What's the best way to make the transition from the junior high ranks into high school football?
For Ed Towle, an assistant football coach at Tates Creek High School in Lexington, Ky., the main thing a player should focus on is not becoming bigger, but becoming better.
"A lot of people at that age are worried about getting big and strong," said Towle, who coaches running backs and serves as the team's strength and conditioning coach. "I just want them to continue to be good athletes as they get bigger and stronger. How big they get, how strong they get - that's one thing. I just want them to be better at what they do. You've got to be an athlete first."
Towle will be the first to trumpet the benefits of strength and conditioning. But the priority for players moving into the high school level has to be on making sure they know the game.
"Too many coaches today are uneducated and they want to push the kids through," said Towle, who completed his 12th year at Tates Creek after having spent six years on the staff at Lafayette High. "They just want to push the kids through, to get them to the next level, have them do the next thing."
So the transition into high school is a good time for a player to make sure he knows the game. While they're learning the game, they should work on building themselves physically.
"They can do a lot of body weight exercises," Towle said. "And really it's a great time for the kids to work on agility movements. A lot of the skill work that they do in practices that their coaches teach them, those are the things that get overlooked at the lower level."
As for conditioning, young players have plenty of things to work on as they move into high school.
"Kids moving from youth football to high school need to build a foundation," said Towle, who also served as the strength and conditioning coach for the Lexington Horsemen in 2008 in the arenafootball2 league. "They've got to have a total body foundation of strength. They need to really get focused on agility, and speed is a big thing today. They have to work on everything."
Along those lines, coaches who guide the team's strength and conditioning program should hold their duties in high regard.
"It's just like being a position coach. It's fundamentals first," Towle said. "You've got to prevent injuries and you've got to teach the kid the right way so he doesn't get hurt. You've got to set goals - set goals for the kids and set goals for yourself and the team."
That can be as easy as getting the player acclimated to safety procedures in the weight room, then testing him on the equipment in the team's first few days of workouts.
"We do a max test with the kids after we teach them a good foundation," he said. "We make sure they can do certain things before we put a bar on their back. Once we get to that point, we test them and see where they are. We'll set goals and go from there."
Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
