New Ideas for Old School Football Coaches (Practice)

I followed his practice week ideas pretty much just as he described this season and the 2nd half of last season and it was good except for 1 thing. Our kids aren't as physical as they need to be. (I've been re-building at a school that hasn't won much for 10 years) That is 1 of the main areas of learning we need. I will need to include more contact-not more any 1 day but some every day. I have always had some decent contact even the day before games and physicality was never a real issue. Possibly when we get more experienced over many years of playing I'll be able to reduce contact again.

I agree with many of his points and there are things he mentions that we've already instituted such as cutting back on practice time and dropping conditioning in favor of up-tempo practices. However, his assertion that his approach will automatically lead to faster football players is flawed.

Being fast on the football field is much, much different than being fast on the track. The kids need reps at the GAME OF FOOTBALL in order to develop the knowledge and confidence to do their jobs on the field with speed. For example, if our linebackers are struggling with their reads and filling open gaps, then we need to get turns as many turns as we can at it. We need to find a way to fit in a fair amount of turns because we have other fundamentals to rep. We don't have the time to throw a group out there, rep a read drill, rest for three minutes and repeat.

While some of what he says is worth thinking about, his whole approach turns me off. We don't practice for long periods of time, we don't condition at the end of practice, we do try to limit contact and rest their bodies, etc, etc, etc.....but his attack on coaches--much of unfounded, just some slant he has, turns me off. I wouldn't finish the article because of it. He starts by attacking the greats of the game, then goes into "always ends with conditioning", "90% are slow overachieving white guys"....and so on.

I'm sure those attacks probably fuel the crowd he's really after--and it's not the "old school" coaches. Rather, it's those who aren't.
Bet he wears a visor...and shades....and uses "bro" and "culture" a lot.

That assertion about this approach=faster athletes across the board=more success seems very fundamentally flawed to me, too.  He's not even a fan of up-tempo practices.  From reading this and his follow-up article, I'm not sure what exactly he wants a football practice to look like.  He spends a lot of time shooting down strawmen about "grinding."

He says there should be 1 day a week of all out, intense full speed effort with a "choppy" tempo that reflects the rests between plays in a game and it should be early in the week to give players adequate rest and recovery by gametime.  That part makes perfect sense to me.

He says to do things at "game speed" in shirts for a very short practice a day or two before games so players have gas in the tank and are rested for Fridays, I can get behind that, too.

Then he says you should have 1-2 days a week of sub-full speed effort to work on fundamentals, scheme, and special teams.  That's where I scratch my head.  How do you teach those things adequately if everyone's just jogging, walking, or standing around and talking?  Most "new school" ideology has been about trying to cut those things down as much as possible.

Even Chip Kelly, the man that Holler cites as an example of new and improved football practice methodology, is known for keeping his practices moving very briskly without ever slowing down.

I think despite what his actual words are it’s the message that needs to be taken from it. Don’t beat the $hit out of your players.

I have a theory that 90% of all coaches are slow over-achieving white guys who busted their ass. The mediocre results these guys got from their hard work fueled their interest in coaching.

That was the quote that got my attention in the article.....sort of screamed what football coaches are to me, and I fall into that criteria too.

Here's the followup article:

trackfootballconsortium.com/football-dosage-and-approach-questions-and-answers/

In that article, he discusses how Kentucky tried something similar under Stoops back in 2014 and 2015.  Kentucky would get off to good starts to the season, including 5-1 in 2014, but then went 5-7 and weren't physical down the stretch of the season.  Stoops went to a more old school practice and wound up 7-5.

He tries to address worries about these things in the second article, but he never really does beyond simply dismissing them out of hand and saying that more grueling workouts aren't really better, but players are more confident because of them so they play better (which, it would seem to me... actually shows that the more old school approach is better).  The one piece of actual evidence he sites (Kentucky) seems to prove the opposite of what he's trying to sell.

I'm not disagreeing with the idea that you should be efficient and not beat your players up or work them to death without recovery.  "Grueling" workouts were a poor choice of words on my part: I should have said "traditional."

