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By: Rob Woodward - Wheelersburg HS (OH) Originally Published in: 2018 Nike Coach of the Year Clinic Manual - by Earl Browning Provided by: Nike Coach of the Year I am grateful to be up here. I coach at a great school with a lot of tradition. I came to Wheelersburg High School in 2003 as an assistant coach. I have been the head coach for the last 10 years. I want to share some information I have gathered over the last ten years. My goal today is to give you what I think I bring to our program. I am going to touch on four or five things I think are important. I spoke at our Ohio High School Clinic in Ohio last weekend. I took that talk and broke it up. This part is on defense, and I am going to talk about our weight room, which drives our ability to win games. The first thing I want to share with you is about our history. I have been a part of the program for the last 15 years as an assistant and head coach. We have had 29 playoff appearances in the state of Ohio, which ranks sixth among the 714 schools that play football. We have six regional championships and two state championships. We won the first one in 1989 and the second one last year 2017. There is a deep tradition at Wheelersburg. I brought my assistants with me today. We have eight varsity coaches, and we have been together since I became the head coach. That gives continuity and consistency to our program. The U.S.A. Football is trying to combat all the negative issues that are in football today. They are trying to promote some confidence in football. I was contacted last week about doing a story about our captains and how football has affected them in a positive way. The thing I talk about with our players and in the program is to "show the game the respect it deserves." I think the game is the last game out there that is hard and teaches values to players. I grew up on a tobacco farm and have raised cattle my entire life. I was 19 years old working in a tobacco field in southern Ohio for my dad before I went to college. Everyone always says it is the Jimmy's and Joe's that makes your team a success. I completely agree with that. But I also think it is the Jake's and Jeff's you might have in your program. Maybe they are not the big stats players, but we have to make sure they get a lot out of this game. I think we have done a good job of that and that helps explain the high participation numbers from 175 boys. I try to teach our players that it takes work to have a successful program. It is no different than the hard work I did on the farm. In 2012, our participation numbers began to grow. I think it was because we built a new football stadium. We have a field house at one end of the stadium. The field house has a weight room and locker rooms in it. The stadium is built on the Ohio River. When we are practicing, we can look across the river at Kentucky. One thing that has helped us with our success is our weight program. This is an important part of how we have been able to endure and last through the games. I use a chart to track the number of players we have accomplished some of the goals we have in our weight room. Across the top of the chart are the categories that we track. The first column is the year and number of varsity players that participated. We track the number of players that can bench 275, clean 225, squat 350, dead lift 400, and 1200 total weight from those lifts. In addition, we chart their 4.8 40 times, 4.4 shuttles run, 55 dots, and 7.0 P/P. I color code on the chart the highest number of players we had in each category. Most of our maximum numbers came during and after the 2012 year. Two things happened. We built a facility with enough room to accommodate the numbers of players we had on the team. We moved our program from a three days-a-week program to a four days-a-week program. That was a huge advancement in our program. Adding that additional day made a big difference in our program. Our players and program grew. Everything I am going to talk about today is about the growth in our program over the last 10 years. That is what got us to the success we have had and reaching that panicle of the state championship. We had the typical repetitions and weight progression in the program. However, one day I talked to a young lady who was working in a weight program. She told me she was sore from doing 30 reps of squats. I thought that was amazing. This goes back to the time when I was making changes in our weightlifting routine. At that time we were doing 10 reps of squats. Granted the weight she was using on the squats was not much, but she had done 30 reps of a perfectly positioned squat. From that point forward, we started to make some changes to things we were doing in our weight room. WEIGHT ROOM - OFFSEASON Up the Tempo - Explode Lifts
Controlled Lifts - Everyone starts at the same time
