Football Coach – Stop Watch Drill and Teamwork

If you’re a youth football coach, (8-10 years olds especially) I’m sure you are aware that they tend to lose focus easy-especially on hot days. I noticed that when we ran sprints most of them were struggling, and they were not giving me 110%.

One day I brought my stop watch to football practice, and all of a sudden everyone of them wanted to run. It became a contest, and athletes like to compete. I began timing how long it took them to fire off the football, hit the hole etc.. Then they wanted to get quicker.

By introducing the stop watch to our football drills it changed the way they looked at running. It became fun to them; they became quicker than our opponents, and we won our league.

Here’s a team concept that has also worked for me to better the “no I” in team motto. At the beginning of the season when we start our laps around the field you always get the player who can’t get back quick enough.

After everyone returns I tell them all their times. The catch is–everyone’s time is the same as the last runner. Now we all learn to run as a team and believe it or not the times get better after every lap.

Try it, you’ll like it. Simple yet effective!

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