Scott Lancaster on Sports

Well, we are back for our second season as a youth tackle football team. To date there have been two weeks of preseason practices, one week of conditioning (which I’ll address in detail later) and now one week in pads.

In order to put this into perspective let me briefly review what the team experienced and achieved last season in 3rd grade. A total of 34 kids registered to “play” tackle football. Now I refer to the word “play” because in our society you sign up for youth sports to play. Did it ever occur to parents that we should register our children to learn how to play? This applies to all sports, especially football.

As I have recounted on my national satellite radio show on Sirius/XM Sports Nation Channels 122 Sirius & 143 XM, as well as on the NFL Channel 124, I was met with plenty of resistance with several dads on the coaching staff as it applied to running a so called “traditional football program”. In other words “traditional” is what Dads perceive the NFL and college football to be – the final product they witness every Saturday & Sunday in the fall. To make any comparison with NFL & college football to youth football is obviously ridiculous.

After many weeks of dissent among these few coaches we finally agreed that winning a football game was no way to approach a football season for 8 & 9 year olds. Instead we agreed to develop every player’s skills through fundamental technique using a creative approach in order make it fun and engage players in the learning process. At the same time we also dealt with the false expectations of parents and their desire to see their sons replicate what they see on television, overemphasizing the need to win games.

It amounted to a great experience for our players and coaches. Despite the fact that we did not win a game, we finished the season with 33 players (and an average of 28 players every practice), all playing equally every game. Our fundamentals were sound, executing great stances and technique with all blocking and tackling skills, along with impressive on-field organization and teamwork.

Now the following season has begun. All coaches from the prior year return and 44 kids register. After analyzing the past seasons accomplishments and mistakes we made as a coaching staff, I decided that we needed better practice flow, with a faster pace that more effectively kept everyone’s attention. Though we were well organized in our first year we still had a tendency to stand around and chat, not providing a 100% focus on the players and not allowing practices to move along at a fast pace.

In addition youth sports do not provide a significant amount of time on athletic development or movement training. When you combine the diminishing quality and quantity of physical education in our schools and the fact that athletic development is non-existent in our organized youth sports programs, we place a majority of kids at a distinct disadvantage throughout their athletic childhood.

With this in mind I made a point of including athletic development into all pre-season and in-season training. Now we incorporate agility, balance, coordination, strength, speed & stamina into our practices – followed by extending that experience into specific fundamental skill training. For example when we are teaching stances, and blocking & tackling techniques we will also incorporate a balance component on ½ foam rolls that challenge each player’s stability coming out of a stance. Then we include a reaction component that reinforces the importance of firing off the snap of the ball. All of these are non-contact, providing a less stressful learning environment while developing their motor skills as it relates to specific fundamental executions.

In order to execute this I brought everyone together as a staff to practice practicing. Yes it sounds odd, but it’s actually very helpful if everyone participates and understands that a well-choreographed practice is a much more productive. During this session my plan is to introduce athletic development & movement skill training (agility/footwork, balance, coordination, etc that involved tennis balls, cones, hurdles, agility ladders, etc.) in conjunction with related football fundamentals. Football conditioning is useless if you don’t apply it to the execution of fundamental skills. One area that all many young athletes struggle is the lack of effective footwork in combination with other motor skills such as hand/eye coordination. Often in sports and especially football, footwork, body awareness, and the execution of other skills such as catching & throwing a football, taking a hand-off, blocking a defender, etc. includes the coordination of both the lower and upper body. Do we ever practice or provide training to prepare athletes to perform those skills? For the most part the answer is no. Therefore this year I introduced a training routine that included functional movement skills that directly applied to the basic execution of all football skills.

It may sound simple but the fact that young athletes are never taught how to repetively get into a basic athletic position before and during the execution of athletic skills is a huge opportunity missed. There is no way an athlete can effectively and consistently execute a tackle or block if he does not get into a basic athletic position prior to making a play. The ability to keep the entire body square and not off center but well balanced is essential to becoming a good football player.

In order to introduce this skill while progressing to keep the body square while in motion I introduced the coaches to a unique training technique that involved cones and tennis balls yet seemed very foreign and non-traditional to my group of coaches, due to the fact that there were no footballs being used and this was something they never experienced. The overwhelming response from our coaches was that our player’s parents would not accept this because it was not “traditional football”.

