By Coach Jim,
You know the practice drill. You do stretches, special teams, individual skills, group skills, 7-on-7, and then plays, maybe followed by wind sprints. Have you ever thought, “Is there a better way?” Are you maximizing your practice time? Lately, I’ve been thinking, “I don’t think so.”
Take QBs across the country. Like me, you’ve probably practiced running passing routes ad nauseam. We do it so much and so well in practice. Why can’t they do it in a game?
The answer is that we’re not practicing under game conditions. QBs NEVER have an unobstructed view of the receivers without the threat of pressure. If that’s the case, why do we practice 7-on-7 every single day? I get it in the beginning. Everyone needs to learn their route. But after that’s done, we need to practice throwing under pressure, with blocked visuals, on the run, with ego at stake.
Many coaches pipe in crowd noise, but the audio can’t replicate the pressure of all those eyeballs watching you! I once thought of bringing all the girlfriends of the players to practice just to heighten the pressure.
Now think if a stalwart of practice like 7-on-7 may be under-utilizing practice time, what else? Do your lineman go through the shoot every day, only to stand up during the game? Do your DBs catch every possible interception in team practice, but drop half in the game? Obviously, we need to make practice more like the game.
Here’s some suggestions:
- Practice game situations. Once QBs know the routes, don’t let them throw unfettered. Like touch football, send lineman after two Mississippi and let them wrap up the QB. Put your spare players in front of the QB as if they’re an offensive and defensive line that’s standing up. Along those lines, have your teams hit at least once a week (not the QBs, but everyone else). You can’t practice true game situations without hitting.
- Practice pressure situations. Pressure comes from the threat of losing something important and an ego that may be embarrassed. When your O and D go against each other, have something at stake that’s more than just a few pushups. Bring in fans, girlfriends, parents, whomever to heighten the stress. However, don’t just put them in pressure situations and hope for the best. Teach them to recognize their stress and ways to cope with it directly on the field. (The rest of this blog is packed with ways to do that.) Teach them mechanisms to be calm within pressure situations, to normalize pressure situations.
- Practice mental toughness. Almost every coach I know pays homage to mental toughness, but hardly anyone practices it. If the mental game is 50% of the sport, shouldn’t we at least practice it 10%, maybe 20%? Against look through the rest of this blog for ways to do that.
- Practice what you’re bad at, not what you’re good at. For example, teams will send their DBs through a series of drills that they’ve mastered since middle school. Back peddle, cut at a 45 degree angle, and repeat. Or maybe they practice breaking to their right and then to their left. That’s five minutes of practice that I could have used practicing something that they’re bad at, like reads, or open field tackling.
We have such limited practice time during the season that we have to be mindful of how we’re using that time.
How do you practice? I’d love to hear your schedule especially if its atypical.
