I consider myself to my a minimalist. I want to run a few things but be very good at them. Even with my minimalist approach when I began planning our Summer practices I couldn't help but feel stressed for time and reps.
We made a major program wide decision to make our lifting/conditioning the primary focus of our summer practices. In the past we put too much emphasis on running plays.
When we began breaking down practice times for offense and defense after our lifting/conditioning sessions I quickly realized I didn't have that much time to schedule for offensive practice. I knew I needed to restructure how we were practicing because there was no way to practice all of the techniques and plays we have in one day.
I came up with the following format...
I remembered the 3 day install plan I used a year ago for Spring Ball, and thought to myself, "Hey I can do something similar to structure a focus for each offensive practice. I also wanted something that would be easy to transition into the season and mirror how a typical week in season looks.
I started, like any teacher does, at the end. Fridays would act as our final assessment. In the season the game friday night is the ultimate test, for our summer practices Friday we will run only team offense and throw everything at the kids, we can grade through film and see how well they are understanding the plays and their assignments.
Monday would act as our learning day. Typically in season this is a day we watch a lot of film, break down the opponent and the game plan. Monday is also our heaviest lift day and conditioning day. To save their bodies after their intense lift/running we bring them into the classroom and will show them film, review things on the whiteboard, any new installation, and give them a focus or main thing we are trying to improve on for the week.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are where we really get our work in.
I split our entire offense up into a 3 day plan, each day focusing on specific plays so that all of our individual, group, and team periods can focus on these plays.
I essentially broke down the offense like this...
We have 3 core run plays: IZ, OZ, Counter
We have 3 core spring outs: Curl/Flat, Flood, what we call Wide
We have 6 core pass concepts: verts, snag, Boot, stick, smash, spacing,
We have 3 core screens: Solid, Jail, RB
I took these plays and divided things up so that each of those 3 "work days" every drill, and every segment on our practice plan will be focused on
1 run
1 sprint out
2 passes
1 screen
It made planning practices much easier for me because I can keep the rough schedule pretty similar and just change certain parts of drills depending on the plays we will work that day.
Some of our other schemes, Draw, 2 in 1 plays, rocket toss can be sprinkled in because while in the playbook aren't the things that we absolutely have to be perfect at to move the football. They are necessary side dishes but this summer is all about getting better at the main course.
This practice format has especially helped my OL because I can tailor all of our INDY time to the skills needed for 1 specific play and we rep that play to death.
