Design Practice With a Purpose; Just Make Sure You Have the Right Purpose

“Take a lap.” They’re probably the most dreaded three words in football practice history. We’ve heard them at the start of every practice from Pop Warner through high school. As players, when we labored around that quarter mile track or sandbagged around the perimeter of the football field, we knew what we were doing was pointless. Our coaches thought we were being conditioned, but we had a feeling we were being fooled. We may have been right. Sadly, similar commands are still being uttered today by a different generations of coaches. Truth is, we teach how we were taught and maybe just now we’re learning it wasn’t always the right way. Conditioning with a purpose is just one of the topics that we addressed in this month’s AFM cover feature on how to plan the perfect practice. We spoke with and surveyed hundreds of coaches across the country to ask them what they felt