Youth football practice drill -- is this appropriate?
Check out this youth football practice drill -- is this appropriate? Someone mentioned in the comments they are 8 years old.
For clarification, when I say "appropriate" I'm not talking about contract in general. I'm referring to what appears to be the complete lack of coaching and technique here. But I could be wrong.
No, it's clearly NOT appropriate and I coached youth football for about 10 years. The kid delivering the hit isnt tackling, he's trying to knock the other player out by leading with his helmet and the two boys appear to be quite mismatched for weight and overall physical ability which should never happen in a staged drill such as this.
The coach who condoned/promoted this drill should be removed immediately unless he took major steps afterwards to end this drill and apologized profusely to the player and little boy's parents who was knocked out.
The coach who condoned/promoted this drill should be removed immediately unless he took major steps afterwards to end this drill
Considering they are laughing at the end of the clip, fair to say doubtful.
Agreed. FWIW I coached at the start of ever season I used to have a meeting with all my parents and I told them I had three goals for each of their boys that year (and you'll notice winning football games was not one of them)
1. That they would be better football players at the end of the year than they are right now
2. That they would still want to play football next year
3. That they had fun
That drill, as executed by those coaches, would produce the exact opposite results
Replace "football" with "baseball" and that's precisely the meeting I have with my parents every year.
This clip is terrible and reminds me of the assholes that have 9-10 year olds trying to throw curveballs...
Coached youth wrestling for a few years and I had a parent take me to task because some of my kids were getting pinned at a tournament. He suggested that I wasn't being tough enough and that I needed to pin these kids down and cut off their air until they fought back sufficiently. These kids were 5 to 11. Some people are insane.
I had the same goals that you did. I wanted the kids to have fun, be better, and want to wrestle again in the future.
i umpired youth baseball (middle schoolers) for a couple summers in ann arbor while in college. i told the coaches before the game that no curveballs were allowed for the 6-7th graders. i allowed it for 8th graders since high school sports were just around the corner.
surprisingly, i got almost no pushback. they were ok with it. and reality, i had no authority; just a college kid making a few $.
Was the purpose arm preservation? When my son played, 7th or 8th grade, the coaches had him throw 90 - 100 pitches in a game fairly regularly. Thankfully he didn't sustain any damage but that was probably too many pitches for that age (and I'm pretty sure he was throwing junk at that point).
I think the standard AA Rec & Ed rules are no curveballs at that age. My son played Rec&Ed up till 6th grade and then switched to travel ball. Almost every pitcher worth a darn was throwing curves at 11 years old. There were no pitch counts and some teams would roll a kid out there for 110 pitches a game or throw him on back-to-back-to-back days in tournaments. I can't imagine those kids don't have arm problems.
I coached my son's team for a few years and we didn't have the boys learn curves until they were 13, we emphasized a change up instead. My son is now 15 and just started trusting his curve and getting it consistently called for strikes. A bit late by some measures but just right in terms of arm health and normal high school development.
Back when I played little league, we had a coach who rode one kid to pitch almost every game with no pitch limit. He did it for a few years until he blew out his arm after his freshman year in which he quit baseball and wasn't good enough to make the varsity team. That coach was incompetent and taught the wrong thing. I got yelled at for running into a pitcher on an infield flyball in which I know I made the right play because a pitcher needs to gtfo the way. He was so bad that my parents went to the league office that I cannot play for this coach anymore since he drafted me at 1st round in which he often gets a top 2-3 pick so I had to play for him for 4 years.
Geez. I played LL in the early to mid-70's and even then we had an innings limit - 6 per week. And rest considerations too.
Need to call the pitcher off on a flyball.
I've heard this before and I'm not saying the "no curveballs for youth" is wrong, but I've never seen any data and can't see how there could be. Are we simply accepting this as fact without sufficient information? For some context I played baseball through college and basically any kid with a strong enough arm to play college baseball is made to be a pitcher in Little League, which I was. I routinely threw curveballs and it never bothered me. I also have a master's degree in exercise science and human movement scientist in me wonders the biomechanical difference between throwing a fastball and a curveball. After doing a quick search it seems my hunch is right. There seems to be no real evidence. Here's the gist
Studies that have found an association between curveballs and arm pain/injury are typically confounded. Pitchers who learn to throw curveballs, especially at younger ages, tend to be more skilled. These pitchers are often bigger athletes, who throw faster. Furthermore, pitchers of this caliber throw more often, accruing large pitch volumes. All of these factors are independently associated with an increased risk of arm pain/injury.
