How To Organize A Youth Football Practice
One question we get from youth football coaches during this time is about how to set up a youth football practice schedule. FirstDown PlayBook going to really slow down and take a good look at this over the next month. Attention all Pop Warner, NFL Flag and other youth coaches. Please join us and feel free to chime in with any questions or comments!
For those of you with degrees in education, this is going to seem like common sense. However, after an extensive football coaching career, we have seen more than a few coaches go to the practice field and the meeting room without a lesson plan or a practice schedule or practice plan.
Former players can be some of the biggest culprits when it comes to this. They are normally very confident in what they they know. After all, their coach always had the practice schedule and all they did was follow it. They are often the ones with the most unorganized practice drills.
When you become a coach, it is a different. Now it is your responsibility to be organized so everyone can get something out of practice. Over the next several weeks we will look at why having a youth football practice schedule is essential. Your Pop Warner team’s offense and your youth football defense cannot be a grab bag of what you used to now.
Your Youth Football Practice Schedule Holds You Accountable To Yourself
When you head out to the football field, you will have a starting time and an ending time for your practice. We can promise you one thing. Regardless of if you coach 6-8 year old Pop Warner players or grown men in the NFL, you will never have enough time once you get to the field. This is why it is critical that you map out what you want to get accomplished. This must be done before you take the football field.
NFL Coaches On 12 Formations To Consider For Your Youth Football Offense
Coaches who go to the field without a practice schedule will consistently find that they never finish. They never get to the last two or three things that they wanted to teach. This is because they have not organized their time. There will always be at least one thing that they ended up spending more time on during practice than they had planned to.
Once You Make The Practice Plan…Stick To It
An NFL Flag practice plan forces you to move on so you can get to everything you need to cover. If something you have taught needs more work you can always come back to it the next football practice. You will quickly find out that you will need to settle on one or two formations. You can’t try to teach too much.
If you look at any coach from the NFL down through a high school program, one thing they have in common is that they always have a practice schedule. Every minute of that practice should be planned before you ever take the football field. You must be disciplined enough to make a plan and stick to it. This will allow you to get everything taught that you need to.
Once again, all NFL Flag and Pop Warner coaches, bookmark this page. Check back with us in a few days to see part 2 of this blog on setting up an organized youth football practice and more help, like this article on the Wing T.
