I just returned from 10 days in Northern California.  I worked out every day, running 2-4 miles, or walking 3-6 miles.  The terrain is flat, and more importantly, the temperature was in the 70’s with NO humidity.  It felt great – like I could run forever… that I could Do More!

I just finished a run at home in downtown Kansas City – my first since returning.  The temperature was not oppressive (in the 70’s) but it IS humid, and the terrain is hilly.  After a mere 1.5 miles, with a hill ahead, and sweating like a P.I.G. my jog turned into a walk.  Sure, some of it was mental, but keep in mind that my perception is my reality.  In my head, if the humidity and hills are killing me physically… then the humidity and hills are killing me physically.

Two things to point out regarding your athletes (and you) as we head into the depths of summer:

1. Heat (and humidity) Acclimation
2. Movement Acclimation

Heat Acclimation

Dr. Daniel Lorenz posted a very good article on the PrepsKC site outlining the importance of, and steps to, get acclimated to the summer heat.  It pretty much follows the MSHSAA (and other state High School activity associations as well) protocol for heat acclimation.  It is a physical AND mental acclimation process.  I am preaching to the choir, I know, but the more of your athletes (and coaches) that can be acclimated by the end of summer and the start of practice, the more efficient your actual practice time will be.

Movement Acclimation

I was not ready physically or mentally for the challenge of the hills in my run today.  I had spent nearly two weeks running on flat terrain.  Are your athletes training in the summer doing things that will carry over into your practices?   Are they getting down, and coming out of the stance they will be using?  Are they practicing the movements they will be doing in their position group – backpedaling, shuffling, 3 step drop, pass set, defensive charge? Are they completing explosive movements for a short duration – the length of a football play?  If not, even if they have been working out, when it comes time for practice, they will be smacked in the face like I was in my run today.

Two very good conditioning drills that will help get your football athletes ready: Pattern Runs, and 40 yard dash drill.  I have detailed each in these posts – Two Birds With One Stone, and Great Football Conditioning Test .

The Pattern Run Drill, which we got from the Kansas City Chiefs, is the best football conditioning drill I have ever used.

The diagram above is a sample of the Running Back pattern runs.  The entire workout is explained in the post Two Birds With One Stone.

Questions and comments are always welcomed!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

The concept and term that Coach Batoon brought to our staff was EDD’s – Every Day Drills.

For every position group there are a set of basic fundamentals that they need to master in order to be successful on the playing field.  For DB’s it might be the shuffle, back peddle, crossover and run.  For the LB’s that I coached it was stance, read step (start) and shuffle.  The point is, every position group on the field has this set of fundamentals that are important enough to do EVERY day – hence the name EDD’s.

All the coaches on my defensive staff were teaching these drills, but we were all going through the process of writing down each drill, every day, on the practice schedule.  Coach Batoon helped us streamline the process of setting our practice schedule, and also helped us imprint the idea on our players that these drills were important; they were important enough to do every day; they were our position group’s EDD’s

I cannot tell you what the EDD’s for your position group should be…  that depends on your (and your coordinator and head coach’s) philosophy.  What I can tell you is that from my experience, many coaches, especially the first few days of spring or fall practice, tend to hurry through these basic fundamentals in order to get on to the process of installation.  Often they assume, especially if they have veteran, experienced players, that they already know this “basic” stuff.  I think this is a mistake.  I have observed many successful coaches, in many successful programs at all levels – high school, college, pro – and one thing they all have in common – they all spend time teaching their athletes fundamentals; they spend time coaching their position group’s EDD’s.

Below is a picture of a defensive practice schedule from a couple of years ago.  You can see how we began teaching the concept of EDD’s with each position group.  You can download the Excel practice schedule template by clicking on the picture – or clicking the link – practice schedule template.

Next week – more about scheduling practices

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

As a coach, it is extremely important that we are doing a great job of teaching important concepts, and that we have ways to “check for understanding” with our players.  We do not want to wait until our final “test”, our contest Friday night, to see if our players have understood a particular concept, play, or defense.  If our players have not “gotten it” by that time, game time, then it is too late.

