Periodization Off-Season Conditioning

Now is the time of year that most programs are just now getting over the siege of the 2015 season.  Kids and coaches are on break and August 2016 is an eternity away.  Most program's approach strength and conditioning in January the same as they do in July.  This off-season, I would encourage you and your staff to sit down and assess how you wish to develop your athletes this off-season to have them primed for competition in game 1.

Below is a sample of a program we built a decade ago with this approach in mind. The goal was to reset our athletes to square one after the semester break.  While we use a maintenance lifting routine during the season , it is difficult to achieve gains during the season.  Therefore, we go back to the basics for core development as well as serving as a great teaching time for our incoming freshmen and underclassmen. 

When you look at the season from January until August, you have quite a bit of time to nurture athletes and work off a foundation of movements.  We structured our 32-week off-season conditioning as a 4 day week broken into 4 phases.  The goal here was to set aside enough time to lay a foundation of proper technique and foster team building in the weight room that would build the core of our team in the fall. During the early phases, we brought in outside instructors, spending a good portion of our time encouraging and involving underclassmen.  This program was built to be progressively challenging while being dynamic enough to change exercises from week to week.

Coaching the 2-Gap Nose

Even or Odd, that is the question.  With more and more defenses opting into basing out of an odd front, I figured I would pass on some notes of my experiences from a true 3-4 defense.  We've touched on this before, but I believe the true multiple defense of today's game is consists of just 2 interior tackles, 1 defensive end and then 1 hybrid 'tweener' or undersized end/speed rusher.  You can get by with these type of players to get into whatever front you need.  Many defenses base out of these odd personnel groups, but are actually playing an even defense, in the traditional sense. These defenses may play a zero technique, but only require this player to control 1 gap.  In addition, they may cover both guards (2i or 3 tech) and control 2-gaps on a read, but aren't actually using a 2-gap technique. There isn't much out there on coaching up the zero technique.  The only thing I've seen addressing this is the Mike Fanoga's "Developing 2-gap Linemen For The 3-4 Defense" video and I don't know that anyone has garnered anything of value off it.  The video just reviews basic DL drills and Coach Fanoga mumbling through unorganized cutups of his teams with no meaningful coaching points. In this installment, I would like to provide my thoughts on coaching a 2-gap zero technique in an odd front.

Coup d'œil

Inspired by the insightful post of Alex Kirby at Life After Football , I wanted to offer feedback on this same process with an emphasis on developing a routine for interpreting live football broadcasts. The method I'll outline is one that I've used for years while being in the box for gameday communication.

What we'll outline here is how to assess the next play that is going to be run before that play starts.  The beauty here is this is a skill you can hone with hundreds of reps at your leisure. Likely, you will already be watching 12 hours of football each weekend that you can practice with.  Let's assume you watch 3 or 4 football games in a weekend. That translates to roughly 450 - 500 repetitions to train your brain with instant feedback to develop this skill. This allows you to stay engaged with any broadcast, playing this game (within a game broadcast) but also developing a skillset invaluable to football coordinating.  Watching games dispassionately, just focusing on formations and areas of the field,  allows you to develop an intelligence towards predicting outcomes.  Naturally, the type of plays called will depend on the play-caller, but those become exceptions to the rule.  The more you exercise this technique, the more scenarios you will have to draw from because you will receive instant feedback once the play is run (were you right or wrong? What did you learn from your hypothesis?).

When all is said and done, it really is the commander's coup d'œil, his ability to see things simply, to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship. Only if the mind works in this comprehensive fashion can it achieve the freedom it needs to dominate events and not be dominated by them. -Carl von Clausewitz 

Coverage Examples

Cover 1







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Cover 2





Cover 4

Nuff Said

The Gospel of Tony - it doesn't take exceptional skill to be a good teammate. #fbcoach

The Gospel of Tony - it doesn't take exceptional skill to be a good teammate. #fbcoach pic.twitter.com/Ffqx74iKjH

— Cripes! (@GetBack2Fundies) October 7, 2015

— Cripes! (@GetBack2Fundies) October 7, 2015