More of the same is not always going to get you where you want to go.

Yesterday I had a talk with a father that could be beneficial to many other parents.

I was talking to father of one of our young athletes about spring football and I suggested to him that if he really wants his son to build some athleticism that is truly hard to develop (footwork, cutting, and having a feel for movement) then he should consider playing basketball in the off-season.

You see football is a sport that experience doesn’t really matter. This is why they have drafted athletes that have never played football. They give scholarships to guys that have played 1 season of football in HS… Quite frankly athleticism gets paid and not sports specific skills. I talk about that topic at length here: https://youtu.be/_UrnAfx10iE

Back to my point. You see running routes in football takes some skill but at some point you can only run so many routes and you stop getting better at running routes. You can pretty much substitute any sports skill in that sentence. In order to get better at running routes you have to get better at cutting, stopping on a dime, changing direction, setting up the defender, lowering your center of gravity in and out of cuts, running faster, etc, etc…

How do you improve these skills? Most likely not by running more routes.

You can spend time training to add strength and explosiveness and speed.

You can add a sport like basketball that really forces an athlete to own those skills to be competitive.

My point is that especially for young athletes building the underlying athleticism is critical if you want them to excel at a later age.

Trying to teach basic footwork and agility fundamentals to a HS athlete that hasn’t already developed these skills is extremely difficult to say the least. Trust me… I’ve seen this over and over again!

Are there sports that are more technical than football? Of course. I’m not saying don’t practice… Im just saying that the skills will hit a lower ceiling when it matters most with out a huge base of underlying athletic qualities. Football is not a sport that athletes need to play year round from a young age to excel when they get to HS… In fact, it might actually hinder them later on.