Friday, January 24, 2014

Youth Football Training Drills For Every Coach

By Nelda Powers


Youth football training varies from that given to adult players. A number of coaches may not know this but the young need special drills to get the best out of them. More drills only waste training time therefore leaving the team weak and prone to defeat in a game.

The definition of a drill is the activity that is closely supervised, narrowly defined and is repetitive. This process makes the players learn skills that they otherwise would resist due to the rigor and routine. With drills, skills are perfected and remembered even after years of no use. However, no matter how important this is, the coach should leave only a small fraction of the training for drills so as to concentrate on other team building exercises.

The other drill is repetition, the act of iterating a single skill of football. It is good to allow the players to try what skills are best for them so as to repeat. For example centers and long snappers should be seriously repeated for best performance, they however need little supervision by the coach. These repetitions make a team synchronized in their game without showing the audience what they are actually doing.

The chalk is simply a verbal training like what happens in a classroom. Before letting the players do the actual physical exercise, a talk should precede it for the explanation. No one however can learn a skill by chalk talk alone but it is important. Some muscle memory is necessary to instill the skill permanently into memory together with the mental hologram.

Without put-ins, a team will not be fit to play a real match. These are the initial activities a team needs to master t make them consistent and correct in performing certain offenses and defensively stop the other team. Training in football starts with chalk then goes to walk-through then ends in a full speed run. This gives the team the correct timing and reaction skills for a match.

The next stage is walk-through. Here the learnt skill is put into play at slow speed for everyone to see what is happening and for the coach to make corrections where required. This is the longest process since it is done very slowly. The offensive team demonstrates their new skills whereas the other team observes and prepares to react to the offensive. The opposing team stays almost motionless for example the fit-and-freeze technique.

Once a skill has been learnt in the slow stages, the team then goes full speed also known as scrimmage. Under the watchful eye of the coach, the teams play their specific skills at game speed with the offensive showcasing and defense preparing to stop the new skill appropriately. This is important for rookies so as to acclimatize their muscles and minds to real game situations. This also helps the defense with timing and reaction planning on the go. The offense team can use this to learn how to reorganize after passes and late-developing blocks. In this stage, very limited coaching takes place since the coach can only see a little of what goes on due to the speed.

20 minutes is just enough for the drill section for a youth football training. This will leave enough time in the two hour period for the players to learn other skills and coordinate a play. A good coach will let the flow with periodic input here and there.




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