Differentiating Drills for Varying Athlete Experience | FBCP S11E19

Our teams are composed of athletes of a large range of experience levels. In football especially, players pick up skills and abilities throughout their career that usually result in them being more experienced and seeing the game differently than younger players. This leads to complications during practice when it comes to running drills that have to benefit everyone on the team.

On this episode we talk with Coach Justin Dottavio about the importance of differentiating drills and how to add to and take away from your drills to ensure every player is getting max benefit from them.

Why is it important to differentiate drills for athletes?

• We often find multiple skill levels participating in the same drill. Consider having an 8th grader who has never played ball and the DI bound senior doing pre-practice key read drills. Each will be working on different aspects of their game.
• More advanced players can better their own understanding of the game by teaching the younger/less advanced players.
• You, as a coach, need to have the ability to build on your drill to ensure you’re developing every player on the team. If it’s too simple, your Senior gains nothing. If it’s too complex, the freshmen will be lost and take nothing away from it.

 

What does differentiating drills look like?

• Start with a simple LB Key Read drill, a LB reading a Guard’s first steps and reacting. 
  • You can then add an additional lineman or two to make it more “game like”
  • Add additional moving pieces to try and draw your LBs’ eyes away from their read. H-Back motion is a great piece to use here. Change his start and end points.
  • Add in a block destruct and wrap-up/ tackle to fill out the drill and get extra reps without a stop and reset for those individual drills.
  • You can add as much as you find value in, but also feel free to remove these pieces when your younger LB is going through the drill, especially if mistakes increase.
• Teach the details of the drill, regardless of the level of your LB. This should help prevent “boredom” in your players… and in you!
• You can always find some coaching points to talk about. Footwork, reads, black destruct, and the tackle are some of the major ones, but don’t forget about ASKA.

How to Implement Differentiated Drills

• Create drills with “triggers”. Football is about reading and reacting. Your drills should, at their core, be getting players better at reading and reacting. Everything else can depend on their experience level
• Take a piece of the game that you’re weakest at, and rep it 1-on-1. Then, as you improve, expand that drill to include more moving pieces or more tasks
• You need to attempt to stay as close to the competitive event as possible. Your drill can start in a “crawl” phase, but you shouldn’t be there long. Move into a “walk” or “run” phase as your players pick up the skill. You can always slow a drill down for a less experienced player, without a lot of effort.
• Maintain the competition between your players. The drill will not develop them as quickly if the other guy isn’t competing too. For example, if you add a wrap-up/tackle to the G read drill, the ball carrier should be stepping up their effort until they’re a live ball carrier. 
• Drills are not meant to build “mental toughness”. They’re meant to hone skills and solve problems.

Related Links

• Are your practices “boring”? Listen to this episode from Season 9 to find fun drills to add in.
• If you’re in the hunt for Defensive Line drills, this episode from Season 10 will serve you well.
• If linebackers are your assigned group, listen to this episode from Season 10 to get the drills to drive home reading and reacting.

Social Media

• You can contact Coach Dottavio @IMFB_blog on twitter