Coach Keith Grabowski, Offensive Coordinator at Baldwin Wallace University, had an excellent post last week discussing the Retention of Learning and the “Learning Pyramid”.  In it, he details various ways to improve meetings, play insertion, practice and drill time.  I would like to share and piggyback off of a few of his ideas.  In preparation for Spring Practice, Coach Grabowski had these thoughts:

“With our coaches the message was to make meeting time as interactive as possible and to move away from lecturing and having their players read bullet points off a Power Point (lowest retention rate of learning). Instead, I wanted them to move towards using dynamic content whether that was Power Point diagrams with animations, still shot step-by-step illustrations with coaching points, film or preferably a combination of those things.   I encouraged our coaches to make the meetings as interactive as possible: Ask questions, have a player demonstrate, have them all stand up and show exactly the footwork or hand placement we expect. Don’t just allow the players to be passive learners.”

Yesterday, I used a play from Coach Grabowski’s playbook in my Advanced Strength and Conditioning Class.  We were evaluating video tape of their Power Clean technique. I used film from our previous class day, which I had exported to Hudl.  As each student’s clip came up, they were given the instruction to “Coach themselves and the rest of the class, focusing on 1) Power Position 2) Explosion Phase and 3) The Catch.”

We normally would do this in our Lecture Hall where it is a little more conducive to this type of teaching method, but it was being used.  We had to “monitor and adjust” and set up a film viewing station in our weight room.  Here is a clip showing one student-athlete going through this process.  The quality of the film is a little rough, but you can see and hear what is going on:

Coach Grabowski also discussed the benefits of making a screencast (or screen recording) of a presentation:

“I also encouraged them [coaches] to use our editing system to prepare video walk thru – essentially a screen cast of them talking through a play and giving coaching points. I like this method for an install because your comments as a coach are saved and accessible for player review later, whereas if you just talk through video in a meeting, once the meeting is over, there is nothing for the player to refer back to.”

My post yesterday , Making a Screen Recording, details how to make a screencast, or screen recording.

Coach Grabowski also took this philosophy out to the practice field:

“I also believe that our coaches do a great job organizing and preparing their practice drills and periods to be efficient and effective. As the learning pyramid shows, this has a 75% retention rate. The biggest area I encouraged both our players and coaches to improve on was having the players coach each other. I want every player not involved in the drill to be coaching and helping his teammates. I want the players to develop a coach’s eye for proper technique. I want them to understand and be able to see exactly right versus almost right.”

“To facilitate this I asked our coaches to follow a simple procedure:
1. Name the drill they are working and give the exact coaching points (being very efficient with language) that they are looking for.
2. The players should then be looking for those coaching points being executed by their teammates if they are waiting their turn.
3. They should also work to use the precise language that the coaches use. In all we do, we want to be able to communicate a coaching point in one to three words.”

You can see my thoughts on organizing practice drill work at this post: Running an Effective Drill

By implementing technology and insisting on interactive teaching and coaching methods from his coaches and players, Coach Grabowski is “checking for understanding” on a daily basis in the Baldwin Wallace football program.  Which instructional methods from the Learning Pyramid are you using to teach your student athletes in the classroom, in the weight room, or on the field?

Thanks to Coach Grabowski for providing a daily dose of great information via his blog: Coach and Coordinator.  You can follow Coach Grabowski on Twitter @CoachKGrabowski.

Questions and Comments are always welcome!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com     Follow Me on Twitter   @youcandomore1

My Squidoo Page – You Can Do More!

1. Have a name for the drill – that way when you run it successive times, you don’t need to spend as much time explaining it.
2. Teach the athletes what technique(s) you are trying to improve with the drill.
3. Have the drill set up prior to the athletes arriving at your station.
4. Have an organized progression as to how the athletes move through the drill – for example “the first person in line will be the ball carrier.  You will go from being the ball carrier, to tackler, to the end of the line.”
5. Don’t be a part of the drill – Coach!
6. Give the athletes specific instructions regarding the speed of the drill – Is it full speed, ½ speed, or walk through.
7. Give the athletes a specific start point for the drill.
8. Give the athletes a specific end point for the drill.

These are simple concepts that make for effective daily teaching.

Comments and Questions are always welcome!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com     Twitter   @youcandomore1

Visit my Squidoo Lens – You Can Do More!

During the spring of 1992, our defensive coaching staff at the  University of Central Missouri took a learning trip to several universities, including Oklahoma State University, to learn more about the 4-3 Defense they were running.  Billy Miller was the defensive coordinator at the time, and OSU had a history with the 4-3 that could be traced back to Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt.

