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Post by tigerscoachbuck on Mar 10, 2015 17:53:36 GMT -6
Hey Coaches I have been racking my brain all off season so far as how to practice bad weather conditions so that my kids will be prepared for the situation. I always dedicate a small portion of practice everyday to situational football, whether it be goal line, 4 or 2 minute offense, down and distance ect. But after losing our League semi final because of rainy weather and my inability to prepare my kids for the situation, I have been looking for some different ideas. Before our playoff game I did even look to the weather forecast and had my kids use wet balls that week in practice but, we still managed to muff 2 QB/C exchanges (and we are a Pistol Team no less), and gave up 3 fumbles, 2 of which were in the Red Zone and we lost by 6. I wouldn't think much off it but we lost the T/O battle by 4. I stress ball security and we were in the plus category all year in turnover margin. I'd hate to think it just wasn't our day because of how hard we worked in practice that week.
I have thought about using a ball in our team period covered in Vaseline, but in this day and age if Little Johnny gets a rash from it because he is allergic to everything including oxygen, I'll be strung by my entrails. So I was considering foot cooking spray, unscented lotion, dish soap but I was wondering if anyone had any other ideas. The more unorthodox the better, so long as it forces us to practice in harder situations than in the game. My kids look forward to the crazy situations I throw at them and something ridiculous would only stir their competitiveness into more of a frenzy.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 10, 2015 18:12:54 GMT -6
Vaseline is less likely to cause allergies than is cooking spray, lotion, or soap. I suppose if you wanted to get to something even less likely to contain an allergen, it'd be mineral oil.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 10, 2015 22:24:43 GMT -6
I would imagine that baby oil is pretty hypo-allergenic, but that's just a guess.
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Post by mhcoach on Mar 11, 2015 5:49:33 GMT -6
TCB
Why would you want to ruin any footballs? The easiest way to practice bad weather conditions is to have a couple buckets of water, & before lining up dip the ball in the bucket.
Joe
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Post by coachjtm on Mar 11, 2015 7:53:30 GMT -6
Also not a bad idea to bring a crap load of extra towels to the games for the referees. We've done that a couple of times to make sure we have relatively dry balls in all but the worst conditions (driving rain).
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Post by 33coach on Mar 11, 2015 15:09:50 GMT -6
Also not a bad idea to bring a crap load of extra towels to the games for the referees. We've done that a couple of times to make sure we have relatively dry balls in all but the worst conditions (driving rain). in my experience refs wont dry balls...maybe you guys have nice refs or something . but yea, practice wise....soak the balls in water before skeles or team...if you want to use something different baby shampoo (basicly anything marked as "baby safe" will do.......
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 12, 2015 21:23:20 GMT -6
I would imagine that baby oil is pretty hypo-allergenic, but that's just a guess. Baby oil is MO + perfume, so if there's any way to reduce the allergenicity, it's by eliminating the perfume & using plain MO. But petroleum jelly is just heavier fractions of the same thing.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 12, 2015 21:28:05 GMT -6
TCB Why would you want to ruin any footballs? The easiest way to practice bad weather conditions is to have a couple buckets of water, & before lining up dip the ball in the bucket. Joe The bucket of water is more realistic, but if it's damage to the case you're concerned with, water'd do that faster than grease, though I don't think either would noticeably shorten its useful life.
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Post by tigerscoachbuck on Mar 13, 2015 21:22:00 GMT -6
Thanks for the ideas guys. Baby oil may be the way to go. Like said above we practiced with water soaked balls that entire week to no avail which is why I'd like to do something a little more drastic. Most times I try to create a situation as game like as possible, like rotating wet balls in during practice, but my idea of this is that if they can hold onto a greased up ball, then a water soaked ball would be easy in comparison. As far as ruining the balls I am lucky enough to have plenty of balls so one or two that may get ruined or set aside for "bad weather weeks" would not be an issue. I tend to have to retire balls annually anyway.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 14, 2015 13:26:41 GMT -6
While extreme measures to simulate difficulty could help a little, in my experience the main thing to practice ball skills with is lots of reps under any conditions, and checking on the players to make sure their form doesn't get sloppy after a few reps. Usually it's not a matter of water on the ball switching it on or off; rather, as I saw with our team in 2014, form that's marginal is good enough for good conditions but not good enough for bad conditions. The rain just brings out a problem that was there all along.
