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Warm ups and Exercise before Youth Football Practice
There is big difference in opinion regarding how much to exercise, stretch and warm up before your youth football practice starts. I have seen both extremes from coaches who run some type of “military” warm up/exercise ritual, to coaches who do nothing. I think both methods are wrong. I do not believe that players from the ages 5-14 need to be over exercised. The reality is there is not enough time to do the proper conditioning required for every extreme situation the team may face on the field. If you do nothing, the team will not be ready for anything.
I am somewhere in the middle on this subject. I open every youth football practice with a lap, usually around one goal post about 50 yards away. I circle the team up and go thru a variety of stretches and exercises. I do this more for team unity than for building muscle and strength. Let us be honest, how much arm strength can be built up doing push ups for a youth football season? The team unity that is built up by the players counting together and helping teach other is priceless.
My personal opinion on conditioning running at the end of youth football practice is that it is a waste of time. There can be some mental toughness that the players develop from this, but once again, I have seen too many idiot coaches running the hell out of their team FOR NO REASON. I have observed that the least knowledgeable, insecure and just terrible coaches do this to the extreme to make up for their lack of youth football coaching ability.
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