Pyramids - Mind over Matter (10-1) One thing we did was up to the tempo of the lifts. We started doing explosion lifts. I started timing the lifts. I made them go 15 seconds a set doing 12-15 repetitions in the first set with the weight they could handle. The second set, we went 15 seconds and did 10-12 repetitions. The third set we did 8-10 reps with the weight they could handle. I worked on our explosion by doing the reps at a fast tempo. One thing we did was up to the tempo of the lifts. We started doing explosion lifts. I started timing the lifts. I made them go 15 seconds a set doing 12-15 repetitions in the first set with the weight they could handle. The second set, we went 15 seconds and did 10-12 repetitions. The third set we did 8-10 reps with the weight they could handle. I worked on our explosion by doing the reps at a fast tempo. We started to control the lifts. We had just installed tempo as part of our offense. This idea went along with the changes we made to our offense. We had to start teaching tempo to our players. We wanted them to think fast, play fast, and do things fast. We took what we were trying to coach on the field and put it in the weight room. When we controlled the lift, we started everyone at the same time. I did not want one group working on the bench and the second group working on the power clean. I wanted everyone going fast, but at the same time doing the exercises together. Players had to hustle to change the weights so we could all go together on the next lift. The next thing I did was put in the 30 reps that the lady told me about. I asked our players how many games we had to play to win the state championship. In 2014, no one on the team knew. That was a problem. I wanted them to start to think about going 15 weeks because that is the number of games it took. I told them they had to come out of our locker room and give me 30 repetitions. That was 15 for the first half and 15 for the second half. I wanted them to give me everything they had for those 30 reps. I wanted them to give me everything they had twice a game for 15 games. I told them I did not want them to stop on rep 28 or 25. In the second round of the playoffs, we were down 13-0 at halftime. That would equate to doing 12 reps instead of 15. We came out the second half and scored 35 unanswered points. The concept of the 30 reps is to finish the game. Do not take 4 reps off. Finish the 30. In the semi-finals, we played Middletown Madison and were down at halftime 10-0. Our players came out the second half with the mentality of not giving up. Not even thinking anything less than giving everything they had. I truly believe that mentality came from the 30 reps station. We went on to win the State Championship. Now our players are begging to do those 30 repetitions. I see the older players pushing the younger players to get their 30 reps. I do not want them to use heavy weight but have enough weight on the bar to do what they can do. We also implemented a station called pyramids. We did two sets. The first lift was 10 reps with a certain amount of weight. The second lift was one rep with a certain amount of weight. The second set was 9 reps with the first lift and 2 reps with the second lift. The third set was 8 reps with the first lift and 3 with the second lift. We continued in that pattern. We did two lifts and 55 reps in that period of time. This whole concept works. When I was in college at Ohio Wesleyan, I was power cleaning more weight than anyone in the program. I found that I could lift more weight than the bigger players, who should have lifted more. I grew up on a farm and had to deal with bales of hay every single day. It was not a lot of weight, probably in the 60-pound range, but I did it every day. This was like doing multiple reps of that power clean. The strength came from me lifting those bales every day. I told our players we had to work and work consistently. Before the fifth game this year, I tallied up the amount of power cleans we had done. We had done over 1200 power cleans throughout that entire year. I talked to the seniors about it. We did not lift the same amount of weight each time. Sometimes we used light weights and sometimes we used heavyweights. They were strong because they did the work consistently. COMPETITIVE BOARDS Season Top 10 Boards
We have a competitive board in the weight room. I am going to talk defense here in a minute, but we would not have been the defensive team we are if we did not have the strength we had. Our injuries have been minimal. In 2016, we had one injury in week nine of that season that was serious. We had a torn ACL. That is only one we have had in the last five years. We post all those boards in our weight room. We have clubs based on our four lifts. We have a 1200 and 1700 pound club combining the bench, squat, power clean, and deadlift. We also have a competitive board for seasonal and career gains. COMPETITIVE BOARDS Top 10 All-time Season & Career Gains
Rep Testing: (6 - 10 reps)
This gives us an insight into the growth of players since they entered the program. I think we have done a good job in the weight room if we can see an improvement of 150 pounds and more. I am tracking that and displaying it where we can see. It acts as a motivation tool. We also have a career record. As a freshman, a certain player was at 750 pounds in those four lifts. When he left the program, he was at 1300 pounds. We buy a mini sledgehammer at the local hardware store and write the player's name on it as the "hardest worker." You have guys on your team that are not your top athletes, but those guys are winning some of these awards. Because of that, they feel part of the team. We find ways to make those players feel a part of our program. In April, we do rep testing. I am interested to see what they can do 8-10 times. We record all those tests to show them what their maximum lift at those lifts could be. If a player does 10 reps with 135 pounds on the bench, we think his maximum would be in the 175 range. Players will compare their numbers and feel good about themselves or have a tool to motivate themselves to do better. I put these results in our archives. I believe this is the holy grail of weightlifting. This is the first year we had everything fully implemented. We were the strongest, freshest, and best conditioned, I have ever seen my players at, for 15 weeks. They actually grew throughout the year. IN SEASON LIFTING
