Group cohesion

Living in Florida, the beach is never more than a few blocks away. I used to take the whole team to the beach in the off season and play a game of touch for about an hour. (Running in the sand is excellent conditioning for both cardiovascular and leg developement). Then, I would life guard for them to have a 30 minute swim, devising races, etc. They loved it and all the while I was working on their conditioning and they didn't have a clue. No better exercise going than HYDOTHERAPY. All they knew was they were having a ball and looked forward to the days of the week we had designated as Beach Day.

Coach Easton

Great thoughts. When it comes to offseason competitons among the linemen, do you guys like individual competitions, breaking them into groups, or both? do you switch up the groups or keep the same groups all offseason? What about things other than physical competions - anybody do community service? Relationship education? Any problems with these?

I've used the Pizza idea or Buffet idea and it works! Another thing I will try this season is to keep all the O-line together in the locker room and put the leader (not necessarily a starter) right in the center of them. Another thing I do is to have story time when we're done with Individual before we go to Team, as long as they've hustled and gotten their work done. We'll all take a knee, and 1 day, I'll tell a story then we'll go to Team. They'll have to write it down that night and figure out the meaning that night. Then the next 2 days, we'll talk about how it applies to their lives and the team. Then we'll start with a new story, always something that has a point (teambuilding, communication, etc).

I've thought about making the starting 5 run sprints all running holding on to a rope together. Any thoughts?

Coach Allore