Conditioning during practice?

maybe in 2-a-days (fall camp) ... but once the season starts, create up-tempo practices that condition the players.

Id rather strength train for 15 minutes than do a bunch of cals and monkey rolls and that useless stuff.

we lift 3-4 times a week during the season as part of our practice. we usually end practice with hills or relay races because sprinting a couple of times a week is a good thing in my opinion.

I like a county fair style set up for blocking adn tackling stations, I also like many reps at running our plays vs cone defenses, no huddle, just check assignments and go, fast pace, good conditioning and good way to keep athletes thinking assignments when gassed.

First three days (helmets only) are supposed to be for conditioning and we will do quite a bit - still have a few stragglers who weren't around much in summer and need it.

After we put pads on we do more "finish" drills (something football-related) than running.

During season we do "concealed running" or finish drill at end of practice. We are concerned with their legs being fresh on game night.

We try to have very high tempo practices so kids get a lot of conditioning during.

We run some after practice. Personally I don't know that we need to because we run a very high-tempo practice. The kids, though, seem to expect them, feel that it gives them an extra edge. Does it make a difference? I don't know. Physiologically, probably not. Mentally? Well, it seems to matter to them so I guess it does.

During our first 2-3 days we will run some county fair style circuits. But no monkey rolls LOL. They will be:
1. Bags
2. Ropes
3. Tire Flips
4. Pushups and situps
5. Reactions

After these first three days we are done with this. I believe in getting in shape by practicing football full speed. We do a ton of half-line at warp speed. For D practices we perform pursuit drills and tip drills. If one guy is not hustling it does not count. Something we are going to try this year is awarding points to how many defenders get to the ball carrier in pursuit drill within 'x" seconds of the first touch. The number of players who make a tag within that time will equal the points awarded (7 guys = 7 points.) Then go to 100 points or something like that.

In short we are rewarding hustle and proper angles.

I got this drill from a coach I worked with at another school. GENIUS game. It is called "Punt for Points."

Align 11 lines at the 40 yard line (going in). Then in the middle place your long snappers and kickers. Place a coach on the 10 yard line, the 5 yard line, and the goal line. Depending on your punter you could align closer or farther away.

Long snapper 1 will snap the ball to the punter who will punt the ball. He must call out the direction. LS and P will not run sprint down unless you have a bunch of those guys.

On the snap the 11 players on the line will chop thier feet and on the "THUD" of the ball being kicked they sprint down the field. They must find the ball and down it inside the 10. If the ball is downed between the 5-10 the team earns 1 point. Inside the 5 yardline 2 points. Inside the 2 yardline 3 points. Inside the 1 then 4 points. If the punter coffin corners it inside the 5 you get 5 points. If the ball goes in the endzone no points are awarded.

The other stipulation is all players must get to the downed punt within a few seconds of it being picked up. We will leave that to the coach's discression b/c the 5-9/310 pounder will not get there in 2 seconds for example. Once they have all huddled around the ball they will break it out and jog back around the outside of the field to thier lines. Also no points are awarded if the long snap is bad or if the punter does not call out a direction. We will put a stop watch to the longsnap-punt but not the first day.

We will play to 25 points for the team. We will have +/- 60 kids so when we 11 lines we'll have about 5-6 in a line when we pull out the long snappers and punters.

When you do this your kids will be busting-*** to get there.

We always condition. There is nothing worse than loosing a game because you were tired. But everyone gets tired. What I try and teach with the conditioning is the ability to dig deep when tired.

Here is the drill in macro terms. Tire them with about 10 mins of hard sprinting then introduce some kind of game usually a relay race where the winners are rewarded. This teaches the mind way more than the body. It teaches the ability to suck it up and play well when tired. I really regard this as mental conditioning not physical.

We do a curcuit like dcohio says during 2 a days. we are at each station for 8-10 reps..we try to simulate an 8-10 play drive..so the kids do a rep and rest approx 45 sec's just like in a game. each rep is approx 6-8 sec's long...IMo..we get more high quality reps like this. the idea is to explode, change direction, finish and then rest..we call this an active rest..Rest IMO is one of the least coached part of a football play.what are you doing IN BETWEEN plays..well, you have to rest..gather information..get a plan..get into a stance

When I played HS and College ball, we always ran sprints at the end of practice
I always "left enough fuel in the tanK" during the last hour of practice to make sure I made a descent showing during sprints
I want my youth kids to go all out at practice so we condition during practice, so they leave it all out on the practice field-
My favorite:

All backups 15-20 yards away - line painted on field
Offensive or defensive reps on air
Rep- See all fits correct- yell rotate-
Backups sprint in from line yelling who they are subbing for,
when they get to where their partner is- they slap hands and their subbing partner sprints to get behind the line
No one is allowed to cross line that isnt sprinting,
No one is allowed to cross the line that isnt yelling his partners name out
No one is allowed to go back in if they didnt sprint off the field

Allows us to: get real good at subbing correctly and quickly, condition, get everyone on our team involved and not standing around
I call the cadence so we can get 1 rep every 12-20 seconds- backs run plays out 10 yards, linemen freeze on second step if they arent pulling- pullers go to POA

Bingo... excellent point.

"Time is the only thing we all have in common"

What about situations where you are extremely thin at depth!?!? I'm coaching at the jv level and we have 6-7 backers depending on injuries or who is being moved up to the varsity and my players practice but are out of condition . when you couple this with the fact that only 3-4 of them are able to play full speed right now would it make sense to do extra positional conditioning with these players?!?! we run a 4-4 so I figure our LBs need to be the the players who are in the best shape.

You could make the argument that this is exactly the situation in which you do NOT need extra conditioning since all of the players are getting a lot of good work at practice.

First, our players are are in pretty decent shape after going through our winter, spring, and summer programs. After dynamic warmup, we go through a series of speed and agility drills. At first there were 5 stations, chaos, circle, shuttle, box, and T. Somedays we may not do all 5 but especially the first few days we do. Each station is 2 and a half minutes long. We are stressing the agility and speed part of the drill, but after 15 minutes of it, the kids get a pretty good workout. We also start each indy period with some kind of running drill (i.e. LBs might do some back drills, dbs might do some back pedal and break on the ball stuff) After practice we may run a little (5 40s or so) more for tradition than anything else. (Unless we have a bad practice.)

Your argument is better than mine for those circumstances.