill for conditioning the kids at camp this year. Thank you

I really enojoy those as well...my son would probably not agree with us at all... 

Jack

[angalton]

Also great teaching points on using your legs. Everything they do is about using your legs correctly. When I looked around on the second day of camp, all the coaches were doing it. Thanks

[coachgregory]

Also great teaching points on using your legs. Everything they do is about using your legs correctly. When I looked around on the second day of camp, all the coaches were doing it. Thanks

I will have the next set up in a few days.

Jack

[coachgregory]

We finally had our first practice this past Saturday.  We had 16 of 19 players attend and we had a great practice.  I have the good fortune of having 3 arces and enough room to have a full practice in our back yard so we are actually having football practice in the "backyard".  I have a shed with all the football equipment in it and lots of shade trees so it makes it convenient in not having to transport equipment all over the place.

Next year I will be building a barn and plan to have a covered area with some benches that I can mount a dry erase board and have an outlet for a TV for video as  well...  Project for later.  Right now I am buildling blocking chutes and doing a few other things like looking into a few portable light packs.

We have practice on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  Saturday practice we end with hotdogs and some pool time for the boys so they can bond and have some fun.  This past Saturday was a blast gave me time to talk to all the parents.  Since this is the first year of tackle all the kids go into a open recruitment so your flag teams don't simply transfer over to a tackle team... Our flag team had 14 kids on the team and we play baseball  in the spring and football in the fall.  Half of the boys decided to play fall baseball so we went to down to seven players.  All seven players are good football players...one linemen type and two tweeners (meaning good enough to play either line or back) in the bunch so we were back heavy.  We ended up combining with another team and by some good fortune they were line heavy.... By line I mean three solid linemen over 90lbs and some really nice talent. We also drafted went into the draft as the 2nd pick and got the best linemen in the draft and then three solid athletes...two of which were blind picks but some how I ended up getting two really nice picks.  Potential DB/LB or RB types with a lot of potential so everything worked out really well for the team.  A matter of fact I don't think I have ever had this much athletic talent or size on the same team.  We have a lot to work with so I expect us to do good things as long as we keep our focus on the right direction.

Practice went well we need to work on tackling and blocking as a lot of the kids can generate a lot of force but need to learn how to maximize it on contact.  As a dad I had a lot of proud moments...Kaden had a great year at baseball this year...our team got into the second round of the play offs and was beat by the #2 seed (a really well coached team with some really good ball players).  He went the entire season only striking out three times and lead the team in hitting % and RBI.  In our first play off game he had four hits with two doubles, a single, and ended the game with a walk off 3 run home run.  Played really well at catcher and was our back up left fielder as well...did a great job at catcher as he got a few home plate force outs and caught several pop flys for outs.  I wasn't sure what to expect in football but he really wowed me...  Came out focused and was really executing everything we walked through the first time through and was a good example for the other kids.  It was on our dummy progression that he really got my attention.  I split the boys into four groups of four to do dummy relays...  First time through we decided to do 20 yards each (dummy flip, dummy push, dummy roll).  Each group had to have the entire team do each exercise in order as a group and then go the next one and when the entire group was finished they all had to be on one knee.  Kaden started in the 2nd group as the first person. Every exercise Kaden jumped out way ahead of every one and the group he was in ended up winning the match by a long shot (at least 2 minutes ahead of everyone).  He made each exercise look really easy...I didn't realize how strong he had gotten over this past season...  Then we had some extra time so I decided to a do a PURSUIT DRILL called HALF LINE LATERAL PURSUIT.  Basically you have RB and LB evenly spaced across from each other with a LOS and DUMMY on one side space on the edge (about the distance of a TE).  On the RB side there is a cone just beyound that DUMMY and about 4 to 6 yards deep.  On GO the RB cross over steps and sprints to the cone and the LB sees the cross over step and gets down hill and must tackle the dummy before the RB gets to the cone.  Simple non-contact drill and it allows you to see how aggressive a kid is, does he know how to hit and can he tackle.  It also allows you to see how aggressive and explosive a kid can be at RB.  Kaden on all three reps ended up tackling the dummy and driving it into the RB's path so he couldn't get near the cone...  After a while the other aggressive kids start mimicking what he was doing...not sure I have ever seen him that aggressive before.  He also proved to be a pretty decent running back...nice cross over and exploded to the cone.  Was very proud of him...at the end of practice I told him he did a great job and he turns to me and gives me a little fist bump and winks...funny stuff.  I also found that we have some really good hitters on the team.  Will see if that transfers over to actual contact...

tonight is our second practice so we will keep working on fundamentals and conditioning...we will probably only have 12 or so boys tonight as we have a lot of kids going on vacation this week.  Kaden is at the lake with Grand parents and cousins this week so he will not be there...kind of wanted to see him repeat his performance

Jack