Revitalizing Nfl American Football Winning Strengths

Up Downs Conditioning Drill

The popular conditioning drill known as up downs is a very effective way to increase cardiovascular activity and endurance. Players will start this drill by running in place as fast as they can, keeping their knees high as possible. From time to time the coach will signal to the players, by whistle or a command, to get down meaning that they drop down do a push up and get back up as quickly as possible to run 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.

Forcing the Fumble

The faster your defense is at getting the ball back into the offensives hands the more likely you are to win a game. Forcing a fumble is one of the quickest ways that you can turn the tides and retain possession of the football. This drill practices with two players. Have the defender move up on the offensive player, trust his arms back and then forward with his fists clenched. As the offender runs ahead of the defender, have the defender bring his clenched hands up quickly, and forcefully, as he aims his hand at offenders football. Start the drill slowly, and reward for a strong tackle that affectively tackles and makes an attack to dislodge the offensive players grip on the ball.

A great Handoff 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. A player leaves line A with the football and runs at line B. In sync with that first player, a second player leaves line B, when they meet player A passes 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. The motion should be constantly moving from one line to another in this drill, almost like a juggling pattern. It is an effective drill to teach handoff skills and help running backs achieve higher accuracy and consistency.

Conditioning: Dot drilling

Conditioning drills are effective in training and helping athletes be strong and reactive. For this reason, coaches like this drill for its focus on speed and accuracy. The drill set up is a mat or place on the field with 5 dots about a foot away from each other forming an X shape, exactly in the same shape as you would see diamonds arranged on a number five card in a poker deck.

The player will start by placing a foot on the back two dots and then jumps together to the middle dot and then out separating his legs to the outer dots, much like you would see in hop scotch. The second phase is having the player touch each of the dots with only one foot, and then switch to the other foot. The next step is jumping on all five dots with both feet together. The last phase is really returning to the original starting phase of jumping together and apart, however this time the athlete will change directions after they have jumped to the outer dots. Remember that speed and accuracy are important on this drill so coaches should start players off slow and then proceed to full speed constantly watching accuracy.