As the 2015 season approaches, one thing you can do to prepare is make a list of “Daily Vitamins”
These “Daily Vitamins” are the things each position group must do every day in practice. These techniques may not make better today but the accumulation of these reps will make you better in the long run. The greatest lesson I learned as a young football coach was the value of daily reps to master a technique. The biggest mistake I see a coach make is looking for “The Quantum Leap” in improvement. I’ve made this mistake myself. I wanted to see improvement NOW. That’s like looking for a one punch knockout.
If you happened to see the Pacquiao – Mayweather fight; Manny was looking for the one punch KO while Mayweather won by a thousand jabs. Coaching is like Mayweather, mastering technique by a thousand reps. It takes tremendous patience & perseverance to do this but the result will be a team that:
1. Can out-execute their opponents
2. Gets better every week & will peak at the end of the year
3. Perform their technique under pressure & win close games.
To decide what your “Daily Vitamins” are you must examine your offense. What are the key techniques for the Offensive Line? In the Triple Gun it starts with stance & starts. The offensive line must come off the ball in a two point stance. All other techniques are worthless without mastering the take off. Then continue to list their other vitamins (drive blocking, double teams etc.).
Then examine your receiver position, then running backs and quarterbacks. What are the key techniques they must master? Then list those like you did for the offensive line. So eventually you’ll have a chart for every position group.
If you are a position coach make a detailed list just for your position that you can work in pre-practice or in your individual periods. For example: Wide receivers must work on releasing against press coverage every day or press coverage will destroy your pass game.
Some Coaching Points For Daily Vitamins:
1. Once you list the critical vitamins that must be worked on every day – choose the drills to best master these techniques.
2. Vary the drills to prevent boredom. Make sure you get technique time vs the defense. For example, work the wide receivers on release vs press against the secondary after learning the skill with just receivers. Make the drill vs the secondary competitive.
3. Make sure the skill taught in individual drills is carried over into group work. For example, getting off press coverage in 7 on 7.
4. These Vitamins only are effective if taken EVERY DAY. This is where the daily discipline is really important because it’s so easy to skip a day because you’re not going to notice if you miss a day nor are you going to notice if you do it – it is THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. The accumulation of ALL the days makes the difference. So it takes the everyday discipline of quality reps to make a difference.
5. There are no shortcuts, there are no magic bullets or Quantum Leaps there is just the Daily Discipline of accumulated reps that create great performance.
Good Luck in 2015 & remember to take your vitamins