Circuit Drills

Where ever I've been it seems teams were using tackling circuits and ball security circuits, but being primarily and OL coach, others might be more equipped to discuss these circuits. With that said, I do use a circuit every heavy work day in individual, so if we play on Friday, I start with a circuit Monday, Tuesday, and if they're still fresh Wednesday. The circuit consists of 6 get-offs/footwork patterns where they take specific steps and pound their feet down boards in one of those big grill-like chutes with a low center of gravity. Basically it's 3 different paths like down block, reach block, etc to the right and left. The 2nd phase of the circuit is a kick slide cone drill where they start at 1 cone, kick to a cone 5 yards away and power step back to another cone five yards away, which is approximately 5 yards behind the 1st cone, so the cones resemble boxes or squares. The players do this six times to the right and six times to the left. The 3rd section is an "obstacle course" where cones are aligned somewhat randomly and they follow the path in a duckwalk demeanor, you know just like they're drive blocking. It amounts to 9 stations where players start at different places shotgun style and just move onto the next station when they are done with one. When the kids learn it and are dialed in, they gun through it in no longer than 4 minutes and I feel like they get a lot of basic work in quickly. You can add some more footpaths to create more stations or you can switch them up on a daily basis. You can also alter the Kick slide angles if you want. What I'm thinking about doing this year because I'll have an assistant is give him half of the guys to do get-offs on the sled, I'll take the other half and run them through the circuit, and then switch them when we're done with the circuit. We'll come together and then finish anything we missed on the sled. Without this addition, we would immediately go through a four station pull circuit that covered all of our pulls that only took a couple more minutes. This means 6 minutes into indy, they've done a tremendous amount of work.

I love circuits. I want a blocking or tackling circuit every day.

As a Special teams guy I want to do a drills circuit before we start install, but I haven't had assistants willing to help out with it (or willing to learn what I need done) so I haven't been able to do that.

4 stations for special teams circuit -
- KO coverage type drill involving running down field and ripping through blockers before attacking returner
- "Steel Rod" drill: Punt coverage vs. Punt Return drill. Players start from engaged position where punt return guy has one arm locked out and onto the shoulder (steel rod) of the gunner. During this time you can have the punter kicking to returners to give them reps.
- Drill where players rip past protection and attack block point (use an old used volleyball for this and it works out great)
- Drill where players kick slide to defend against player trying to block kick

Stole that stuff from Cal Poly. They run it great. Well Oiled practice machine.

We use a couple of different circuits.

1. Tackling
2. Special Teams Fundamentals
3. Turnovers

I will probably create a Block Destruction circuit for this year as well.

We don't use them all the time, but I like them because they can be done at a high tempo, different coaches get to work with different kids and its something different!

In the summer we do a circuit everyday. Once the season starts we will do one Monday - Wednesday. We will rotate between 3 different ones, Defensive tackling, Offensive tackling and combo.

Defensive - I took from Paul Golla from CA
Rip Technique
Butt Press Shed
Turn Over
Tackling

Offensive - we are a double tight reach team
Reach
Trap/Ball Security
Screens/stalk blocking
Tackling

Combo - this is basically were each coach takes his favorite drill and does it
Screens/stalk blocking
Onside recovery
Butt Press Shed
Tackling
- this last one changes more to what we need to work on for the week but we try to tackle everyday.

Anyone have some good block destruction circuits/drills they can share?

If you guys search around the interwebs there is some Gary Patterson circuit stuff out there somewhere as well. Might not apply to everybody but I bet I can give you ideas to adapt to your needs.