Planning Practice

[CoachK 0]

Good Afternoon!! I would like some input/help with planning practice for my youth tackle 6&7 yr olds. I have been around football a long time but starting over at this age I dont know where to begin!! We have 9-10 pratices with pads and 1 scrimmage before our first game. I have been told that in this league and with 6&7 year olds it is almost impossible to pass??? I would like to know what people think that a good offensive to run and what are some good drills to run to start them off right? Any help would be thankful!!

[mlbryant 0]

Good Afternoon!! I would like some input/help with planning practice for my youth tackle 6&7 yr olds. I have been around football a long time but starting over at this age I dont know where to begin!! We have 9-10 pratices with pads and 1 scrimmage before our first game. I have been told that in this league and with 6&7 year olds it is almost impossible to pass??? I would like to know what people think that a good offensive to run and what are some good drills to run to start them off right? Any help would be thankful!!

The drills I drew out in the http://www.y-coach.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=905 forum are the drills I used with my 6 and 7 year olds last year. Don't believe that it is impossible to pass at this age. Although I didn't install the pass until after the first few games, we were very successful at passing. The keys are:

> A kid that can throw 7-10 yards consistently

> A kid or two that can catch the ball

> Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

The reason passing fails at the younger youth levels is that it is not practiced. We would practice the route we used 30 times or more each practice. Sounds like a lot, but it was reall about 6-10 minutes of work. After throwing 150 times during the week, we were throwing and catching the pass on the run and in stride. The last 3-4 games of the season, we averaged 1 touchdown pass and 60-75 yards receiving.

As for where to begin, I suggest that you install a very simple offense. Mine was setup so that there was a left series (3 plays) and a right series (3 plays). Each series consisted of a blast, a counter, and a bootleg. Left told the QB to open from the left, the FB to lead block left (5 hole), the left HB to take a step left for the counter. Regardless of whether the Bootleg, the Blast, or the Counter was called, the backs all had the same responsibility (for example, the FB always lead blocks through the 5 hole on the left series and lead blocks through the 4 hole on the right series). Thus, for 6 plays, I really only installed 2. I added a couple sweeps and a full back blast and presto, I had a decent offense to start off with; where all players knew their responsibility for every play.

After you have some ideas of who could play where, start working backs in one group and linemen in the other. Linemen need to learn who they are supposed to block for various defenses.

First night of pads is contact night. We work several different blocking and tackling drills to teach form and to evaluate skill.

Hope this helps. Please ask for more if you need/want it.