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