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I have a pet peeve. Take it with a grain of salt, this rant is coming from a strength and conditioning nerd!!! Of course, thanks go out to all the parents stepping up to coach our kids! I’m sure I could use some help from your own area of expertise! This is my advice to all you noble coaches out there.
Don’t be a PE teacher! No disrespect PE teachers! Practice is not and should not be a PE class. PE is for school. (Well, it used to be!) We as coaches need to look at our sport and design sport specific drills for the athletes we are coaching.
Most skills drills are just fine. Basketball coaches don’t let kids practice half court shots for 30 minutes. Likewise, quarterback passing drills do not revolve around the “Hail Mary”! Both of the above examples are unrealistic and statistically improbable in a game. Take that common sense and apply it to your speed, agility and conditioning drills!
Here are several examples. “Take a lap!” Does your sport require endurance? There is absolutely no reason for baseball players to jog around the whole perimeter of the field! Baseball is sprinting! Statistically, how often does a batter get an in the park home run? Don’t over fatigue your athletes! Base running drills should be primarily sprints to first base with adequate rest between sprints. Second priority would be sprints to second again with plenty of rest!
Football… same thing! True, the big linemen need to last the whole game but should they be running laps? No way! How long does the average play last? Five seconds? How much rest between snaps? Football is explosive! That’s how your practices should look. Players conditioning should emulate game speeds, tempos and rest intervals.
A boxer would train with various 3 minute speed bag, heavy bag, sparring etc. followed each time by one minute of rest, just like in the fight. Get the point? Time is precious. Lots of kids are dual sport athletes now. My little neighbor buddy is playing soccer and baseball! Keep your practices game specific. Forget about the traditional busy work we did 30 years ago! Keeping everything specific to your sport makes everything a lot more fun too!
Hey Coach… Thanks!
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