The in-season lifting we did was important. But more important were the weight and reps we lifted. We have committed to about 40 minutes of pro tackling a week. We are doing the Hawk tackling program. We have cut so much of what our players do as related to practice time. We dedicate that time to the weight room. It has made us so much better. When we lift in-season, we drop from four days to three days. On Monday, I pick two of the four core exercises and work them on that. We do three sets of five. We have another group outside working with the elastic bands. I have another group outside working on tire flips. We went to a car dealership and got about 50 tires that we flip across the field. We work on the field for about 20-25 minutes. We built one-man wooden sleds, and they drive them. We do those activities while the other group on the inside is lifting. We do 20 minutes at each station, which amounts to about 45 minutes. We call our Wednesday workout "growth." For 45 minutes, we do rep maximums with one of the core exercises. I want to see some of our players reach their personal best during this time frame. I want to see them better what they did in April and July; I shoot for them to break their record. The first week we did this in our in-season lifting we had 51 out of 54 players that got a personal best in their core lift. That is close to 90-percent of our players. We have 54 varsity players. For the entire season, we had 82-percent of our players that recorded a personal best. Saturday after the Friday night game we do a recovery lift. We do a circuit of lifts and move our players around in that circuit for 30 minutes. When we went through the exercises for the second time, we reduced the weight about 20 pounds and doubled the reps they did. if they did 6 reps the first time we reduced the weight by 20 pounds and they did 12 repetitions. Our players loved it, and the coaches said it was the best thing we had ever done. We had a big bell hanging in the weight room. Every time a player accomplished a personal best, he rang the bell. COMPETITIVE BOARDS
We put up another competitive board to track the overall growth of our players. We ranked the players, 1-82. Who was the strongest guy in total lifts? We rank them as to speed. Who was the fastest guy? After that, I took the two rankings and put them together. If a player ranked first in one and second in the other, his real score was three. We ranked the team using that criterion. That let our players' gauge where they were at as compared to the rest of the team. It also gives you a talking point as to why one player was playing over another. It has been huge in creating stronger players throughout the year. All the weight room stuff has allowed us to be better defensively. I feel without the in-season lifting and the competitive boards, it would be hard to create that mentality of playing for 15 weeks. We have to be strong enough to play for 15 weeks. The rest of my lecture is going to be on defense. We have to establish a philosophy of defense. We are 4-2-5 schematically, but before we can talk about schemes, we have to establish a foundation. In the 4-2-5 alignment, we play with two defensive ends. (Diagram #1) Their alignment will depend on the team we play. However, their alignment will vary from a 5-technique to a 6-technique. We have two interior linemen. We have a 3-technique tackle and a 1-technique nose.
We originally ran a 50-defense. My first five years as an assistant and my first six years as head coach, we were in a 50-defense. In 2014, we switched to a 3-3 and tried to run that defense. It did not work very well for us. From there we went to the 4-2-5, and we have loved every minute we have been in the defense. Defense Philosophy
The first objective of our defense is to get the best eleven on the field. If the player is a wide receiver but are one of the best athletes on the field, he is going to play defense. This year we had four players go both ways full-time. That was a low number for us. We are going to get the best athletes on the field, and we want them to play with confidence. When they play with confidence, they can play fast. Our players have confidence in their strength, and they know what they are doing. We cannot stop everything on defense, but we want to stop their best play or player. We find out what their best play is by studying the opponent. Once we find what teams hang their hat on, we stop it. We want to build off the past. When we went from the 3-3 defense to the 4-2, we wanted to keep as much of the terminology as we could. That allowed your veteran players to maintain old terms that applied to the new defense. They did not have to learn everything new. Alignment and recognition are two main goals that every defense has to have. Other teams, apparently they do not believe that. If the defense can get themselves aligned before the ball is snapped, you have an 85-percent chance of being successful. If you are not aligned correctly, the offense will win every time. We have made that mistake also. In 2004 we played a team in the finals of the playoffs. We did not align right at all. They outmanned us and continued to do it the entire game. That was why we lost that game. Put your athletes in the position to be successful. Defensive Team Goals
