Coaching is hard. Coaching un-attentive kids is another level of difficulty. I’m here to help with these 10 youth football coaching tips.
One thing you can do right now is check out a youth football playbook here.
If you love to air that thing out, check out our spread offense playbook.
Number 1: Do dynamic warmups
Throughout all of my younger football days, we did static stretching to get warmed up. That is just not good. Start out with high knees and butt kickers and that sort of thing. More examples of exercises are scoops, and soldier kicks.
These will allow the players to get warm and ready to run.
Number 2: Don’t yell too much
There is a time for yelling. If you’re players are disrespectful, and I’m not saying yelling is bad. Putting players down and insulting them isn’t gonna do anything for you except make them want to quit.
Number 3: Include drills
Too many teams run plays for the entire duration of practice. This gets monotonous and boring, and leads to players getting a little out of shape by seasons end. Include competitions and positions drills after warmups to keep the practices a little more exciting
Number 4: Be constructive
Like tip number 2, you want to build people up. But when someone does something wrong, you can go ahead and yell if that’s your style, but tell the kid what he did wrong and how to correct it. Not just some insults. AND if you ever tell someone to stop doing something without telling them how to correct it, how are they going to get better?
Number 5: Less is more
When you are doing team, or practicing plays, less is more. Getting 10 plays down perfectly is always better than having 30 plays but people messing up on every single one. This isn’t their job. They aren’t in the NFL. Once you get plays down you can expand the playbook, but always master a play before moving on.
Number 6: Just play fast
If you teach the kids one thing, is to be fast and aggressive. Give 100 percent effort on every rep in practice and game. My team calls is loafs. Make them run for each time they loaf in games, so that they can learn to give it 100 percent.
Number 7: Do conditioning at the end of practice
The kids will hate you for it. But, they won’t be complaining when the win. It will help them get through to the 4th quarter, and especially in the summer before the season, designate at least 20 mins into a conditioning period a day.
Number 8: Have competitions
Pick one day a week to have a competition. It can be relays, ultimate football or things like that. Put 20 mins a week into that and teach the kids how to compete, and it’s important to teach them to HATE TO LOSE.
Number 9: Hate to lose
If your team likes winning, but is ok with losing, you’re not going where you wanna. Football is serious, and people take it more seriously if it hurts to lose. Then the team will give an extreme amount of effort into the games and practices.
Number 10: Download one of our playbooks
These will get you a step ahead. Click here if you’re the kinda coach who wants to sling it around the field a whole lot with a spread offense playbook.
If you just want a basic youth football playbook you can get that here