Advancing Elementary American Football Position Suggestions

Hand off drill

Because hand offs are such a vital part of a running offense, running backs should practice hand off skills every day. A simple drill for a hand off is to line up all of your running backs in two lines facing each other in what we will call line A and Line B. The player from line A leaves the line with the football running towards line B. At the same time that the first player leaves player B leaves his line towards player A, as they pass each other in the middle player A hands off the football to player B. Now player B has the ball and will hand off the ball to the next person in Line A who will hand off to the next player in Line B. This drill should perform in a seamless motion. Practice this drill every day to ensure that your running backs are effective on their hand offs.

Conditioning Drill: Up Downs

Up downs is an excellent conditioning drill that will improve reaction time and endurance. This drill consists of having players run in place as fast and as hard as they can. At the coaches signal the players will drop to the ground and do a push up, and then quickly get back up and start running again. Because this drill can be very taxing, it is important to increase the time spent at this slowly over time as the players strength increases.

Water on and off the field

Drinking plenty of water is all it takes to prevent dehydration, and thus should be an important part of football practices. Every player should have a water bottle close so that they can take quick water breaks or at least a swallow here and there. Water should never be used as a motivational or reward type basis. Keeping everyone happy and hydrated will go a long way to a successful practice.

Ball handling Drill: Hot potato

Without a solid foundation of ball handling players will be easy prey to a solid defensive team. This drill is meant to help players control and develop their ball handling skills. The secret to this drill is having the ball constantly moving around and from hand to hand. The drill starts by having players hold the football above their head and start to pass it around their head, moving to the chest, under the arms, around the waist, knees, and completing with passing it through the legs.

In this drill the coaches responsibility is to observe the smoothness of the drill, and to also shout commands of body positions to move the ball around, and also to reverse the direction of the football. The reverse option is an important command as it will keep the players on their toes and focuses on concentration and ball handling.

At the very end of the drill the players will do several simple drops. This means that the player will drop the football and retrieve it again quickly. To further increase pickup skills have your players change up the hands that they are using so that both their strong and weak hands are developed.