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Keys to better practice
Through the years, I have been asked to provide coaches with insights into how we structure our practices. Our practices have evolved over the years based upon a number of factors including, film, phones, focus on defense and special teams.
Most 1A coaches have duties beyond coaching football and a limited staff and practice times. We are not afforded the typical position coaches nor the numbers of athletes to compartmentalize a player into a single position. Most of our players play, "iron man", both ways and for many of us we have fewer players on our sideline than we do in the game.
Enough Bodies: The first step to better practices is to pray that you have 12 players at every practice! It is much harder to run scout O an D without the minimum players needed on both sides of the ball. Your practices need to take into account not having 12. I make it a point to solicit the use of middle school athletes or other students to fill in where needed.
Tip: Do not practice with imaginary players. If you ask an athlete to block Casper in practice he will emulate this in the game. Players need to have some physical representation of who they are being asked to block, cover, etc. Find someone, my daughters can tell you they hate being the last option!
Script Practices: We break everything down to the minute. You can view a sample of both a spring practice and game week practice below. We focus on reps in all that we do. Our Golden Rule, is to spend less time talking (aka coaching) and more time doing (aka repping).
Tip: Film all of your practices. Do not trust your eyes in practice as they will often deceive you. What you think are the major issues will often be wrong and will show up on film. Ask yourself, why do we spend so much time breaking down opponent game film? You should break down your own practice film with the same attention to detail (if not more) because you are playing the opposing team once and with your own players for the entire season.
Film Practice : Building on the tip above, we no longer have group film sessions as it is a waste of time. I have found that the majority of players will not ask questions and the ones that do are the same ones that will ask you the questions via email or at practice.
We will watch every practice film and send out (same day) a no more than 3 min recap video of what we want the players to focus on. Ever so often we will send an individual player some film of where he could improve or what he needs to focus on with respect to the upcoming opponent.
Game Scripts: We will break down every play the opponent has in their playbook. You can view a sample below. We spend our game week focused on their base offensive plays and defensive schemes.
Tip: We do not spend much (if any) time on the trick plays. We tend to ask our veteran players to study the trick plays and to be prepared for them. The reason is that younger players will overthink defensively if they are always worried about the play that happens once a game.
We do not present the game scripts to the players until Sunday afternoon. We utilize Saturday for focusing on the game we just played and the dissection of what we could do to improve our performance.
Practice Allocation: We spend the majority of our time on our offense in the spring and defense in the fall. The reason is we are not certain what offenses our opponents will be running in the spring and oftentimes programs will change their offensive tendencies as their personnel changes.
In sixman football, you can not be wed to a specific offense or defense because you simply do not have enough diversity among your athletes to fit the players into the scheme. Instead, you have to match the scheme (offense or defense) to the personnel.
The reality is players will have to learn multiple positions on both sides of the ball so as to ensure the redundancy needed. It always amazes me when we play a team where the MLB is also the Spreadback. That is too big an ask for any athlete. He will wear down and you will struggle in the second half of games.
Tip: Be sure your offense and defensive sets are personnel flexible. For example, if you only have one player that can throw a football, don't spend all your time on spread or other passing offenses and then be dead in the water when the athlete is out for the game / season.
In the fall, the focus is on our defensive schemes. We will spend twice as much (if not more) of our time on how we are going to defend opposing offenses. We also give significant time to special teams as the kicking game in sixman is far more utilized given the higher propensity to score and that PAT kicks are worth double.
Choice of Drills: We threw out all drills that did not make any sense. This meant we threw out most of the traditional 11 man football drills. They simply do not fit the sixman game. We focus only on skills that are essential to success on both sides of the ball. Here is a list of what we thew away:
Power blocking (replaced with screen blocking)
Power tackling (replaced with open field tackling)
Timed throwing routes (replaced with scramble throwing drills)
Press coverage (replaced with zone and catch man drills)
Rip/Swim/etc (replaced with basic blocking and defending techniques)
Etc..
Tip: KISS it. Remember your players have to know at least two positions on both sides of the ball! An 11 man player will know one position on one side of the ball for his entire career. Spending time on his hand and footwork at a particular position is often a waste of time. If you have the numbers,time and coaches to teach position specific techniques then of course do so; however, that is not the norm for most sixman teams.
We put into our practices only drills that will create a scenario our players will face in the game. For example, we know for a fact that our players will face a spread offense and so we have drills that only account for defending the spread.
Furthermore, the week of the game we will make changes to the drills. For example, if we are facing a left handed spreadback, we will practice rushing the spreadback differently as all of our drills are based upon a right handed spreadback.
Game Week Schedule: We focus on the following during game week:
Opposing team film shared with players Saturday afternoon.
Opposing team offensive plays sent out on Sunday night along with coach film breakdown of opponent film
Our offensive plays for the week sent out on Sunday night
Monday practice 50% defense 35% offense 15% special teams
Monday practice film breakdown sent out (most watch Tues morning)
Tuesday practice 60% defense 20% offense 20% special teams
Tuesday practice film breakdown sent out (most watch Tues morning)
Wednesday (we dont practice unless we have a Thurs game)
Thursday practice 40% defense 40% offense 20% special teams
In conclusion, the philosophy of less is more has worked for us. We want our players to fly around on both sides of the ball without having to think too much while playing at least two (if not three) positions on both sides of the ball. We undertand that most will not put in the film time so we break it down into bite size elements that can be fed to them in 3 min intervals. Finally, we put as much as possible the specific elements of our offense and defense into our drills.
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