Gaining Strenght and Speed for Middle School Football Season

Strength and conditioning: Up Downs

The popular conditioning drill known as “up downs” is a very effective way to increase cardiovascular activity and endurance. This drill starts by having the players run in place as fast as they can encourage them to get their knees up as high as they can. Then at random a coach will yell, “down” or blow a whistle at which the players must dive to the ground do a push up and then jump back into running in place. As up downs require endurance and strength, players are encouraged to start in slow short burst and work up to longer and more intense sessions.

Conditioning: Dot drilling

Conditioning drills are effective in training and helping athletes be strong and reactive. The intent of this drill is to increase accuracy, timing, and speed. In order to execute the drill you will need a place with five dots, either marked on the grass or on a mat, forming an x shape much like the dots for the number five side of dice.

The player will start by placing a foot on the back two dots and then jumps together to the middle dot and then out separating his legs to the outer dots, much like you would see in hop scotch. Next the player will jump touching each dot with on leg only, and then switch using the other leg. Then continue around the dots with both legs together. The last phase is really returning to the original starting phase of jumping together and apart, however this time the athlete will change directions after they have jumped to the outer dots. Players will need to increase their speed and accuracy to be effective with this drill.

Playbook Practicing

Learning a play is critical because when an individual learns a play and executes it properly, it benefits the whole team. Rule number one in starting out a new play is following your coach's instructions. In order to avoid learning a play wrong, or developing bad habits, we recommend that you go through the entire play slowly at first. Remember that if you need help, you should ask for it. At times we have seen a player fail to advance or refine their techniques because they don't ask for added assistance. Don't let this happen to you The last helpful hint that we want you to learn is the power of visualization. Go over the plays in your mind, over and over again. Make your mind work them out and your muscles memorize them even when you sleep

Hand off drill

Because hand offs are such a vital part of a running offense, running backs should practice hand off skills every day. A simple drill for a hand off is to line up all of your running backs in two lines facing each other in what we will call line A and Line B. At the coaches signal player A leaves line A running with the football towards line B. At the same time that the first player leaves player B leaves his line towards player A, as they pass each other in the middle player A hands off the football to player B. At this moment another player leaves line A and accepts a handoff from player B. This drill should perform in a seamless motion. This is a great drill to help running backs practice hand offs, and should be run every day.