Restrictions against curveballs in youth baseball rest on a paucity of scientific evidence, supported primarily by expert opinion. Current evidence remains limited, especially given the observational nature of the available studies. Obviously, causation cannot be determined.
Longstanding taboos against teaching curveballs to pitchers before puberty remains ingrained in youth baseball. This is despite a deficiency of convincing evidence in both biomechanical and epidemiological research showing increased harm. Larger studies with improved control of confounding variables may eventually reveal curveballs to be the dangerous pitch that many believe it to be. However, at present, the sports medicine community has no good evidence to recommend against its use.
Curveballs in Youth Pitchers: A Review of the Current Literature, Tamate and Garber, Hawaii J Health Soc Welf. 2019 Nov; 78(11 Suppl 2): 16–20.
That is a good question.....the kids who throw them early tend to also be the kids who are going to pitch the majority of the time since they are so good. So do they get injured from the addition of the curveball or the overwork?
I coached travel ball with a guy who got a baseball scholarship to EMU back in the 80s. He was a pitcher and had duels with Steve Avery back in the day. He said starting around 10 years old his curve ball was so good that was all he'd throw and by the time he was 18 his arm was blown out. He didn't make it through one season at Eastern before leaving the team. He was a big reason our pitchers threw changeups until they were 13.
Again, his perception might be that the curveball is what caused his arm to hurt, but it could also be that because of his curveball his coaches kept throwing him out there too long.
same. I passed put copies of Mike Matheny's manifesto.
I used to coach youth travel baseball as a pitching coach. I forbade them from throwing any breaking balls because of the stress it put on a developing child's arm/shoulder. I have them throw fastball with 4 seam, 2 seam and changeup and concentrate on mastering control of their pitches. Cutter is okay considering that you throw it like a fastball but I mainly want them to throw fastball/change up.
100% this. Fastball command is paramount, throw the 2-seamer if ya can and develop that change-up. Profit.
Our rule on curves is basically 13-14/facial hair.
This clip is terrible and reminds me of the assholes that have 9-10 year olds trying to throw curveballs...
I'm going to be delicate with you since I don't want to do the same thing you are doing (calling people names that disagree with you). But, not only are you wrong in assuming that throwing curveballs is inherently any more dangerous than other pitches (or at least lack any evidence to suggest it), but this idea that we can call people "assholes" or "terrible humans" on the internet because we disagree with them is one of the problems not only with this board, but with the age of social media. No one would say that to these people's faces because it's wrong and because you'd have to face them. So, you probably shouldn't do so on the internet either. The only reason you do is because you can hide behind your anonymity and behind you computer. People are not assholes for allowing kids to throw curveballs. But, back the topic, there is no research to accept your take on curveballs. Here is the current literature on the topic:
Longstanding taboos against teaching curveballs to pitchers before puberty remains ingrained in youth baseball. This is despite a deficiency of convincing evidence in both biomechanical and epidemiological research showing increased harm. Larger studies with improved control of confounding variables may eventually reveal curveballs to be the dangerous pitch that many believe it to be. However, at present, the sports medicine community has no good evidence to recommend against its use.
A good set of rules and I'd be happy if you coached my kids.
What really sucks in this video is that the running back also didn't learn anything of value - he "learned" how to lower his helmet and spear a defender. At best it showed him that he can run over a physically smaller opponent, and at some point he's going to try this against someone bigger or more skilled and possibly get hurt.
The drill itself is set wrong. The defender is given a few yards advantage so they obviously get there early. The drill itself is set to let the ball carrier truck whoever is defending because the defender gives all momentum up to turn for the tackle. Teaches nothing about wrap, teaches nothing about pursuit angle. And obviously the defender didn't have time to drop or set his level, helmet placement or anything.
This is no different then when I was a kid playing little league decades ago. No teaching best player trucks the lesser player every time.
Mismatched players, ie likely the best player on the team against a kid that isn't ready for that physically.
Size mismatch aside, is it proper to teach to lead with your head down?
No. Why start a bad habit early?
No. Not appropriate. The parent of the kid that got crushed should be pissed. That’s too young for that bullshit.
Kids that young trust parents to put them in good situations. This is pathetic and boils my blood to see it. I couldn't imagine the amount of insecurity someone would have to agree that this was a good decision.
Yeah, there's really no way the defender is going to come out ahead in this exercise and the fact the coaches were laughing afterwards showed they probably expected that outcome and didn't see the danger in putting a kid's health at risk for it.
The kid running the ball is learning to give and receive concussions and, if he's really unlucky, to break his neck.
And possibly prosecuted for child endangerment.