I once played under a coach who was a fan of 4 hour, full contact practices all week, including Thursdays.  That left us beat up and exhausted when game time started.  You don't have to convince me that's a bad idea.

But the point is that a "speed-based" practice plan he advocates is really a radical departure from the "skills based" practice plans that are discussed on here, though.  In another thread, coaches said the best thing they did this year was treat Thursday as a normal, full padded practice day.  To him, that's a huge mistake.

The idea that you only work on scheme once a week and only let players run full speed once a week on a different day... those are unconventional and provocative, though he doesn't provide much support to back them up besides drawing on his experience as a coach of track athletes.

I didn’t see the part where he said only work on scheme one day a week. I have read both articles and I guess I missed it.

The way I read it is that you have a hard day. The next day should be lighter for recovery. So I have a harder more contact more running practice on Monday and Wednesday and lighter more thought and skill on Tuesday and Thursday

I would encourage anyone to attend his Track Football Consortium. Go with an open mind. I have coached Football AND track for 18 years. Holler is a great guy. But if you know anything about track he associates with a ton of outlier type guys. People who are into neural theory and PhD types. If you go to one of his clinics you will be listening to a Westside Barbell guy and then an hour later listening to some PhD candidate telling you how dumb you are because you don't understand the krebs cyle as it relates to football workouts.

It was in the first article, where he outlines his ideal week of practice.

"Game-Prep Wednesday – 90 minutes of practice that football coaches love the most … the chess game. 75% of a football coach’s attention seems to be focused on the next opponent. The hours and hours of watching film (old school term of course) pollutes the brain and creates a near-psychotic obsession with the other team’s formations, tendencies, schemes, etc. My weekly plan forces football coaches to focus inward until Wednesday. Defensive recognition, review, and special teams can be addressed in this one practice session. No sprinting. No conditioning. Do nothing on Wednesday that will interfere with “Super-Speed Thursday”. Weight room following practice should be effective minimum dose upper-body work. Wednesday is a recovery day."

His 4 day play was to work fundamentals without running full speed on Mon., run full speed and work fundamentals again on Tues., then coach scheme and special teams on Wed. before doing a short, low-volume walkthrough on Thursday.  His ideal 3 day play condenses the "Fundamental Monday" and "Game Prep Wednesday" into one day: Tuesday.  You'd run wide open Monday, do that stuff on Tuesday, do a quick 1 hour walkthrough in shirts on Wed., and then take Thursday off.

I guess I'm mostly confused about how much "dosage" of wide open running he's trying to tell us we should do on the non-full speed days.  I thought he meant zero at first.  He says to only run all out, full speed 1 day a week in practice, but then he says to do a quick walkthrough in shirts where players run at "game speed" but only for a very quick practice so they can recover by Friday.

In-season conditioning is a waste.  You can't do enough of it to be effective during the time you need it.  For me it's even more of a waste, because I coach children, and endurance never makes a difference in their games.  When they say they're tired, they really mean they're bored, afraid, or have performance anxiety.

Most in-season agility drills are a similar waste, because again, you can't do it enough to be effective during the time you need it.  Work on the particular moves you need instead.

And I have my ticket to TFC 8. I am also eager to get my RPR level 2 training. Soon I hope.

So... my question for 60zgo and Davs, since you follow his advice, is a simple one:

How do you figure "minimum effective dose with rest between reps" and put that into practice effectively enough to still adequately teach football-specific skills at a high level?

For example, if a receiver is resting 4-5 plays in practice for every route he runs at full speed, and you only run 20 plays in team period, then he's only going to get 3-5 reps in a 10 minute period. When you've pared the playbook down as much as possible, but you're a passing team with 6 core concepts to rep, aren't those football specific skills and the nuances going to erode or never even develop?

I'm all for taking as much of the grind out of practice as possible, including doing as little contact and unnecessary running as possible to keep guys fresh and healthy. My big concern is "what defines a 'minimum effective dose?'" and "how much of a tradeoff between skill development and explosiveness in games is there?"