These are our team defensive goals. If you watched us play in the championship game, you saw the stickers on our player's helmets. They receive those stickers for doing the team and individual goals. They are like gold to them. Those stickers are for teams goals, and some are from the defensive goals. If the team accomplishes 7 out of 10 goals, everyone gets a sticker. If it is 8/10, they get two stars. Nine out of 10 gives them three starts and 10/10 gives them four stars. That has happened only one time. If we shut out an opponent, the team gets a star. If the defense has no missed tackles, the defense is awarded one star. That is almost an impossible goal. We consider the entire game and award the stars if we think we had a great tackling night. We want to emphasize the fact that we were great tacklers that night. I think the 2017 team was the best tackling team I have ever coached. We did less one-on-one tackling in practice than we have ever done. We never take anyone to the ground in our team sessions. When I first started coaching, I was an old-school coach. I believed that practices had to be hard. As I have gotten older and more experienced, I think we practice smarter not harder. We bought into that in 2014, and that thinking is at all levels of our program. In our goals, one of the goals is no defensive penalties. We have to qualify that goal. We do not want any penalties that come from mental mistakes. Penalties such as un-sportsman like conduct or fighting. We will get penalties that are aggressive penalties, which happen all the time. Defense: 4-2-5
We break the defense down into the front six and the secondary. The main goal of the front six is to stop the run and pressure the quarterback. We have to know the offensive strength and the running back's alignment. We want our linebackers to see those things and communicate it to the front six. We are going to give the front six all the keys and tips they need to get their alignment right. Our practices are organized so that our front six spends more time together than any other group. Our secondary has to recognize all the formations and make the adjustments. Tempo is the biggest thing that has been introduced into high school football. That is what we do offensively. We work against our offense every day. We have to learn how to stop our offense because that is what we are going to see with teams in today's offenses. We feel the 4-2-5 can work against every team on our schedule. We open up with Ironton. They run two tight ends and a full house backfield. They come right at you. However, even Ironton has done some things in the last two years in the spread game. We had to pick a defense that we could use throughout the entire year but be ready to handle two tight ends and a full house backfield. We have to make the adjustment, and the number one thing we have to know is "never be down more than 1/2 man." If we draw a line down the middle of the center, if the offense has five and 1/2 to the right of the center, the defense must have five defenders to that side. If we are outnumbered by more than a 1/2 man, we are outnumbered, and we will not be successful. That is the number one thing we emphasize in our coaching meetings. The biggest thing we have to work on is gap-exchange. It the biggest word we have talked about in our defense. We have to know how the front six and the back five work together and exchange those gaps. I know I am talking about the why and what a lot and not too much about the how we run the defense. I hope understanding what we do and why we do it can help your program. Defensive Positions Front Six - Develop Packages - Dingoes/Jumbo
Secondary - Develop Packages - Nickel
We develop packages that we can use with our front six. We have two defensive ends. Depending on your personnel you may want to align the strong defensive end to the strength of the formation and the weak defensive end to the open side or weak side of the defense. You could use speed as the determining factor. With our defensive end, whether they flip will depend on who we are playing. We have a nose and defensive tackle that play as 1-techniques and 3-techniques defenders. You may want to align the power tackle to the 3-technique side and the quicker player at the 1-technique. Our linebackers are strong and weak. The strong linebacker has power, and the weak linebacker is the speed player. That is also an adjustment we make to the teams we play. When our defense comes in the game, they will know how the defense is going to align and which personnel is going to flip. We may not flip anyone. We also have defensive packages we use to adjust to some offensive schemes. We have a package called the "Dingoes." They are like a bunch of scrappy dogs nipping at your ankles. The players on this team are small aggressive pass rushers. They are waiting for the third down play so they can get into the game. If the coach calls dingoes, they go on the field like a pack of mad dogs. That helps you get more players on the field. They can contribute. We have a jumbo package, which is a short yardage package. In the secondary, we have packages as well. We play nickel, which gives us a different look. We look more like a 4-3 defense when we play the nickel. We have ways to adjust the corners. We can read or play man with the corners. We can align with a field and boundary corner or a strong and weak corner. Our personnel adjustment is controlled by the scouting report. The other defenders in the secondary include the safeties. We play with two strong safeties and one free safety. You could call the strong safeties outside linebackers. These three players are going to do a lot of the adjusting in the defense. I have one coach working with the corners. I have one coach each with the defensive ends, interior line, and the linebackers. We have to make sure all the defensive coaches are on the same page and speaking the same language. Defensive Practice
