Revitalizing High School Football Position

Low Ball Catching Techniques

Great plays are made through dedicated practice of the fundamentals. This means that quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, etc have gone through the motions several times and know how to react to situations on the field. Perfect and not so perfect scenarios should constantly run at football practice. Here are some great techniques in coaching and learning the low catch. First keep the pinkies together down low to make a shovel. This technique stops the ball from bouncing away and also helps the player scoop up the ball quickly. Locking your pinkies prevents the football from falling through your hands. Once you have the football in your hands scoop it up and tuck it away. Use your hands and not your body. Always watch the ball through from the first time you see it in the air until it is in a secure ball carrying position. And always see the ball through, meaning that you are watching it into the tuck.

Conditioning Drill: Up Downs

Up downs is an excellent conditioning drill that will improve reaction time and endurance. This drill starts by having the players run in place as fast as they can encourage them to get their knees up as high as they can. Then at random a coach will yell, down or blow a whistle at which the players must dive to the ground do a push up and then jump back into running in place. This drill is an excellent workout and should be worked in slowly at first and then increased in intensity and length over time.

Practicing the Hand off

Drills practicing fundamentals like an effective hand offs can make the difference between a mediocre team and an excellent one. This drill requires more than one player; it starts off with two lines, line A and line B, the front of each line facing each other a couple of yards apart. At the coaches signal player A leaves line A running with the football towards line B. At the same time a player leaves line B, and when they meet in the middle Player A hands off the ball to Player B. At this moment another player leaves line A and accepts a handoff from player B. This drill should perform in a seamless motion. It is an effective drill to teach handoff skills and help running backs achieve higher accuracy and consistency.

Conditioning: Cross jumping

Football is all about action and reaction, and those that practice reacting quickly in a variety of directions will dominate the field. The point to this drill is having players practice quick directional changes on the field. It starts by placing players in a small four square box. Once a players positions themselves in one of the corners they will proceed to jump from one corner of the area to other in either a patterned function or randomly. Changes can be made so that the player will only use one foot and then the other while they run the drill.