Cross Country my arss. You don't improve football endurance putting your team thru CC workouts like Fartliks and miles of slow running around the field or on the track.
But as your possible opponent guys like me hope you are coaching like that.
Teams whose coaches spend the time and energy sending their players on 30 minute runs have simply run out of good ideas of how to get their team better; Or they are victims of the old school thinking popularized by their own coaches who learned their trade going through army and marine boot camps.
Long haul running builds good long distance runners, not quick, high impact twitch muscle reflexes and the sort of endurance necessary to feel capable of giving 100 per cent in the fourth quarter of a football game.
There are ways to increase football endurance infinitely better than CC training.
If we had our kids for two and three workouts everyday like the colleges and pros do, some longer distance sprinting could be beneficial. But we don't. And we shouldn't be given that much time with our student-athletes.
If you need ideas for improving player endurance and cardio, get in touch with some of the perennial playoff teams who have been doing it for a while.
Oh sure, if you have a Tyler Earl, Denim Reeves, Mitchell Parsley, Lyle Campbell or Jaquan Thompson on your team you will be successful no matter how you coach, even employing CC running. With our 2004 - 2007 RS teams we would have won many games deep into the playoffs rolling the ball out and putting them thru long distance runs, but I doubt we would have earned three championships during that time. Our kids were conditioned using game-like workouts almost every day of the week beginning the first or second practice of two-a-days. If we ran suicides or yo-yos, occasionally a Longhorn it was to build mental toughness, or it was punishment for lackluster practicing. Our kids built strong endurance and strength running pass patterns and play repetition versus the best scout team we could assemble. Anything else is wasting valuable time and energy.
Regular use of Cross Country training is neglecting proper football preparation. If your relying on it for your football and roundball conditioning, the AD should put you on a growth plan.