In our practice schedule, we cover offense and defense every day. However, on certain days we may focus more on the offense or the defense. Tuesday is our offensive practice, and Wednesday is our defensive practice. We play games on Friday night. On Monday we are in pro pads. That is girdles, shorts, shoulder pads, and helmet. We work 30 minutes on offense and 30 minutes on defense. In our 30 minutes of defense, we do 15 minutes of group and 15 minutes of the team. What we talked about at the Sunday meeting is what we talk about on the practice field on Monday. Tuesday is the offensive day. However, the defense gets 25 minutes in our Tuesday practice. We are in full gear. That is the only day we are in full gear. On Wednesday we are back in our pro pads. We are in shorts, shoulder pads, and helmets. The whole concept is we are not taking anyone to the ground. We are playing through the upper parts of the shoulder and are not going full-out. We do a ten-minute tackling circuit. In that period we are not taking people to the ground. We use the donuts we roll out and a shadow man in our tackling drills. We do tracking drills as they do in the hawk tackling. We do the hawk roll against dummies. That is the tackling we do. We are committed to the hawk tackling program. We have the sixth and fifth graders, and all the youth leagues committed to this type of tackling. In the first group session, the front six are focusing on the run. The secondary is working on their adjustment they will be making to the run. The second 15 minute period we work on the passing game. The linebacker goes down with the defensive back, and we work a 7-on-7 passing drill. While they are working on the pass defense, the down linemen work on pass rush. We come together as a team and work in the goal line situation. We want to make sure we understand the adjustments we have to make. We work goal line and red zone defense during this time. We finally come together as a team against a scout team offense. The coach has his script of plays we are going to run against the defense. We work 20 plays in 25 minutes, and we are done with practice. Thursday we are back in pro pads. The only day we are in full gear is Tuesday. For us, that was a big change. We taught we had to be in full gear every day. That was the way we did it when we played. We found no pads goes a lot faster and is better for the players. Helmet Stickers
We grade our players after the game. We score them with a plus or minus. Everyone gets a plus or minus and no grade for doing your job. If you did your job but did not have a huge impact on the play, you get no grade. If the play ran away from the defender, would be an example of not having a huge impact. If you did your job and impacted the play, we give the player a plus. He could earn a double plus for doing something outstanding above his main job. It could be extra effort, extremely good technique, or maybe score a touchdown. You can receive a minus for a negative play. You can also get a double minus for no effort, a poor technique, or no production. We give them their grade at the Sunday meeting. Our players text their position coaches trying to find out their grade. They want to know how they performed and how they stacked up that week. That is a great way to track our players and give them the incentive to go out and improve their play. Front Six Principles
These are the principles we want our front six playing with. These are the things we focus on and the buzz words that we are throwing out to them. We work on these things every single day, and we want to make sure they get it. In our read techniques, we must stay square. If we are rushing the passer or running a stunt, we may turn our shoulder to get skinny or some other escape technique. One thing we preach repeatedly is "hands, feet, and hips." We got a drill tape from Ohio State two years ago. It showed their step-over the bag technique. We got as many step-over bags as we could afford, then we made a bunch more. We have 30 or 40 of store bought and handmade step-over bags. We set them up in all kinds of different ways. We have our players going over the bags like crazy people. They are stepping over the bag, flipping their hips, and going in and out of the bags. When we attack an offensive blocker, we want to attack half-a-man. We never want to attack the chest of a blocker. We want to attack the edge and control the blocker. On flow toward the defender, we play into the gap and hold the line of scrimmage. On flow away, we squeeze, shuffle, and redirect your charge. We do not penetrate. The line of scrimmage is our friend. If you penetrate, you are creating a new gap. We cover block destruction with every one of our front six players. We teach block destruction and release from the block. You cannot stay blocked. When you find the ball release, disengage from the blocker, and make the tackle. We run split stunts with the front six. One side of the defensive line may be stunting, and the other side is playing a reading technique. One side of the line may be reading, and the other side is crashing. We have split coverages in the secondary, and we do the same thing with the guys up front. Offensive tackles hate to play against our defensive ends. We are harping on the defensive ends to beat the snot out of the offensive tackle's hip and not let him get up to the linebacker. Secondary Principles
The main coaching emphasis in defensive back play is eyes. You must read your keys and play with your eyes. He has to make sure his eyes are on who he needs to be reading. We want our outside linebackers and safeties to work with their shoulders square to the line of scrimmage. We know where to fill, and we want to come with the shoulders square. The strong safeties are the wall setters. They must attack everything from the outside and turn it back inside. The free safety is the alley runner who fills inside the strong safeties. Thanks for your time. If I can do anything to help you out, please call on me. |
Weight Room Impact on Defense
