Sprint Based Football - Feed the Cats

As far as a twelve month program yes. Actual in season practice is far less. The mental side is harder now. Despite what many on this board want to believe about themselves the game itself harder and more demanding than what it was in the past. With all of the options they have I respect a kid who plays football today a whole lot more than I do myself or my peers. 

It's physically more demanding in almost every position, especially on defense... I would say the mental load across the board is higher because they have far more to deal with than we did. They have better things to do and way more distractions.

How is it physically more demanding? You playing a different game than I played or coached? How is the mental load more? Zone blocking, for instance, has made OL monumentally easier IMO. In a lot of schemes, there's only 3-5 blocking schemes. Total. Hell, the spread was the rage to take thinking out of the game and "let athletes make plays in space".

I also would disagree with distractions. I know I sound 1000 years old, bit we had video games. We had jobs. We had cell phones. We still played 2 and 3 sports.

Nope. Social Studies. Pretty good at it too.

And, wtf does that have to do with anything?

I respectfully disagree with this.  When I played we had no summer contact other than lifting.  Now teams have 25 days of summer camp (pre-season) which has led to larger playbooks that, when done correctly by a solid program can still be executed at a very high level.  

Been coaching for 25 years and b/c of year round lifting in the last 15-20 years kids are getting bigger, faster and stronger. 

It also used to be when I first started, the defense you saw on film was pretty static. Now we see multi fronts, multi coverages all of the time.  I can only speak from my experience but back in the day we basically saw 1 look from the defense.  Now we tend to see more variations.  

I feel from a coaching standpoint this has made things more challenging and this gets passed onto the kids through more audibles and prep time to maintain a high execution curve.  And, like I stated before, at least in my area, kids have improved physically due to more training, hence IME the game is more challenging both mentally and physically for kids and coaches.

JMO though.

So good. As far as education movies I have to go with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" but this is a close second.

Update for the FTC crowd : Brad Dixon and Camp Point Central (CPC) won the 1a state championship in Illinois this morning. They took down the Lena-Winslow (LW) Panthers, who were playing for a 4th consecutive state title and have not lost a game since the spring Covid season in 2021. Last year, LW beat CPC 30-8 in the title game. Today, CPC won 14-0. The LW line outweighed the CPC line by almost 50lbs a man yet CPC controlled the line of scrimmage. By the 4th Qt, CPC had worn LW down. I have never seen that happen to a LW team in the postseason. Tip of the cap to Coach Dixon and the CPC Panthers. 

So, needless to say, Coach Dixon is going to be a really popular and busy guy this offseason.   

I have not heard of LW being an actual “FTC” school, at least to the extent that CPC is. With that being said, they do have a very strong track and field tradition. Historically, the best football players at LW do track and field (or the best track and field athletes played football, however you want to look at it). In fact, the former LW T&F coach, who has since retired, was the LW JV coach for a really long time. So the football program at LW certainly supports the T&F program and encourages football players to do track (and vice versa).

I am interested in FTC philosophy, but I would like to see an actual example of the program laid out. Anyone know where I can find one?

WOW

Hang in there Coach!



By the way, they are right. Baseball practice shouldn't be harder than football practice so tell the baseball coach to work on the things that matter in baseball instead of conditioning. Hey, wait. Now I am guilty of criticizing a program that I know nothing about. Anyways, congrats on turning the program around.

I was never officially a FTC guy, but I ran into a similar situation in 2010 when I took over for a guy who had been there for 25 years. I stopped practicing on Saturdays, I quit endlessly running at the end of practice, I quit doing conditioning stuff that had no point (mostly things like bear crawls, monkey rolls, crab walks, etc). We started out rough (4-5 my first year, which was below the norm there) and I heard all the same things you do. I was too soft, we'd never win unless I punished kids, "back  in my day I had to bear crawl around the practice field for xxx minutes", etc. Year 2 we went 6-4, won the conference and started a 24 game regular season win streak. Suddenly, no one had a problem. 

If you like what you're doing, and it's being successful, {censored} those idiots. 

One thing I think we are forgetting here is that teenagers have an unbelievable recovery time. Can't tell you how many times we've finished a pretty grueling practice only to find kids goofing off, running around near the parking lot waiting for their kids to pick them up. We're not dealing with old men with back pain who have 1 good play left in them.

Smartassery aside, I agree. I also think that grinding them for 16 straight weeks can be very detrimental.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd definitely lighten up a LOT more toward the end of the season if I thought we had a chance to make a run. I didn't do that in 13 and it will always eat at me. The what if.

There's a grass area by the parking lot where kids hang out and wait to get picked up. Inevitably, there's always some kind of grab assery, tag type of game. Other times, I've seen kids go from football practice to playing a pick up basketball game on the blacktop courts near the locker room. The point is they have a high level of recovery. 

I'm not saying rest isn't important and that we shouldn't run them to the ground everyday, but I can't help but think that the only way to get fast is to sprint a lot. The only way to get strong, is to lift a lot. I think the practice restrictions we have now keep that from happening anyway.