Top 10 Off-Season Training Goals
Hello Everyone
This is Coach Stern again.
I hope all is well with everyone.
I was thinking about the Top 10 things that I really try and focus on with myself and my athletes in the off-season as we approach Spring Football 2009.
- Rest and Relax – The off-season is a time to get everyone on your team healthy. Players and coaches alike. Its important to spend time with your family, friends and loved ones. Our seasons get very long, especially if your team earns its way into the play-offs. Don’t forget to stop every once in awhile and focus on other things besides football.
- Recruiting - Recruiting for some of us is so important to build the foundation of your team for the next season. It’s as easy as calling prospective players, sending emails and visiting them. Make sure to ask the players about things other than football. It is important that you value these potential athletes as people as well as players.
- Strength – Make sure that your athletes are in the weight room as much as possible. The strength that they build now will carry them through the season. Implement functional training regiments that will translate on to the football field. It is great to see weight lifting numbers on a wall, but if the exercise is not functional it wont be any use to your team during the season. The Bench Press is a great upper body exercise but one of the only times that a player should be bench pressing on the field is when they are on their back pushing someone off of them, and we all know that is not an ideal situation.
- Flexibility – Functional flexibility is very key for our athletes. Focus not only on muscle flexibility, but joint flexibility. Properly warm up your athletes and put them through a series of functional flexibility drills that will make them limber. This will improve their change of direction ability as well as their overall speed on the field.
- Core Stability – Core stability is so important for our athletes and it is probably one of the most overlooked aspects in training athletes. I incorporate a core stability section of practice right at the beginning during my warm up so that it does not become an afterthought in our training. The core is the bridge of the body, if the middle of the bridge is not strong than the bridge will implode on itself. If you incorporate 5 mins everyday to core stability you will see improvement in your athletes productivity on the field.
- Speed – Focus not only on straight away speed, but on efficient running form. You have the time to slow down and perfect deficiencies in athlete’s run form in the off-season. It is important for athletes to have good running form. It will eliminate injuries and improve their efficiency and production on the field.
- Agility – This goes along with speed but you also want to focus on your athletes change of direction ability. It is important to focus on foot speed and hip movement in your athletes so that they can change direction freely on the football field.
- Conditioning – Conditioning meaning the amount of oxygen that a player can breathe in at a given time. Train your athletes in long distance conditioning in the off-season so that their bodies will be used to taking in the amounts of oxygen that they will need while playing the game in season. If you wait until August to condition your athletes, it will be too late.
- Stances – Stances are important to focus on because you need consistency on the football field. If your players are not consistent in the beginning of their progression, then they will not be consistent in their finish. In the off-season you have the time to break down player’s start stances at every position. Focus on the details.
- Initial Reads – It is important that your players not only know what they are seeing in front of them while on the football field but that they understand the progression of a play as it unfolds in front of them. Train your athletes eyes to look for initial keys of the players that they will be playing against. They should know where they are going and how to adjust to the movement of the play in front of them so that the adjustments needed are second nature to their movement.
This is my list of training goals for my athletes in the off-season. I hope that it is useful to you all. If you have any comments please feel free to leave them on the site. Also, please feel free to email me with any questions or suggestions about the drills that we share.
Until next time.
Be Well,
Coach Stern
Tags: agility, conditioning, core, goals, off-season, relax, rest, speed, stability, stance, strength, Top 10
Coaching Inspiration
Hello Everyone,
This is Coach Stern again.
Thank you all again for the support on the website. I hope that your off-season training is coming along well. I know that most Division I colleges start Spring Football drill on or around April 8th. I personally will be visiting some of the major schools around my area including San Diego State University, University of San Diego, Sacramento State University and Fresno State University. I encourage everyone to contact the Universities and Junior Colleges in your area to visit their practices. You can pick up a lot of great information from these other coaches and the coaching staffs are usually very welcoming of other coaches visiting as long as you contact them before arriving.
Ive been thinking a lot about a certain piece of advice that I give to my players and I wanted to share it with everyone that visits the site. the saying goes
“If you are not Progressing you are Regressing. In the classroom, in the community as well as on the football field, improve yourself everyday in everything that you do.”
I tell my players this because in our sport it is very easy for the players to forget about the broad spectrum of life. Often players focus on becoming the best football players they can be and forget about other important aspects of life including school and family.
I try to hold myself to this as well. As a coach it is easy to focus only on winning football games, but it is also important to remember what you are ultimately there for which is guiding these young athletes through some important growing phases of their lives. It is important for us coaches to be not only a source of knowledge and guidance on the football field but also be there to provide support to our athletes and teach them the right way to conduct themselves as people.
I hope that this quote will be useful to you. It has been very useful to me in my career.
Please feel free to leave comments on the site or contact me via email if you have any questions.
Until the next time.
Be Well,
Coach Stern
Tags: classroom, coaching, community, football, football done right, improve, inspiration, playbook, progress, quotes, regress
Coach Stern’s Playbook
Hello Everyone,
This is Coach Matt Stern. This is my first of what hopes to be a frequent blog posting by me to the Football Done Right audience.
First of all, I would just like to thank you all for the support shown to Football Done Right. This site is a constant work in progress. I look forward to bringing you all new and exciting information the coming months.
Football Done Right is an interactive coaching website. The idea behind this entire site was to share ideas between coaches. So please if you have any questions, want to leave a comment on a post or have a great idea that you would like to share please contact me directly or post underneath the comments link under each section.
Secondly, I know that off-season conditioning programs have started and we are full steam ahead towards Spring Football 2009. I am very excited for this time of year because it provides coaches with a glance at what to expect from their team in the coming season. This time of year is a perfect time for coaches to expand their knowledge, network with other coaches and obtain new ideas for drills going into Spring Football.
I am excited to announce that we at Football Done Right have 5 special video collections that will be released within the month of April. These video series are full of ideas and drills that I will be using to improve my athletes going into the upcoming season. I have used these drills for years now and I have nothing but success with the results of integrating these drill progressions into our workouts. I will try and release some preview information for these videos to our email subscribers soon. If you haven’t signed up or confirmed your subscription to Football Done Right do it now so that you won’t miss out when the trailers are released.
Lastly, I just want to encourage all of our visitors to Football Done Right to continue with communication to the site. This site is a place for idea sharing among us coaches. I have received great feedback from many of our subscribers and look forward to answering your questions in the near future. Please keep up with the emails and comment posts.
Thank you all again!! I will be posting again soon so stay tuned.
Coach Stern
Tags: coach, conditioning, off-season, playbook, stern