conditioning before practice?

i belive in it. kids have to learn how to play when they are tired. it is great for lineman. also if you are a no huddle team, it helps as well.
just my opinions however.

i like the middle screen so we use this as a conditioner on air. it gets everyone running.

Interesting stuff. That is the way we did it in college and I've always thought about incorporating it in to our stuff now at high school. How do you handle the athletes that coast during conditioning knowing that they have practice remaining?

If you have read the book "Coaching Football Successfully" by former Augustana College Coach Bob Reade he mentions "stations" in his chapter on practice organization. After warm-ups his teams would go through 4-6 fundamental stations (agility, tackling, blocking, ropes, etc.) and finish with the 40 second drill (across and back the field twice). After these were completed the players took a break and went into individual and team work. There was no conditioning scheduled at the end of practice.

After 26 seasons of this format he had lost only 27 games total. A lot of people in Illinois have adopted this strategy and it continues to be successful for all the reasons that you mentioned above. I feel it is important to use fundamental drills to condition rather than just straight running.

Well guys here's an Idea to conditioning that we used when I was in College about a year agao, we called it "MPC" it's Middle of Practice Conditioning , what it is a 10-15min. slot incorporated into the practice time for conditioning whether it be the length of the field twice in 45 sec. or the Pittsburg drill we use to do this about half way through practice, My coaches say it gets us to focus on finishing strong when you are tired. trust me it works .(IMO) and I plan on using it with my HS team this upcoming season to see if it works just as it did in College for me.

We do conditioning twice per day. We run at the begining of practice and then finish with either a conditioning team drill (KO/KO return) or more sprints. However, if the kids bust thier butts we cut back or eliminate the sprints at the end.

In college, we regularly ran 10x100's, 10x40's, 5 sideline to SL,SL,SL gassers, all timed by position, then 4 quarters of updowns (25each quarter) on hit/hit,hit cadence with arms to ear holes/thigh pads, any flinches or delays in movement added quarters.
We start practice with stretch, agilities and 10 40's, but don't consider it conditioning, thats just warming up. We have tried to incorporate conditioning into everyday drills, like playtiming on air through sets of cones for 30 yards (weave drill), or two minute offense up and down the field. We also do a drill called Burma Roads where we set up the tall tackling dummies about 40 yards apart zigzagging down the field with 6 dummies, the players sprint to the dummy, tackle it, pop up and continue through all the dummies down the field, any loafing or not tackling it full speed gets the player moved directly to the front of the line without rest to do it again. For competition, we do shuttle relay races where the players carrier the dummies 40yds to their teammates. Sometimes when practice just isn't getting done with intensity, we will stop whatever we are doing and go back to the "old school" and just line up and run till the whistle runs out of air.

We start every practice with a 10 minute county fair

Get every player going somewhere (punters = punt, kickers = kick, snappers = snap, returners are fielding for kickers and punters, TE, WB's catching balls from QB's, OL in an OL segment working anything that needs to be worked on)
Next we do Dynamic Warmup
Than we follow with 10 minute agility stations
we go to special team of the day after the above....

has worked well for us so far