Up down sprints

I had the idea for this drill this past weekend...
Our team splits up into all defensive teams for part of a practice so you can split your team up by lineman, defensive backs, and linebackers. If you have enough players so that no one plays both ways put the receivers with d backs and running backs with linebackers.

The players run a ten yard sprint and chop their feet until the entire group gets to you standing at the ten yard line, blow your whistle five times for five up downs (player falls to the ground, hitting their chest and then has to pop back up). Midway through the five up downs, you need to backpeddle another ten yards and repeat. The total drill that I used was fifty yards with the players doing five sets of up downs and then sprinting the fifty yards back like a quarter gasser.

I had the team do this for conditioning Tuesday after running four gassers after practice. We scrimmage three teams Saturday so I likely will ease up on the running after today when scrimmages occur on the weekend and Wednesday when we start playing on Fridays to give their legs some time to recover so they are able to go full speed for their games.

Circuit Training and coaching update

I got back from three days in the sticks with Woodford county's football team... we went to Aldersgate camp, which is synonymous with the middle of nowhere. I was able to help condition the guys in the morning and then I ran the d-line through some individual drills.
I had the d-line guys do some ladder drills, bag drills, and a couple drills on the tackling sled.
I had them focus on ripping with one arm and taking a strong first step... they really need to focus on changing their stance from offensive to defensive, since most players play both ways.

the defensive back coach showed me the hill on friday that they were supposed to run this morning, a steep three mile hill.

I imagine that was a site seeing the whole team run that... all and all the trip was more about team building then showing them how to run hard.
A lot of the players give full effort and some others not even close to full effort. They have to realize that mediocre effort will result in a mediocre season.