Pretty sure this was half of my practice as a youth football player and why I’d never let my sons play football before high school. Yada yada something about building toughness. Didn’t learn a single thing of value about technique or better yet football until high school
I'm going to go out on limb here and say no.
Huh, Taylor Lewan has a football camp...who knew?
The drill looks pretty standard, the technique looks bad. We dont know from a 3 second clip if the coaches are coaching that
There’s nothing ‘standard’ about that drill, it’s poorly set up (the defender has to curve around and give up his momentum while the ball carrier just runs straight ahead, and the tackling and ball carrying ‘technique’ if you can call it that - is awful too. This coach should be fired and if you think it looks ok, then you’d be a terrible football coach and an even worse parent.
It's a tackling drill. In football you are going to be tackling from all kinds of angles. Did the drill put the kid in a bad position? Sure. Will football games also put him in a bad position? Yes.
As for technique, dont put words in my mouth. I specifically said the technique was bad and hopefully the coaches arent teaching that but we have no way of knowing.
If someone is questioning if the drill is appropriate, I think the real question is if you should have kids this young playing tackle football. A tackle drill is standard procedure for tackle football.
Have you ever played organized tackle football?
This type of drill is everywhere.
and......?
So if you dont want your kid doing drills like this, dont put him in tackle foitball.
Literally no one who knows football teaches tackling drills like this any longer
Yes, I have and no, it’s not. These are 7-8 year old kids who clearly haven’t been coached on proper technique, are vastly different in terms of speed/strength/ability, and to top it all off, The jackass coach laughs about it and tells the kid ‘you’re fine’ when he just got hit helmet to helmet in a way that would likely get you kicked out of a college football game. There’s no need for this shit, especially at that level, and if you really think it’s just a ‘tackling drill’ then there really isn’t a point in discussing it further
They seemed to think it was pretty funny so I'm guessing they approved
Reminds me of Friday night Tykes. A show which I hated w/o even watching, because the previews showed drills like these, that seemed abt big hits more than they were abt technique.
Yeah, I'm not abt tht
It constantly surprises me how many coaches of kids don't understand development, meaning both developing kids' skills and that development levels differ physically, emotionally, and mentally.
When I was talking with the commissioner of a baseball league of 8-9 year olds, I said I was proud that nearly all the kids on our team the year before had signed up for another year.
He told me I was wrong, that the goal was to get kids to drop out so only the best were left.
That's awful, no-one has ANY clue which kids are the best when they are 8-9.
Hell when my son was 8-9 you would never have thought he would be any sort of athlete he was slow and uncoordinated and had trouble doing the smallest thing no matter the sport, now with the magic of puberty he is big and fast and a good athlete, he also LOVES sports and its because he had coaches with your philosophy of make sure they have fun.
I mean, tackle football at such a young age is inherently scary to me because these kids don't know proper form and the size differences between some of these kids is pretty extreme. Like, I've got a kid around this age and even in her class the height and weight disparities are such that one kid's head is going to be exactly in the worst possible area for trying to tackle this other kid. And so you get plays like this, where a kid who maybe has been playing football for a year at most is trying to tackle a guy running at him and he just tries to square up and gets rocked.
Luckily kids at this age are (reasonably) flexible so you hope he can bounce back, but they can still get concussions and other brain injuries and there's no way to tell. Heck, I played Pop Warner football around age 8 or 9 and got kicked in the head hard enough trying to tackle a guy from behind that I passed out for a second and had a headache for the rest of the day. It was a big reason why I stopped playing - it was scary and it also felt like the coaches didn't really know how to teach proper technique. Maybe I just had a bad, one-off situation.
But these coaches telling this kid who just got rocked and is clearly hurt "you're good" while laughing is...obnoxious. I hope they checked on the kid and helped teach him proper technique and used this as a teachable moment because if they didn't, they fucked up as coaches.
The drill itself - pretty normal.
The technique being taught, the size/matchup differential, are all things that SHOULD have been addressed.
But with all the concern about the drill - what exactly do people think would happen during an actual game?
The game is an uncontrolled environment, things like this can and do happen. The goal of practicing should be to prepare you for that environment with controlled situations.
If the game is officiated properly, then the ball carrier gets a penalty and possibly ejected. At least that is what happened when my son played at that age. There was no messing around with head shots whether initiated by defense or offense. It very rarely happened because it was taught properly and enforced.
See above where I said: "The technique being taught, the size/matchup differential, are all things that SHOULD have been addressed."
I also see your question about what everyone thinks about it happening in a game, which was answered by the above poster. The concern about the drill is that the ball carrier should be taught about getting tossed from a game for doing what he did. As the coaches were laughing, I’m guessing that lesson didn’t get taught.