Conditioning

My first day of football practice when I was 10 years old (my second year playing football), our coaches laid down the rules. Everyday before practice, before we started calisthenics, each player was to run 10 laps around the field. We were practicing up at the National University of Singapore’s football fields, where “football” meant soccer, and a soccer field is even bigger than an American football field. To a 10 year-old boy, not only was 10 laps a really long way, I wasn't even sure it was possible. So the next day, we all showed up at practice and each dutifully jogged 10 laps around the field before we could begin practice. At which point our coach told us that our 10 laps didn't count because we hadn't done it as a team; we had all jogged our laps individually, and we were now instructed to do it again – 10 more laps! – all together, sounding off at the corners with with a team “Broncos!” If you do the math, 10 laps is around two miles, so we did 4 miles that day. I do not think I ran that far again for 7 years, when as a senior in high school I was trying out for a Himalayas expedition. Everyday now, in the August-September heat of Singapore, in full pads, we ran 10 laps as a team, sounding off with “Broncos!” at the corners (a total of 40 times), all before we even started our calisthenics. We weren't fast – we could only run as fast as our slowest man (which, thankfully, wasn't me) – but we did it, and we did it as a team. And we won our first four games of the season. Easily.

Granted, back then we practiced everyday. There was no six-hour maximum per week. On the contrary, league rules mandated a minimum: a player had to practice a minimum of eight hours the week prior in order to be eligible to play on Friday or Saturday. Back then it was considered a safety issue: a player who was not in shape was more likely to get injured. But when teams practice 5 times a week for two hours, even with a half hour each day spent on conditioning, that still leaves 7 1/2 hours a week for practice. We do not have that luxury. We practice just four hours a week, and taking half an hour before both of our practices would leave us with only three for everything else, so we need to prioritize how important conditioning is.

I myself am not certain that conditioning is all that important to 8 year-olds. Certainly my view has been that football experience is more important than anything else to such inexperienced players. Now I am not so sure. Part of my thinking was that I wasn't certain that boys can even build that much muscle prior to puberty, but my reflections on my experience that year on the Broncos indicates otherwise. Apparently, prepubescent boys can condition.

However, if our players were in better condition, not only would they not fade in the fourth quarter, but they would play better throughout the game. When you're in shape, everything is easier: learning new skills, adapting to different conditions, having the energy to gang tackle, etc. Being in shape covers over a multitude of shortcomings.

Certainly I doubt ten laps is doable for our younger players, so I am not advocating precisely the same regimen we did at ten. However, one thing we learned from the experience was that sometimes what seems impossible isn't. When I was in Army basic training, they took us down to the confidence course, and we had to do some seemingly impossible tasks – some of which we thought were downright dangerous and might get some of us killed. As it turned out, we all completed it and no-one died. And we gained confidence in our abilities. Maybe pushing our players harder than they think they can go will be good for them? I don't know enough about child psychology to say. But the question remains: how much emphasis should we put on conditioning versus learning/practicing skills and scrimmaging?

On my 10-year-old Broncos team, undefeated at midseason, our coaches decided to spend more time in practice teaching us new plays. No team had come even close to us in our first four games, so at the bye week, they cut our laps down from 10 to 2, giving us more time to work on new things. The damage was psychological. We now thought we were invincible, and instead of pushing ourselves even harder, we relaxed. We were awesome. And we lost our next 4 games to end the season 4-4.