Football Conditioning

One of my readers actually suggested these ideas for football conditioning recently. I’ve included them for you below. Keep em coming! Football Conditioning Drills

From Tom,
CONDITIONING
Players like this football drill because it breaks the monotony of straight springs. It’s called the circle run.

Everyone gets in a circle face down on their stomachs. Select one player to get up first and run around the circle, jumping over the other players. When the last person in “line” passes over a player, He gets up and joins the run. When a player jumps over the last player on their stomach, the player running hits the ground and waits in position on his stomach for others to pass over him. Encourage players to catch the person in front of them, and toss footballs to the backs and receivers as they run to work on peripheral vision. I usually let the circle loop around three or four full cycles.

RECEIVERS
To toughen receivers up for catching a ball across the middle, I borrowed this from a basketball coach’s rebounding drill. Since he was using a football hand dummy anyway, I thought it was fair!

Standing in place, or running a short (5-7 yd) drag route, two players wait with hand dummies to hit the receiver when the ball arrives. Passes should be a variety of high, low and “in the gut”.

RUNNING BACKS
Most everyone has some device to help running backs break tackles. Padded mechanical arms, half tires, hanging dummies, etc, it’s usually a frame that the backs run through. I place four players in front of the device (two on each side) to put a shoulder on the runner and two behind it (one on each side) to try and rip the ball away. Finally, a coach points a direction for the back to break off towards.

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