This episode is taking from the Virtual Football Summit which was held at the beginning of the pandemic shutdown. Former Director of Performance for the Houston Texans Erik Korem shared the details of how he helps prepare a team and get them in game shape for week 1.

Over the course of your career how many times have you walked away from week 1 saying “We need to get into better shape?”

For some, practice planning is a copy/paste function. Templates are set up and the practice plan varies little over the course of the season.

However, crafting a practice that prepares a team to perform at an optimal level is both an art and a science.

Former Houston Texans Director of Perfomance Dr. Erik Korem, shared the science portion of practice planning.

The point of any practice is to prepare players for game day. Having a detailed plan on how to be ready both physically and mentally is critical.

Dr. Korem pointed out that coaches should conduct more of their practices to truly replicate the time and intensity of game day atmospheres. This means setting those old templates and scripts aside and understanding the workload a player and team will face on game day.

The First Game Conundrum

Dr. Korem emphasizes having practices that prepare players for both the actual time of practice to replicate the actual time spent on game day.

If players must exert over a 3 hour and 24 minute period (average time of an FBS contest) then there should be some days that replicate that (within NCAA or state governing body parameters of course). High school games are between two and two and a half hours.

His point is that most coaches do not plan practices to last as long as they used to, and if not prepared for leading up to game one, the team may very well look out of shape. Korem calls this the first game conundrum.

He does not suggest having an uptempo practice for that long, but rather studying what actual game day looks like for a certain team, including half time, time outs, and even adjustments on the sideline, and replicating that workload in practice.

He shares the philosophy, rationale, and science behind this in today's episode.

Get the entire talk with slides at CoachTube FREE with this link:

https://bit.ly/3PhfDAF

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