Practice Organization Archives:

Overview of Last Practice of the Year In Nebraska- it gets full dark at 7:00 now. So we can only practice from 6-7 pm now. It also gets cold early here- often times snowing in October, count on it for sure in November. In this area of the plains unlike Omaha or Lincoln, it shows [...]

Many youth football coaches struggle with how much and how to teach football terminology to their kids. What often times happens is they teach too much and in a fashion that leads to fake knowing nods, glazed over eyes and players tugging at grass. Too many youth coaches use this time to show off their [...]

What to Do When Youth Football Players Won’t Engage I’ve had a number of youth football coaches e-mail me with a problem most of us have to deal with from time to time, a player who won’t engage in contact. Maybe won’t engage is a poor choice of words, he feigns injury when it comes [...]

How Some Youth Football Teams Swoon Late in the Season At this time of year many coaches are deep into playoff runs or wrapping up their seasons. Many of us will know who we are playing or at least have a good idea of who we are playing well in advance. For many of us [...]

At this time of year some youth football practices become a bit stale. Now is the time to shorten practices a bit. We went from 2 hours to 1:45. We are now at 1:30 now that it is getting darker, we go 15 minutes later on Character Development lesson nights. Continue to develop fundamental skills, [...]

Coaching Youth Football, Football Practice Shouldn’t be fun? Really? I hear a number of youth football coaches turn their noses up at the idea of those of us that think we should try to make football practice “fun” if we can. Many of them seem to feel that football is inherently fun so there is [...]

Beware the NFL Youth Football Coach In youth football your assistant coaches and be a godsend or a pebble in your shoe. One assistant coach I remember once brought me a stack of Linebacker drills he had culled from a very well known NFL coach. He had obviously put some time and effort into getting [...]

Getting the Most Out of Your Drills, Killing Several Birds With One Stone The most successful youth football teams seem to do one thing very well, they get the most out of their practice time. You won’t see many wasted time, wasted movement or standing around. One way to do this is to combine several [...]

Dealing With Sweltering Heat in Youth Football If your weather is anything like ours, it is 100 degrees and 83% humidity right now, making it miserable for anyone trying to practice. I won’t bore you with all the regular advice on keeping your kids hydrated and keeping your eyes open for heat stress. Most of [...]

Creating a Sense of Urgency in Youth Football Practices One of the things many poor performing youth football teams do is waste practice time. They waste it by doing things that add little or no value to their team (priorities) and they waste it by not having a fast enough practice pace. Some of the [...]