We were able to spend some great meeting time with their staff and then watched a couple of their spring practices.  At their first practice they ran a crazy drill that Coach Miller had warned us about – they called it the fumble score drill, and is diagramed below.

It was a spirited, high-energy drill, and all the coaches and players were having fun with it.  As a defensive staff we decided that we would implement the drill, but I knew as defensive coordinator that I would have to do some “selling” to get our head coach to agree that it would be productive practice time.

When we talked to our head coach, Terry Noland, about the drill, we told him all of the great fundamentals that we would be working on.; footwork and pad level while we were going over the bags, and the correct technique of recovering a fumble.  We talked about how recovering the fumble was job #1 – everything else was secondary.  We taught that if they were in any traffic at all, or had any difficulty recovering the ball, do not attempt to scoop and run, but curl and recover. We kind of glossed over the whole idea of defensive lineman and linebackers pitching the ball to a teammate part of the drill!

We implemented the drill during our pre-season camp, and ran it at least once a week.  It became one of our weekly team defensive drills.  Just as it was with OSU, it was a high energy drill that the athletes and coaches both had fun with.  One day, as a big lumbering defensive lineman recovered a fumble and pitched it to another, big lumbering defensive lineman, our head coach came over and said something on the order of “this is all well and good, but the first time we lose the ball when a DL tries pitching it, you will have some explaining to do.”

Our first game that season, 1992, was against the University of North Alabama, who would go on the become National Champions that year.  In the second quarter, on an option play, our corner made a jarring tackle on their RB out in the flat.  Our safety scooped up the ball and raced down the field until the QB caught him.  Right before going down, he pitched the ball to the corner who ended up taking it into the end zone for the TD and the go-ahead score.  We ended up losing that game 16-17, but defensively gained great confidence.

Over the next 4 weeks our defense scored a TD in a 10-7 win vs Missouri Southern State University and another in a 24-10 win vs Southwest Baptist University.  Against Northwest Missouri State University in our 5^th game that season we set up a score in a 10-7 win.

By this point in the season, the fumble score drill became the high point of our practice.  Even if we wanted to eliminate the drill, our players would have revolted.  They believed!  They believed that because we were doing this drill each week, we were scoring defensive touchdowns.

The bottom line – we talked about recovering fumbles and taught the correct way to do it.  We talked about scoring on defense and taught the correct way to do it.  After 5 games into the season, we had scored 3 TD’s and set up another score for our offense. The previous season we scored exactly zero touchdowns!

What seeds are you sowing with your players?  What crop do you want to reap next fall?

Comments and Questions are always welcome

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com       Twitter  @youcandomore1

Stop by the Squidoo Lens – You Can Do More!

The object of the test is to run 10 – 40 yard dashes with a 30 second rest between each 40, with each 40 time falling within .50 seconds of the athletes personal best time.

• 40 yards x 10 reps – 30 seconds rest between reps.
• Each 40 within .5 seconds of your personal best
• Example – Johnny Joe has a 4.49 personal best 40 time.  He must run all 10 40′s in 4.99 seconds or under.

In addition to being one of the best conditioning tests for football that I have seen, it was also a good speed/ conditioning workout.  We asked our athletes to run this test on their own once a month over the summer and send their results back to us on campus so we could monitor their progress.  When they reported for double day practices in the Fall, this test was part of a battery we put our athletes through.

This test was a much better indicator of being in football playing shape, or football conditioning than was the 1600m test.  You can download a pdf of the card we used over the summer at this link : 40 test card

Tomorrow – The Breaking Curve

Any Questions?  Just comment or email – I will respond!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

My Squidoo Lens – You Can Do More!

This quality is related to speed and explosion, which were discussed in previous posts (Purple Cow Quality #2 Speed and Explosion-how to get it) but slightly different. Coaches look for the ability of an athlete to change directions, stop and start, adjust angles, and their overall body control.  Some of this can be measured by tests, the most notable the NFL Pro Agility shuttle test.  This video is one of the best descriptions of the NFL Pro Agility shuttle test (also known as the short shuttle, or 5-10-5 shuttle) I have seen.

Aside from testing, coaches will evaluate film, and possibly evaluate performances in other sports such as basketball or wrestling.

How do you improve your Athleticism and Quickness thereby improving your time in the NFL Pro Agility Drill?   How do you develop Purple Cow Quickness? Now that would be REALLY remarkable… a Quick Purple Cow!

