Thursday, March 08, 2007

this is madness...

THIS IS SPARTA!!!

Ok, i'm a hedonist. Mr. train all the time is going to the midnight show of 300... what can i say... i'm raised on star wars, raiders, jaws, and matrix, 3 of which i saw on opening day....

today at practice: 34 kids. here's how i organized it. 6 groups of 5. the extra 4 showed up late. 1 full field (technically small, 90 x 30). 2 dutch drill fields. one space for drills.

throw.
1 mile warm up
pair throwing (while i set up cones)
dynamics : each event, 30 yds w/ 30 yd stride. 3 x high knees (strides), butt kicks (Strides), side to side (Strides), karaoke (stride), teardowns (strides), skips (strides), 2 x build ups.
marking drill (one set no arms, one set full mark, both develop foot work, and confidence in new throwers)
then, 1 hour of 6 minute sets of cycling through. if you were group 1, you would go, scrimmage, scrimmage, dutch, dutch, drill, drill... there was some overlap that led to varied competitiion.
mixed in: i would pull aside 1 kid for every set, play catch, and then give them 'something to work on'. so, i only got to a small fraction, but with this system, i'll get to every kid every week or two for a few minutes. today, i coached handlers. mostly focused on simple stuff. basic practice form. and mark breaking. i might have had the same kids huck, but it was windy, and i was looking for success. also, i've got a few 'special athletes'... new players juggling track v. frisbee, and they are good, so frankly i gave them some help.
then i spent 5 minutes only reviewing our simple endzone 'o' version one. it's very simple, so i won't share it. then we scrimmaged 2 fields for 20 minutes.
then, i built a 2nd field, and let them play. i got in a few throws then, then i'd concentrate on running out to tell the 'o' team to 'run the play we've drilled' and 'burn some time on the goal line to get an endzone play call'.
pretty successful.

so i've got 35 kids. 17 don't know what a mark or a force is yet. and the result is positive. by not playing, i'm already seeing new players take leadership roles. i'm also missing 10 players who are ski racing still. 3 of them are 'varsity'. i may end up with 50 kids! sweet. the structure of the practice, my large single field (equivalent to 2.5 full fields) allows me to set up stations easily:

coaching strategy:
i had my 'varsity' run an endzone drill. here is the way i do that for HS.
13 players and me... you get a partner. we play everybody's it tag (if you are tagged, you are frozen, until the person who tagged you is touched, then you are free. the point is to get kids to run willy nilly around for a few seconds. then, i grab my partner, usually the best kid, and one of goes, WHITE ON OFFENSE. STACK. The defender yells FORCE SOMETHING (forehand, backhand (i'll bring up my reasons for opposing use of home/away later) They jump up, and stack, and we call our offense.

works well.

Personal. After practice, i went for a 40 minute, 11Km ski. Felt good. Got dinner, now, up too late..

THIS IS SPARTA!!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luke, remind your loyal readers what the dutch drill is again... Thanks.

supertaster said...

i am coaching a middle school team. love the post. keep them comming.

Anonymous said...

and tear downs.

Luke said...

dutch drill... box drill, whatever. x vs x in a game in a box. x can be anywhere from 2 up, and the box can be small or big. complete y passes in a row for a 'score'. if i'm playing w/ good players, it's 10 passes. for new kids, 5 passes. box size, number of passes, number of players all affect the game. very good conditioning activity, lots of fun.

teardowns: chicken scratch walk, modified russian step . ok you do your high knees, but then you kick out, and tear down... foot strike should be under body, like if you were running... i think it's pretty intuitive if you've seen it...

uh, my preferred order for those things is to only slowly increase range of motion... the teardowns and skips come after the high knees and buttkicks..