Doing things just because it's "hard"?

I tell our players to be successful in this game they must take pride in doing difficult things well.

But I don't have to go looking for or cook up tough things for them to do, especially ones designed for them to fail, "break them down to build them back up".

Just doing what it takes to be a good football player is sufficient.

Isn't football already difficult enough?

The ONLY thing we do that is non-football specific that is hard (I guess) is we run a 5K in order to be able to turn out. We also run 12 x 110 yard sprints in a specified time to earn our helmet decals.

We also use our off-season attendance as incentives to avoid both of these "hard" tests.

Kids who want to be lazy (off season) AND avoid the hard things (5K & 110's), do not turn out.

It's our way to thin the herd.

After this, it's ALL football

I think there's merit and value in doing things that are intrinsically difficult or merit a certain dedication/discipline, but only to a point. If there's a more efficient way to accomplish the same goal, a better teaching method that's easier, so on and so forth, then by all means adapt to it and continue.

For example, getting your guys to sell out and commit to the weight room requires them doing things that are hard, such as saying no to their fat little girlfriends, scheduling their time better, and making themselves physically uncomfortable at times as they lift. That's good stuff that has a lot of value. I think the toughness and discipline is formed in saying 'no' to things enough that it becomes their way of doing stuff.

But, drawing from my own example, asking kids to perform a specific schematic assignment just because it's 'hard' and therefore = good, is folly. Our defense is hard. Any 3-4 is going to come with certain complications, it's the nature of the beast. But we've worked a good amount on how to teach it easily and make it simple to learn and process, because that's not the kind of things that should be hard for the kids.


Hope that makes sense.

I think that seems imprudent.


Building toughness is as easy as making every last set in the weightroom a burnout. (BFS) Sure it's 5x5, but don't you dare rack that last set........go until you fail.


As coaches, I don't think we need to set up something we know our kids will NEVER succeed at....................but we do need to allow them to fail.


If you want 40 offensive plays in a 15 minutes TEAM session, or we are doing X conditioning.......then 39 doesn't cut it. I don't care how hard overweight Joey tried, or that I had all 11 guys busting their hump..................


Sometimes, we will reward effort over result, and that is almost as dangerous as allowing lazy failure when it comes to the performance of your team.


I was on a team in High School where we played hard all game, but against high quality opponents, we didn't believe we could win.......we'd play hard, but we found comfort in that, NOT IN ACTUALLY WINNING THE GAME!!!!


A productive way to build the product you want is to set difficult goals (something useful and attainable, unlike a 1/4 mile duck walk), and to work at that............hard work needs the pursuit of victory to be a winning combo.

That kind of stuff is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME. Its hard enough just to train your guys to be better football players. You don't need to rob yourself of training time with stuff they will never use.

Toughness is a stupid thing to focus on because you can't measure it. What is a kid specifically supposed to do when you tell him to "get tougher"? That kind of stuff is confusing to players. Instead focus specifically on what you want done in every instance. For example if you want guys to finish blocks better focus on that in every rep of every drill. Instead of "get tougher" there is some direction and focus "finish the block, go to the whistle". Much more specific, and you can actually see the results of your efforts. Are the guys finishing blocks better? Yes or No and move on from there.

I think sometimes coaches confuse confidence (and even sometimes endurance) kids gain from conditioning programs, especially strength training, with "toughness."

Weights don't hit back. Other players do. Strength without functionality (skill, fundamentals, techniques, ability to move) is useless.

How do you quantify "toughness"?

I am looking at this discussion from the viewpoint of making better football players/athletes during the OFFSEASON (not during fb season). I think the original name of this thread was something about "doing things just because they are hard". Over the years, we have had athletes go off to military boot camp after graduation. One of the common statements we get from a lot of them when they are home on leave, etc... is how boot camp seemed easy compared to the offseason program they went through when they were with us in high school. They were used to the hard work, the discipline, pushing yourself to the limits, etc... Now how is that a bad thing??

