High School Football Training for Dummies

High School Football

Imagine this, if you will….

It’s Memorial Day Monday.  You’ve spent some great time with friends and family, the past two days, enjoying the weather and simply catching up on life.

You should have one more day to relax, but instead, you’re woken by the alarm clock going off at 5:15 in the morning?

What the *?@#!@#$!!!!!

Oh wait, yeah that’s going off because little Johnny has football practice today at 6 am!

Think I’m exaggerating on this one?  Try again.

One of my high school football players made me privy to his off-season workout schedule, and it looked something like this.

Monday

6:00-7:30 or 8:00 am – Speed, power and agility workouts

5:00-6:30 pm – Strength and conditioning workouts

6:30-8:30 pm- Team and invidiual practice

Tuesday

6:00-7:30 or 8:00 am – Speed, power and agility workouts

5:00-6:30 pm – Strength and conditioning workouts

6:30-8:30 – Team and invidiual practice

Wednesday

6:00-7:30 or 8:00 am – Speed, power and agility workouts

5:00-6:30 pm – Strength and conditioning workouts

6:30-8:30 – Team and invidiual practice

Thursday

6:00-7:30 or 8:00 am – Speed, power and agility workouts

5:00-6:30 pm – Strength and conditioning workouts

6:30-8:30 – Team and invidiual practice

Friday

They do something here, but honestly I was so appalled at the rest of the week I think I tuned him out.

Saturday

Team 7-on-7 drills

If you are unable to practice/play, you must come in for 1-2 hours of individual conditioning.

The worst part?  It’s like all this all summer!  They have one week off in the middle (called moratorium week), but other than that, we have high school kids who are practicing football, lifting weights, or doing speed/agility/conditioning workouts upwards of 20+ hours a week!

I’m not sure what most NFL practice calendars look like leading up to mini-camp, but something tells me this schedule rivals what the Indianapolis Colts, Minnesota Vikings, or just about another other professional team does in a given week.

Seriously, is this stupid or what?

You see, last year high school football changed in Indiana.  Instead of waiting until late July or early August to fire up the practice schedule, now practice can start as the previous school year is over!

What happened to going to the pool for a while?

Or going to a movie with your friends?

Or even doing something as bengin as playing XBox or Wii for a few hours?

I’m all for kids getting out and being active, but this is ludicrous.

And the worst part is, I don’t put all the blame on the coaches.  Sure, they have some control over all this, but at the end of the day their job is going to ride on wins and losses.

I get it.

Where the problem really starts is at the administrative level.  Whichever board of directors, group of administrators, etc. allowed this are a group of idiots, and people who obviously don’t get it when it comes to youth sports.

You want to make kids hate a sport?

Get burned out?

Or stop playing sports all together?

Make them play it year round.  Trust me, I see it all the time from my kids who are fed up with baseball, soccer, or just about any sport they’re forced into playing season-after-season.

Until we make it a goal to let kids be athletes again, we’re going to be fighting a losing battle.

Stay strong

MR


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