Now here’s the question “What is traditional football training? ” For many it’s wind sprints, push-ups, laps around the field, up and downs, etc. Is that any way to engage a kid’s passion to play football? Kids don’t worry about what’s traditional, they’re more interested in what’s fun and authentic. Authentic is not a 1950’s football practice but rather an innovative experience that enhances their skills and improves performance. If we all took a more creative approach, using contemporary methods that engage a kid’s interest to learn in today’s fast paced information environment, we may find that less kids would leave sports and become more interested in athletic & fitness oriented activities.

This year I took a strong stance against focusing on X’s & O’s during the first several weeks of practice and spending more time focusing on athletic development, then football fundamentals before ever considering what plays and formations should be installed. As I told the parents and the coaches, I’m not going to be so short sighted to prepare these kids for a 9 game schedule, but rather a 5 to 6 year progression of learning the correct way to play football through fun and engaging skill training that produces passion to want to continue to play football through high school and live a active lifestyle well into adulthood.

John Cloud the author of the Feature “Health” Article in this week’s (August 17th) issue of Time Magazine “Why Exercise Won’ Make You Thin” is totally written out of context.  Cloud attempts to explain that exercise not only doesn’t help you lose weight it actually causes you to gain.

Now let’s dive into why this article is misleading and actually could do more harm to people who read Time Magazine and actually believe everything they read.  Cloud claims that he exercises all the time (like we care), he’s 163 pounds and still has a gut that hangs over his belt when he sits. What we never find out in this article is Cloud’s actual height. If he’s 5 feet 2 inches tall then 163 pounds is fat, if he’s 6 feet he ‘s most likely thin.  Due to his description of his bulging belly we’ll assume he’s on the shorter side.  Which leads me to believe that this information, like so many other sources have no clue about fitness and the benefits it provides to weight control and overall well-being (though he does acknowledge “people who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases”).

But let’s debate the main issue of this article, exercise and weight loss.   Cloud wonders why Americans work out so much and still one third of all Americans are still obese, while another third count as overweight by the Federal Government’s definition (why we would consider our government as the source to determine who is overweight is beyond me). He cites that 45 million plus Americans now belong to health clubs up from 23 million in 1993. We spend $19 billion a year on gym memberships.

All figures that are true for the most part but the point Cloud misses and many Americans do as well is the fact that we have no idea how to workout.  Have you ever really paid attention to what other people do at a gym – you would think the most popular piece of equipment were the mirrors. Cloud does concede this fact from a Minnesota Heart Survey  – that found, more of us say we exercise regularly. The fact is we don’t work out correctly.  There are lies, damn lies, fishing stories, golf scores & gym workouts.  We are not honest with ourselves. We are lazy. We stand around at the gym and look for anything to do, but actually be physical. Our jaws move more than our legs and arms at gyms – it’s a place to socialize.

Cloud tries to make the argument that we eat more after we work out therefore we are actually consuming more than we are burning, which could very well be the case but it’s not because exercise does not burn calories.  He and others claim that you don’t have to conduct strenuous exercise in order to lose weight, simple things like walking at a slow pace may be more beneficial.  Great, let’s give Americans another excuse to take it easy. Again this points to the fact that Americans don’t understand how to workout.  This microwave society wants everything fast with quick results without the effort.  Why do you think gym memberships soar after the Christmas and New Year Holidays – everyone is looking for quick fix to lose the pounds – that’s how Americans approach fitness and weight loss.

What makes me so uneasy about this article is that now parents will take this to heart and be less concerned about their kid’s exercise habits.  The main fact is this – if you exercise and are active consistently over extended periods of your life (childhood-teens-college-adulthood) you’ll most likely develop a metabolism that burns calories much more efficiently and keeps weight off.  Is that not the goal for most parents to achieve with children?  Unfortunately our generation grew up uninformed about exercise, we were lazy, we were interested in quick results or we lost interest.  So it’s not surprising we have developed poor metabolisms and poor fitness habits that add up to limited weight loss when we try, and when we do it’s for the most part half-heartedly

What we should be focused on as adults for both ourselves and for our children is making fitness something that is fun to do, that allows us to grow a passion to want to do it.  Rather than giving up on exercise and downgrading it’s benefits we should take that energy to create innovative ways to make it part of our lifestyle through contemporary methods.