Youth Practice 2 day's-vs-3day's

62,

For the reasons you give, the idea doesn't sound bad.
I coach 9y/o and I just don't know if I could get everything I needed in before Saturday. At times I feel like I need more than I'm getting now...especially for a big game. We go 3 days a week at 2 hours a pop.
But I must also admit that I'd be lost without it. Practice for me is something I look forward to. I love being out there with the kids...especially after a hard day at the office.
I sit around my house looking real stupid on off days...not knowing what to do with my spare time except look at film.

My way of thinking on this is a little bigger picture for me. I am the commissioner for the youth program and a varsity (high school) coach also. So #1 I am looking at as a way to also get those not so committed parents eased into the football life style so they continue to support football. And #2 to keep the kids wanting more and not getting them burned out before they go up to the Jr. high level and eventually high school level. But as far as getting everything done in 2 days my thought was to organize the practices for effectiveness. Last year the coaches wasted about 30 to 40 min. a practice doing cals and other activities that did not help teach the game of football. So they were already wasting 1 whole practice.Our youth level we really don't scout so we basically are there to teach fundamentals (blocking&tackling) and basic theory.

I am entertaining the idea of dropping down during the school year to 2 nights also. We have 3 teams, ages 8-11.

The main possibility that allows us to consider this is veteran coaches with a clear practice agenda. In the past we have had coaches run their kids too much, piggy back races, and extensive water breaks, and other time consuming, non-applicable practice time wasters.
We plan on instituting an agenda for the coaches to follow, along with basic learning objectives ourhigh school affiliated football coaches would like to see. It may not be quantity of practice, but quality with the time available.

I switched to 3 then 2 nights per week during school about 14 seasons ago.
My parents and coaches thought I was nuts, we werent very good as an org, they thought we needed to practice more, not less. We went from 5 then 4 nights a week to 3 and 2.
We COMPRESSED our practice schedules. We eliminated cals and set aside conditioning and went to a very intense high tempo practice. We eliminated almost anything not 100% football, minus some of our eval games, team building games and conditioning games which ALL have football components to them.
We practice about 1/2 as much as our competition. Since going to this schedule and tightening up our practices to the point Henry Ford would have liked my personal teams have gone 121-17
We have consistently outperformed those practicing 2X times us
Heck when I had teams in Omaha, we did the same thing to teams that started practicing in June, when we would start on August 1. In fact some of the teams that started the earliest and practiced the most were some of the worst teams.
Practice doesnt make perfect at all
Perfect practice makes perfect and priorities are where it's at
Coaches WASTE too much time in practice.
Im a miser with my practice time, I dont allow it to be stolen by anyone.
We do this all the way to 7-8th grade. I will admit we did do 2 very light no pads Saturday walk throughs with the 7-8th graders last year due to some odd schemes we were facing and HUGE gaps left because of flu epidemic- game day personell changes

Good points all the way around.

That is much how we ran our 5th/6th grade team. Our kids play in a local league featuring six teams from five towns in southeast Arkansas. Its pretty good youth football in a pretty good football area, lots of emphasis placed on the programs.

We kept a three practice per week model from the start of our season (starting the day school started) and really preached up-tempo practice work, fitting as much as we could into two hours on Monday and Tuesday and a shorter walk-through practice on Thursday.

As you mentioned, we were also INDO heavy. We had strong #s in our program, but a significant drop-off from our 1s (and some 2s) to the rest of the roster...lots of kids just getting into the game. This lead us to cut down on live scrimmage work. As opposed to full scrimmage stuff during practice, we worked half-line alot...best on best. Our kids enjoyed this, especially since they could get a good look. We'd do this for our less experienced guys, too...really working to get our kids reps against similar talents. This allowed them to get experience and build-up confidence.

The majority of our live work was during 7-on-7 periods and during inside drill. We'd have our skill guys working the crap out of our passing game against the secondary look we'd get on Saturday while having our OL rep the fire out of our run game vs. our opponents defensive look. Stress lots of high-energy reps with everything being scripted...down to who was the scout LB and how many plays our scout S would get before coming to play X for us.

Our conditioning was reall quick at the end of practice and never involved straight sprints or snakes or things like that. A favorite of our kids were pursuit drills. We'd throw three coaches out there with dummies, line four kids us with their backs to the coaches. On the whistle, the kids would turn and find the dummies...first three to tackle a dummy got a break while the kid left-out would go another rep with the next group.

As part of this league, we see some teams that practice four or five days a week. Some teams try to put together two-a-day practices prior to school starting. We've got coaches that stress "toughness" above all else and are out there running Oklahoma Drill in pre-game. Those teams suck. Their kids look unhappy, their parents get pissed when they get mercy ruled. They are just a mess.

We've finished second in this league the last two years. Lost to the same team in each season...by 8 points in '08 and by 12 last season. We're not some world-beater program, but we're good and we're feeding prepared kids into our schools 7th grade program. In fact, 2008's team was unbeaten in 7th grade football this season. That's what its about, preparing these kids to continue to play the game while learning alot and having a ton of fun.

As was mentioned by other people on this thread, the most effective way to do this is to have a great plan for everything you do every day.

I honestly believe the HUDL thing is a great idea. I would imagine that you get more quality practice in with your 2 days, plus the HUDL, than most other teams that go 4 or 5 days.

I know for a fact we get way more reps in our three days, than most teams could from 5 days.

Priorities...tempo...those are key to success in practice. In my experience, the players are the quickest to respond to such a practice method. Some coaches have to get a fire lit under them to move at the tempo I require.

We go to 3 days a week once school starts for 2 hours. But on Fridday's we do cut practice short 1.5 hours, and it really just a walk-thru for saturdays game.