THIS WEEK’S QUESTION- ”My practices are not what I want them to be, we seem flat.” What tips or little secrets would you give them to up their practices? What questions should the coach ask about them as a coach and how they are in practice? Would you have a list of- “look at the following things?”
Greg King- Sterling
Practices are the coaches' classroom. They will determine your success or failure on Friday night. The drills or fundamentals taught need to be applicable to fit your schemes. Why do a drill if it does not fit your offensive, defensive , or special teams philosophies?
When it comes to your drills -
1. Make sure you are not wasting time setting up your drill. If you have to teach a drill do not waste valuable practice time. Do it before practice. If a drill is complicated…ask yourself is the drill really needed? I have seen coaches spend 3-4 minutes of a 10 minute segment setting up their drill. You now have lost valuable time that you cannot get back.
2. Make sure you do not have kids standing around. One of my biggest pet peeves is when 2 kids are working and 10 are watching. Split up your drills. Have multiple groups going at the same time. As a coach you can watch more than 1 group.
3. One of the biggest things I changed that added to practice success I got from Pete Carroll when he was at USC. Add competition to as many drills as you can. There may be some drills you do that are teaching drills. These you may not want to be as intensity filled. There are some drills though where it is get after it time. For example in football you may be working on Double Teams. You have to coach both sides of the ball to make sure you are getting the most out of each side. They need to understand that there is a winner and loser of every rep.
4. One of the things that I would change from when I was a head coach, would be to shorten practice. My practices were definitely too long. You should be able to get most of your work done in 2 - 2 1/4 hours. If it goes too long you lose kids.
5. Make sure that you are doing drill work that is specific to you. I would always look at our group and team sessions and base drill work off of that. If we were doing schemes that would have a lot of OL pulling, I made sure we would work on pulling footwork in our drills. Doing drills just to do them without the reinforcing them is a waste of time. I do believe that you need your everyday drills(EDD) that you need no matter what. As an OL coach…we were going to work drills that dealt with the acronym G.O.L.F. Get off - Leverage - and Finish. We would have drills maybe in pre practice or in our station work that would work on these. Every position on the field would have their own EDD’s.
6. Also overlooked is the coaches attitude on practice. I always had fun at practice. When it was 90+ degrees out and all you were complaining about is the heat….players will do the same. Make sure everyday is sunny and 65 degrees! When it is time to work…work. In the other times, make sure kids know you care about more than football. Stretching by the way in my opinion was a waste of time. Even more of a waste of time was when coaches would just talk to each other while the kids were stretching. Go around talk with them. See how their day went. Tell them what you expect out of them today. This was also a good time to set up a drill you were going to do later.
Evan Massey- Galesburg
Be Prepared- A coach must spend time creating practice plans. Have a written practice plan.
Be There- All coaches need to be ready to go and bring energy. If you feel your practices lack the intensity that you want- your first look should be at the energy you and your staff are bringing to practice. Very few teams have good practices if there are coaches on the sideline chatting or if there are coaches sitting down.
Meet and Greet- Often right after school if a coach has spent the entire day teaching, they want a moment to catch their breath. We expect the players to be ready to go, we should be ready to go. As players come into the gym and they are doing their warmup routines, coaches should be going around and using the time to talk to the players. Give them energy with your energy.
Drills That Bring Energy- Use drills that are competitive when you can. Look at your practice plans, look at your rotation of drills. In basketball, insert drills that require energy and running to succeed. Look at your drills and decide if you have periods of time where you are slowing things down.
Require Energy- Require players to move from one drill to the next with quickness. Eliminate the pauses in practice. Insert short competitive drills throughout practice.
Don’t Shoot Ft’s- Nothing kills a good practice like stopping to shoot ft’s. Do your ft shooting at the end of practice.
Shorten- Early in the year we feel we need to have long practices to “get everything in.” But in general if we are having energy issues, shorter practices might help.
Pull the Plug- As coaches it can be painful to cancel a practice. in the middle of December, middle of January, it can be a grind. As a coach we decide we want to give them a break. We may decide,”Let’s not practice on Monday, let’s just watch film.” We just can’t quite give them the day off. If you want to give them a break to help rejuvenate them, don’t do anything- don’t bring them into shoot or watch film. Let them get away from you and from each other.
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