How many times have you seen a kid who needed to grow up, or who needed discipline and direction in his life, come back a changed guy after being in the military? And I know that sometimes a guy comes back screwed up from fighting in war, etc... But anyway, I've seen this quite a bit where I am from. This is what we are attempting to do with athletes in offseason. We want them to know what hard work is, how to overcome adversity, how to be a team player, and how to be a better human being. We attempt to change these kids for the better through all of this; just as all of you attempt to put a positive influence on kids.

Obviously, everything that we do is designed to get kids stronger, quicker, faster, and mentally tougher. I am basing my opinion from experiences as an asst. coach at two perennial playoff fb programs (one is 3A, one is 4A). I also observed some perennial 5A playoff programs go through their offseason since I know a lot of coaches in my state. I know what has been the backbone of all of these programs WHEN IT IS NOT FOOTBALL SEASON. And it is the offseason program. And yes; there is a time and place for spring fb drills during later phases to work on fb fundamentals. I completely 100% understand this.

Now maybe some of you have always coached at a place like this that has tradition and has always won. But there may come a time where you become a HC, and step into a program where things are not this way. At the 2 programs where I have been fortunate enough to take over, both had the following problems:

1) the fb program had been losing for years - there was no "tradition" to speak of - participation levels have been low

2) the discipline has been poor - no accountability & no expectations set

3) the kids have not been pushed, & are not used to hard work - they have gotten into the habit of going half-ass - some of the young asst. coaches on staff have been used to going half-ass as well - and guess what? - since this is the only place that a couple of them have ever coached, they don't know any better
(no kidding!)

4) there has not been any importance placed on a great weight or offseason program - the kids are very weak overall when you test them for the first time - and this adds to kids not being very confident in themselves

So you leave a place where you always have kids who understood tradition, and where they expect to win; and you enter a place that is a totally different animal. Its like you moved to another planet.

And in both cases, these "down" programs had the athletes overall to compete with the other schools on our schedule. Having athletes was not the problem. It was the other things mentioned. So the mentality and "how we do things here" has to be changed. This is what I was trying to say in the first place.

right on the nuts

For the record, we have never done 300 V-ups or 400 m. duckwalks. Training for endurance, or trying to do things on purpose to see who will quit makes no sense to me.

We do things to produce stronger, quicker, and more explosive athletes. A stronger, quicker, and more explosive athlete (who wants to be good) will more times than not have a better chance of producing on the field, than a counterpart with the same drive who is not strong, quick or explosive. I'm going to play the odds.

We are definitely going to coach 'em up once fb drills start. But we want to work on their mind as well as their body before fb drills start later in the Spring. It is a lot easier to coach a kid who has confidence in himself than to coach one who doesn't. Some have to adopt that mentality to allow themselves to succeed. I guess you could compare it to Social Darwinism; also known as Survival of the Fittest; also known as the Law of the Jungle.

Amen Coachwoodall! Sounds like our "overtime" period for the last 5 minutes of offseason. Bring 'em all together and do something to see who's "all in" and who is not.

how the hell does a kid gain toughness by duck walking around the track? You gain that by putting him in situations. Are you trying to gain mental or physical toughness.

I'm not the strength and conditioning coordinator and don't design the workouts. I was just talking to him and he said he designs these kind of things to push kids to failure and to build toughness. I was just curious if anyone else did the same thing and had the same mindset about these things.

Difficulty is part of team sports. While I like things that will help our football players become tougher individually as football players, I LOVE activities that make our guys better and tougher as a football TEAM. Sometimes, it may be unrelated to football or the connection is hard to see, but its difficult, and our guys should come together because of this difficulty. That's what I want. I want hard situations, no matter what, that bring us together as a team and foster toughness. I'd say 95% of the time though, its definitely football related or beneficial in someway.

We went on a hike up a difficult trail up a hill one year at a nature preserve, which some coaches asked about how it related. It was all about getting through the trail in crappy conditions together and as fast as possible. I mean, we built a little endurance, but mostly it was about togetherness. At the end, we talked about it briefly, and what it meant, and chilled out. It was well worth the bonding time as a team. We mentioned the hill a lot that year when things got tough.

Couldn't agree with this more.