Looking for Practice Plan Templates

something I picked up


Practice Schedules:
This is in response to a coach who asked roughly how do we organize our practice schedules, also with a short note at the end for how we install the gameplan on a given week, which is a great idea that we completely stole(don't we all):


Hey Coach, thanks for the kinds words. Sure, to give a
rough outline, school ends at 2:45. At 3:00 we meet in
the classroom(or certain areas around the gym/locker
room for positions), with the kids dressed in gear.

We give a quick and concise outline of what we are
going to do, new concepts and schemes, etc. Sometimes
we will show short film clips of a particular drill or
technique or route, but if this is not to the whole
team it has to be rotated for the vcr/tv etc, since
not every position can have their own classroom with
vcrs and tvs.

By 3:15 we break and by 3:20 we are on the field, in
positions, getting loose a bit and walking through
some things, QBs doing center snaps with an
action(straight drop back, handoff, boot action, etc.)
Receivers getting loose, catching balls, etc.

3:25 we are in lines, our players know where they are
to line up every day, and we have a coach move this
around so they have to sprint to this and get
organized as a team, quickly. Just sort of a fun game
to see where on the field this is set up and in what
order. We run down and back at 3 quarters speed, and
then we sprint out row by row into our streches lines.
Anyway, after stretching and running at 3:40 we break
into positions. Here we do agilities. At first we do
agilities to get more stretches, bags, ropes, stance
and starts etc for 5 minutes, then we kick it up a
notch for the second 5 into being more conditioning.
Then we finish with a 5 minute position specific
technique period, blocking form for linemen, cut
drills for receivers or stalk blocking fundamentals,
QBs go through their throwing warmups, etc.

From 3:55 we do 5 10 minute periods, and one 15 minute
period that we try to change up each day, and the last
thing we do is conditioning, which, and we tell this
to our players because it's the truth, it is for your
athletic conditioning but it is a test of your mind
and will to finish strong during the worst part. We
want to be done on the field by 5:15-5:25 at the very
latest every day, and on some days we keep skill
positions an extra 5-10 minutes to polish/throw, etc.

We let them take off their helmets and shoulderpads
and drink water for the conditioning, and we try to
keep it fairly short, and it consists mostly of 20s,
40s, and 60 yard sprints, though sometimes down and
back.

The 15 minute period is usually on Mondays some kind
of contact drill, like one blocker/OL vs one DL/LB and
one ball carrier in a chute, or a 3 blockers vs 3
defenders and the ball goes one way or the other in a
similar chute. On Tuesdays and wednesdays it is more
of a polish period for our offense's and defenses.

We rotate the 10 minute periods, but they include, and
we rely heavily on managers to help get things set up
for drills because we try to keep it fast paced, we
almost always do routes on air, which is our receivers
and QBs versus bags, and some kind of one on one
receiver drill. We also incorporate linebackers and
RBs and tight ends in this. It's also helpful to
sometimes have the receivers stalk block to keep the
DBs somewhat honest. Also, we will incorporate full
speed pass protection during this period too, and let
a Def coach throw whatever he may at us. we also will
have OL one on one pass blocking going on. Of course
we like to run pass skelly also, however we rarely go
full speed hitting in pass skelly since the DBs are
just teeing off, but they must tap off on the Receiver
but he still must sprint 35-40 yards downfield and
score.

We usually follow position specific work with a team
period that we just call "Let's Go" and what we
essentially do is huddle, or not huddle and call at
the line, and run a play, usually on air completely or
versus some JVs with bags, and we will run the plays
and everyone has to sprint 30-40 yards downfield and
break down on a coach until he releases them. The
second unit(and sometimes third) has to be ready to go
immediately after the first, running the same play and
we will keep this constant rotation. This is in part a
conditioning drill, it is a drill to work on huddling
and getting to the line, it is a repetition drill as
we are running our plays over and over, (we almost
exclusively run running plays in this drill and
screens and quicks every so often) but it is primarily
a pace drill, trying to teach our team the pace of
that we want. I can't say it's a super-fun drill
though.

We incorporate other drills as needed, running
periods, option periods, stalk-blocking periods,
sometimes in the middle of practice we will go right
back to bags and do high knees and all that very
inensely all over again.

Hope that gives you an idea, it provides our basic
outer structure and then it gives us a lot of
flexibility, cooaches bring their groups together,
etc. I'm sure as you know, the biggest key to practice
is the enthusiasm of the coaches and that, coupled
with this fast pace approach has helped us.

We like putting the lecture in the beginning because,
even though it is the end of the day, we feel like
they are better in learning mode than at the end or
even worse in the middle of practice.

Another note is that we, after scouting, generally put
in just about everything we're going to do versus our
opponent on Monday, and monday is our frustration day.
Everyone is frustrated, coaches, players, me, etc.
However, we begin throwing things our on Tuesday and
wednesday and wednesday night myself and one or two
other coaches will make our versions of our first 15
plays of the game and 2 or 3 "best plays" and we ask
our QB to come up with 5 of our 15 starting plays and
1 or 2 best plays. We bring all this together in our
plan and polish on our special teams/runthrough day on
Thursday.

Hope that provides a decent framework.