Southwest Minnesota State University In-Season Practice Plan (Part I)
By Cory Sauter, Head Football Coach
Every year I like to evaluate our weekly in-season practice plan. I want to make sure we are as efficient as possible with our time and energy as a program. Are we spending too much time on situations that do not occur frequently? Do we need to spend more time practicing certain down/distances? The goal is to create a practice template that prepares our players in a similar ratio as what they experience in a game. In this article, I would like to share what our entire in-season practice schedule entails.
Before we get into our daily schedule, I would like to talk about 4 practice principles that I believe in.
1. Daily Theme- The more you emphasize, the less you emphasize. It is important to have a central focus for each practice. We have five areas of emphasis on offense that we evaluate after each game. Each day of preparation will have its own theme. By the end of the week, we will have each one covered.
A. No Negative Yard Runs (Positive Play Tuesday)
B. No Sacks (Positive Play Tuesday, continued)
C. No Drops (Webby Wednesday)
D. No Pre-Snap Penalties (Penalty-Free Thursday)
E. No Turnovers (Turnover-Free Friday)
2. Good vs. Good- In order to improve, you need to challenge yourself and your unit daily. Each day of practice will incorporate a competition element between the top offense and the top defense. Competing and handling adversity is a learned skill. If we only compete against scout players, we create a false sense of accomplishment.
3. Back-Up Players Need Proper Reps – We give our back-up players the same number of reps as our starters. We all know how quickly things can change if a starter becomes injured. We have decided to invest valuable reps into our backups to minimize the disparity between our starters and backups.
4. Pare Down Schedule- I firmly believe that staying fresh and minimizing injury during the practice week is crucial to a team’s success on game day. If a player sustains an injury during a game, we can accept that; it is a part of the game that we cannot control. However, if we have several injuries occur from “friendly fire” during the practice week, our chances for success diminish (something that we can control). Below illustrates how
we adapt practices throughout the season. Notice the amount of pads diminishes throughout the season. We also cut 5-10 minutes off practice every 3 weeks as well.
A. Weeks 1-3
i. Tuesday- Helmet/Shoulder Pads
ii. Wednesday- Full Pads
iii. Thursday- T-Shirts
iv. Friday- Helmets
B. Weeks 4-6 (reduce practice by 5-10 minutes)
i. Tuesday- Helmet/Shoulder Pads
ii. Wednesday- Helmet/Shoulder Pads
iii. Thursday- T-Shirts
iv. Friday- Helmets
C. Weeks 7-9 (reduce practice by 5-10 minutes)
i. Tuesday- Helmets
ii. Wednesday- Helmet/Shoulder Pads
iii. Thursday- T-Shirts
iv. Friday- Helmets
D. Weeks 10-11 (reduce practice by 5-10 minutes)
i. Tuesday- Helmets
ii. Wednesday- Helmets
iii. Thursday- T-Shirts
iv. Friday- Helmets
To Be Contuinued:
Part II will be published tomorrow March 16th….
I hope you were able to take something from this article that will help your program. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me at cory.sauter@smsu.edu.
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