Education Process Help

Is it necessary for a football player to do off-season conditioning? Especially in the spring and summer? Only if the kid wants to be better Some dont seem to care They carry an attitude that says I was okay last year, and Ill be okay this year too And, there are kids like this, kids who are okay with being just okay Most of these kind of kids would like to be good or even great (maybe legendary) but not if it cuts into their fun time Theres this kid, a sophomore running back, who had a good year for a sophomore By the end of the year, he was a starter, a good, solid kind of running backfor a sophomore He just doesnt like to work out Youd think that he was allergic to iron the way he avoids the weight room He refused to turn out for track, even though his speed is not good enough to place him with the elite backs in this area, let alone the state He has the same aversion to the after-school workouts that have been there for the athletes who have not turned out for track, baseball, or soccer So, every day we have 14 or 15 guys, mostly linemen and a couple of backs or receivers, who are running with the guidance of a group of three or four coaches

I chose to do the Tuesday and Thursday slots only, because it is SPRING, and Mama has a honey-do list that would kill a mule (The old saying is true: If Mamas not happy, aint nobody happy) Ill tell you what, the kids who show up for these workouts are incredible I look back some fifty and more years to when I was the same age, and I have to wonder if I ever worked as hard as many of these kids do Some of these kids are overweight, but they run every step, every painful, agonizing step, and if they begin to falter, their teammates are there offering encouragement Some of these kids have seen backup or special teams play for most of their years in football, but they are running every step as though this is what will win them that college scholarship, even though they are vastly undersized They do, however, have a quality that will forever make them winners in the game of life: they will not be outworked They have hearts of champions

Gabe Dye was a back-up quarterback last year and was also a starter at outside linebacker He looks carved out of marble and has speed to burn He was an excellent wrestler who set everything aside to work on football Taking over for Alex Coffman, who was the starting quarterback and safety for the last two years and is the reigning Washington State 160 pound wrestling champion, Gabe is a wired, vocal and highly competitive leader who is determined to win every sprint, every drill Derrick Meyers a starter last year at 275 pounds is determined to be quicker and stronger for this, his last season While still competing for the track team as a discus thrower and shot-putter, Martin Martinez at 63, 314 pounds still comes out with us and works on his explosiveness, lateral quickness, endurance, and agility before track practice

On the days that I have the guys, we go through a number of different sets of drills (five to be exact) that we rotate through Speed is a function of length and strength Length is the length of a players stride We want to try to increase their strides, a difficult thing to do, because when most people consciously try to lengthen their stride, they take themselves out of a normal running rhythm We try to have them not think about their stride at all How? We will discuss it later in another post Strength is self-explanatory, but there are a number of ways to achieve it which we will, again, discuss in another two or three days