The Path to the Endzone

moving right along!

It’s been close to a month and things have been progressing along quite nicely! We finally got everyone into pads last week and have been knocking into each other ever since. Since we are still inside in the gym it hasn’t bee full throttle yet, but it’s been fun anyway. We have added in our complete defensive set now and are pretty much working on fine tuning the stunts. I’m sure we will add more as time goes on, but it’ll be nice this year to have a core set that we know better then the back of our hand!

Because of scheduling issues, this year we have been blessed with having 2 practices a week scheduled on back to back days.  I don’t know why this bugs me so, but last year I found it nice/easier to deal with when you always had a down day between each practice day.  It gave you that day to let body recover from what ever abuses the coaches could dish out.  It gave you that day to get your home life on track and get set for the next practice.  This year, I’m finding things a little more out of whack right now.  That second night, I feel much more sluggish and a little spacey.  The joints are so achy that the thought of running cut drills about makes you want to bolt out the door.  One more shuttle sprint and my ankle thinks it’s going to collapse.  Not to mention the home life juggle, after two days of being out of the house.. things are in dire need of serious attention.  Problem is my body is so worn out that it doesn’t want to cooperate.  Even finding the motivation to get in a little off-day conditioning is a bit hard.  I’m sure I’ll get it all figured out soon and in the end it’ll be no big deal.  But right now I feel a bit whiney after completing two back to back practices where the coaches decided to sprint the devil right out of us.  My knees hurt, my shins are on fire.. even my back is bugging me.  SO pity party for me time!!!

Thankfully starting next week we are switching to a Sunday, Wednesday, Friday schedule which should help a ton with the aches and pains.  Part of the change is to get us set for a schedule once the season starts, and the other part is to finally get us outside on Sunday. I’m so looking forward to getting off the gym floor and onto some real grass!!

Ticking of the Clock

WOW... time sure flies when you’re having fun!!  It’s been almost two weeks of practices since I last posted, but it almost doesn’t feel like it.

Practices have been pretty much going at about the same pace each night.  Warm-ups, circuit drills, tackling fundamentals, skill specific drills, then defensive unit drills and then a quick offense against defense walk thru. Most everything is going at ¼ speed since we still need to work the steps and fundamentals and we still are not wearing pads yet. It really doesn’t feel like we are even working that hard, yet by the time I get home, the body is usually aching pretty good.

As far as the defense goes, we’ve been adding stunts left and right to our base defense and having fun with it. Most of them are pretty much modifications off of the stunts we ran last year and so we’ve been picking them up rather quickly. A couple of them though are pretty risky “bet the house” type stunts that leave one or two players covering the majority of the field.  The scarier thought is it seems to be me that is often left with the “monstrous” task. We actually have introduced man coverage, which is not something we ever really dealt with last year. I have to admit being a bit skeptical about it, we were actually very good against the pass last year playing nothing more then a cover 3 zone and I wonder how well disciplined we can be to maintain a good man coverage.  I guess time will tell, and it doesn’t mean we necessarily have to use it.

Of course my body seems to have hit that first brick wall of the season. The body has been aching like crazy the last couple of practices and the mind starts doing that debate of whether you really want to do this or not. The shins pretty much burn 24/7 right now and doing shuttle runs makes me want to scream with pain each time I pivot on the line. The knees are so creaky and sore that after sitting in a 2-point stance for almost an hour, you have to argue with yourself about whether you can get up off the floor. Just 20 minutes of tackling drills have found me laid out on the floor trying to stretch out the lower back so the muscle spasms stop. Thankfully, the desire to play far outweighs whatever pain manages to come, and at least this year, I have the joy of knowing it will soon go away once the body has adapted.

Of course Sunday’s practice is cancelled due to the Superbowl, so a night off and hopefully a good party to go to may also do wonders for me as well!