What kind of snap form were you using when you had trouble in pistol in the rain, and what exactly was the failure mode on the snaps & fumbles? In practice, check the QB's eyes to make sure he's not taking them off the ball as it's snapped. You might want to present him with some distractions to induce him to glance away at the wrong time, just to check on that tendency.
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Post by tigerscoachbuck on Mar 24, 2015 19:28:32 GMT -6
While extreme measures to simulate difficulty could help a little, in my experience the main thing to practice ball skills with is lots of reps under any conditions, and checking on the players to make sure their form doesn't get sloppy after a few reps. Usually it's not a matter of water on the ball switching it on or off; rather, as I saw with our team in 2014, form that's marginal is good enough for good conditions but not good enough for bad conditions. The rain just brings out a problem that was there all along. What kind of snap form were you using when you had trouble in pistol in the rain, and what exactly was the failure mode on the snaps & fumbles? In practice, check the QB's eyes to make sure he's not taking them off the ball as it's snapped. You might want to present him with some distractions to induce him to glance away at the wrong time, just to check on that tendency. So first off we use a dead ball snap. The center snaps holding the nose of the ball so that this is little to no rotation on the ball when the QB receives it. We are a pistol wing t offense and we use that technique because we run Jet Motion a lot. It allows our QB to not have to mess around with the ball too much before handing off that quick jet sweep to the wing back. We do an 8 minute ball security circuit twice a week in practice, so my players were getting what I thought was enough reps. Of the fumbles we hand that were not simply the QB/C exchange they came from just strips while running. Just your average drag down tackle that popped the ball loose. The reason it was so maddening is that they came from 2 different players, (whom were also my best ball carriers), that I doubt put the ball on the turf the entire season. It may have just been that the weather exposed some flaw in their running style, or as much as I don't want to admit it, just wasn't our day.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 25, 2015 0:56:57 GMT -6
While extreme measures to simulate difficulty could help a little, in my experience the main thing to practice ball skills with is lots of reps under any conditions, and checking on the players to make sure their form doesn't get sloppy after a few reps. Usually it's not a matter of water on the ball switching it on or off; rather, as I saw with our team in 2014, form that's marginal is good enough for good conditions but not good enough for bad conditions. The rain just brings out a problem that was there all along. What kind of snap form were you using when you had trouble in pistol in the rain, and what exactly was the failure mode on the snaps & fumbles? In practice, check the QB's eyes to make sure he's not taking them off the ball as it's snapped. You might want to present him with some distractions to induce him to glance away at the wrong time, just to check on that tendency. So first off we use a dead ball snap. The center snaps holding the nose of the ball so that this is little to no rotation on the ball when the QB receives it. We are a pistol wing t offense and we use that technique because we run Jet Motion a lot. It allows our QB to not have to mess around with the ball too much before handing off that quick jet sweep to the wing back. We do an 8 minute ball security circuit twice a week in practice, so my players were getting what I thought was enough reps. Of the fumbles we hand that were not simply the QB/C exchange they came from just strips while running. Just your average drag down tackle that popped the ball loose. The reason it was so maddening is that they came from 2 different players, (whom were also my best ball carriers), that I doubt put the ball on the turf the entire season. It may have just been that the weather exposed some flaw in their running style, or as much as I don't want to admit it, just wasn't our day. When you wrote "simply the QB/C exchange", which was bad: the snap or the reception? If it was the reception, did you notice any difference between plays where the jet handoff was on & the plays it was off?
Where, relative to the sidelines, did those drag down tackles occur? Did it look as if there was the possibility of your ball carriers getting a lot more yardage (or scores) when they fumbled?
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