Practice Tempo

I am blessed to work with some of the best coaches on the high school level in the country.  At any time several of our coaches could be swiped up by college program, and make their staff better.  It is obvious in our preparation and in practice, that our coaches are committed to helping our athletes get better.

Today our practice was impressive.  The amount of energy displayed by the coaches and then translated to our players, was a sight to behold.  Which got my ever rambling brain thinking... Does every coach have this much fun coaching? I sure hope so!

Our practices are high tempo and high energy because that is what we expect from our athletes.  We run off a tight schedule and every coach has a practice plan so that we know exactly how many minutes to spend on the stations we are on, and where we are heading next.  There is very little down time during our practice for the players.  We usually have 5 to 10 minute blocks of drills and teamwork.  The scoreboard is our time keeper, lit up with the time remaining, and our team managers re-start the clock when time expires on each block.  We flow from block to block with no down time, helmets on, water on the fly, get to your next station quickly.  We usually allot 50 minutes for defense, and 50 minutes for offense with 10 minutes of water and break time in between.  

A few years ago, we didn't use the scoreboard clock, man were we missing out!  

We also have music constantly playing in the background.  It not only helps motivate the players, it simulates the potential chaos that could be Friday nights.  We play in front of some large crowds, and if the first time our players here the large crowds is on a Friday night, we haven't done our job as coaches.  The past couple years we have run a no huddle offense, which means calling plays from the sideline without a player running them in.  We have hand signals, large play cards and we often times yell to the players our audibles and play calls, so the music helps get our kids focused on the task at hand and helps them listen through the chaos.

High tempo, high energy, constantly moving constantly improving!  That is our practice tempo, what's yours???