Consider this:

I agree with both strongly, when i see over coaching...coaches doing way too much with their athletes, way too much for their level of play...often way too much scheme and trickery to disguise scheme and not enough "play football"....alot of teams beat themselves...thats it in a nutshell. I ask myself how its possible that a team can have 7 coverages yet still has "too many men on the field" for extra points or punts....stuff like that.

the second part...yup, these are still kids...it had better be fun. nowadays i see football losing kids to basketball, hockey and lacrosse...kids say "i am going to concentrate on basketball" or "fall ball" baseball...why? not enough "fun" for some. anyhow, fun to me comes from winning and being part of a family/team. I think you have to make the hard work and conditioning fun every day.

does wisconsin still have the 7 on 7 leagues in the spring? I know they used to.

Way too much emphasis is put on all the 7 on 7 and team camps and not enough on strength and conditioning.

in Minnesota you cannot require anything. If the state has any proof that you have influenced a athlete or a team in anyway to participate in summer workouts, camps, etc.. the coach is fined 1000.00, the school is fined 1000.00 and the coach can lose his job.

As for B), there are at least a couple of catholic HS's here in CA that run contact camps for 4th graders! They start them weight training in 6th grade. Makes for a great recruiting tool.

So true. However I still think you have to be very careful about doing too much. If you don't have talented kids I have found it was better to focus on doing a few things very well. But situations vary. You might have kids who are very smart and pick things up right away...don't need to rep concepts as much and therefore can do more. My kids...KISS.

simple offenses are simple to stop....


be careful and walk that fine line between "simple" and "efficient"...

the language barrier is usually the biggest cause of breakdowns within a task. language barrier being defined as an individual's inability to properly comprehend & use the terms that go with a job....
solve your language barrier early...i.e. get the terminology straight, and the rules straight.... then, "simple" becomes "efficient" which allows for the "smoke & mirrors"

i agree with both statements. High school athletes do suffer from burn-out, and most teams are over coached (thanks to technology for the coaches)

What do you mean by "overcoached"? How would you tell thet they're burned out?

<sup>a) 51% or more of teams are over-coached.

b) "Burn out" is a bigger problem for HS athletes (football players, specifically, for this forum) than under-training.</sup>

a) cqmiller has some good insight re: undercoaching technique and overcoaching scheme. Still, you can overcoach technique- our punter had a 44.2 yds. per punt avg. and I (and other coaches) left him alone (form is not "pretty", but he does a good job- I could only make him worse). I've overcoached a lot of kids on stance, footwork, reads in the past. The best LB I've ever had read the backfield wrong, went opposite the fullback way too much- and made the play almost all of the time. Finally after a few weeks of misreads and still making the play, I said "David... let's try this... just tackle the guy with the ball". I was a heck of a coach then.

In the off season (i.e. now) I have way to many schemes, formations, motions... come summer camp and fall we will run the same 8 plays we have always run.

b) Burn out is a worry- we are a small school, our guys work hard, put a lot of time in and almost all play 3 sports. We condition in class and summer year-round. We have do do a lot of "fun" things. I think in our situation it helps a bit that the alternative for FB weights and conditioning is farm work or manual labor, so FB has some nice "social" time attached to it as well. I worry about that more on a sub-conscious level- we always seem to peak too early (week 7 or 8) and just run out of steam in the playoffs (hard to tell when over the last 2 years we've had a total of 14 starters out for the rest of the season by playoff time).

There was a thread in the weight training section about time off- we give our guys off from now until June 1 (though we are still finishing up lifting this week)- by then they are getting kind of antsy to get back at it, which is how I want them. We don't want panic, but a little urgency is a good thing. I'm planning on giving a little more time off- maybe we will peak at the end of November rather than the end of October.

I believe in keeping it simple and effective, to much emphassis is put on every situation that can happen kids get lost and confused mistakes happen coaches get upset and the season goes down the toilet. Keepin it simple playing the keys and getting the job done seems to work for me having the game plan dialed in what do we want to accomplish and how we get it done will make for a better results. Over coaching I think creates burn out and loses kids sometimes coaches. On the other hand a good program that is balanced with weightroom, agility training and simple season planning leaves room for kids to have a life also, keeps them and the parents happy. I do require 100% particapation from all the kids when it time to work but I also want them playing the game because its fun too. Keepin it simple works for me. As far as camps go I am committed to 1 camp that offers all the fundementals, intensity,7-7,11-11,steady circuit training and consistancy, for a very modest cost the success it produces is amazing.

that's almost exclusively what the big boys do!

Kids don't get bored, coaches do. I think that leads to some over-coaching in terms of Xs and Os. We get carried away with the pencil and paper.

Also I think we try to be too smart. We go to a clinic and hear a pro or college guy with some "new" term for something we've been calling a "storm" or "weakside end" for years and we just wind up confusing a 16-year old who's got enough to remember where the 6-hole is and that he's on kickoff return, not kickoff coverage.

As far as overtraining, most of my kids are going to see me and hear my voice at least three days a week for a minimum of 60 minutes year-round except Christmas and Spring vacations.
Our kids have a very good work ethic and most of them really like football. I worry about their enthusiasm and excitement draining toward the end of the playing season especially.

I also worry about long-term effects of lifting heavy weights in multijoint (Olympic or body-building-type exercises) over an extended period of time.

I agree that "overthinking" is a better term than "overcoaching". I do see a lot of stuff like using their best back as "decoy" or driving the ball down a team's throat then coming out the next series throwing the ball out of spread. On the whole, though, I'd say that there are an awful lot of undercoached teams.
Burnout? I still don't know how I'm supposed to recognize the symptoms.

they work on technique. they rep a lot of plays. however his situation is really unique. for exmaple, he does not have to deal with title 9 as his school is all male. he recruits as many plays as possible and let them weed themselves out. he carries around 160 players each year. compare that with the wisconsin systems next door who can only carry 100 players per team do to title 9.

i think the devil is in the details at the high school leve. kids know very little about football.
IMO, good technique will win most of the time. if you tell a kid to run a 15 back to 13 yd curl route, you better stand there and make sure they do it right. when done right it will be open, when done wrong, the db will have a chance to make a comeback play.

i read where a team is supposed to cut practice by 30 to 40 mins after the halfway point in a season and at the threequarter mark, cut another 10 mins off practice.