Much of the same type of training (plyometics, dynamic weight training, etc.) that lends itself to increased speed and explosiveness will help improve quickness, too.  In addition, if you are currently not doing quickness drills as part of your workout program, ask your coach for a program you can do on your own, or look at some of these drills:

These links are an excellent series of drill,  Lateral Speed and Change of Direction Drills, from Central College:

• 1-2-1 Shuffle 
• 1-Knee Start 
• Box Drill 
• Hop to Lateral Sprint 
• Lane Shuffle 
• L-Jump 
• Pro Agility 
• Skate Hop 
• Sprint Agility 
• T-Drill 
• Triangle Agility 
• W-Drill 
• X-Drill

Here is the Lane Shuffle Drill

And the Sprint Agility Drill

This link (Florida Gator Agility and Foot Quickness Drills ) will take you to another list of football specific drills from the Florida Gators Strength and Conditioning Coach.  There are drill descriptions and some accompanying video: 

Another good series, and time tested set of drills are the BFS (Bigger Faster Stronger) dot drills.  Here is a pdf file explaining the drills: BFS Dot Drill and this video showing an athlete completing the drills.

Like all the other qualities I have discussed, mastering this one does not come easy, or all at once.  Practice, improve, and become a Quick Purple Cow!

Tomorrow video and coaching points on the first of our four core lifts, the Bench Press.

As always, any questions comment or email… I will answer!

Check out this resource as well – My Squidoo page – You Can Do More!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

The workout consists of our athletes completing a series of jump rope patterns, doing each pattern for 25 seconds, with 5 seconds off to reset and communicate the next pattern.  We will go through the following patterns 2-3 times, totaling 25-30 minutes of jump rope time.  You can download a short video that shows two of our athletes demonstrating each of these patterns by clicking on this link:  Jump Rope Demo Video  (or click on the picture above)

• 2 feet jump in the same place
• 2 feet front to back
• 2 feet side to side
• 2 feet round the clock (12-3-6-9) clockwise
• 2 feet round the clock (12-9-6-3) counter clockwise
• Right foot only in the same place
• Left foot only in the same place
• Right foot only front to back*
• Left foot only front to back*
• Right foot only side to side*
• Left foot only side to side
• Right foot only round the clock clockwise
• Left foot only round the clock clockwise
• Right foot only round the clock counter clockwise
• Left foot only round the clock counter clockwise
• Alternating Right and Left foot jumps
• Ali Shuffle
• Backwards

* Not shown on video

After going through these patterns 2-3 times, we conclude with the following jumps, all with a 10-second rest in between

• 30 seconds – as many jumps as possible
• 20 seconds – as many jumps as possible
• 15 seconds – as many jumps as possible
• 10 seconds – as many jumps as possible
• 5 seconds – as many jumps as possible
• 60 second cool down – choice of jump at a comfortable pace
• 45 second cool down – choice of jump at a comfortable pace

All the patterns are completed using the following guidelines:

1. 1 jump per turn of the rope
2. Stress staying on the balls of the feet
3. If jumping on 2 feet, stress landing on both feet and jumping off both feet at the same time.
4. If they miss (and they will at some point during the 30 minutes!) then they must get right back to spinning the rope

If you have any questions, please comment or email.

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

This “Pattern Run” conditioning workout is designed to help you improve your conditioning for football by performing different movements specific to the position you play. The Pattern Run workout was developed by strength coaches in the NFL, primarily Russ Ball (then of the Kansas City Chiefs now with the Green Bay Packers). While at the University of Central Missouri, our staff received permission from Coach Ball to use it with our players (Coach Ball is a graduate of the University of Central Missouri) and when members of our staff moved to William Jewell College, we used this workout, and had excellent results, with our players there, too.

There are different patterns for each football position group.  A description of the workout, as well as diagrams (including target times and distances) for each position can be downloaded at this link:  Pattern Run Workout

Keep in mind that the target times are for college athletes, and the pattern terminology is what we used at the University of Central Missouri and William Jewell College.  This workout could easily be adapted using your terminology and a adjusting the times to the targeted fitness level of your players.

If you have any questions about this workout, or anything else I have shared, leave a comment or email.

You Can Do More… your brain is lying to you…. don’t believe it!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com