We put a lot of focus on youth tackle football coaching here at Tackle Smart. We have written many articles on how to begin your kid’s football journey, ensure they are working at an age/talent-appropriate level, and what to do if your child gets a concussion. These are all necessary initial steps regarding your child getting involved in football.
This is not all we do and believe in at Tackle Smart. We also provide tools and tips as your child progresses through middle, high school and into college football. At this point, general coaching becomes less critical – players have the basics down – and specialized coaching to positions and skills becomes what makes average athletes good and good athletes great.
Look for the following three things when getting your kid specialized coaching.
Appropriate Sized Groups
Nothing is worse than enrolling your kid in a camp to accelerate their development only to arrive and see the camp has a couple of coaches and 200 players. Similarly – but less talked about – it is just as pointless if there are ten coaches and four players. We are looking for the Goldilocks situation when the right amount of coaches covers the right amount of players.
You want your kid to be coached around a few enough players to get lots of reps and advice but around enough that they can actually work on skills in a team environment. Ask for references from parents who have already been through the program if you need to – or check social media posts for photos and videos of previous sessions – to ensure these groups are what you need them to be.
The Right Coaches
Having an appropriate number of coaches is only useful if those coaches are the right coaches for the job. At Tackle Smart, we teach safe and effective tackling techniques. To that end, we have tackle coaches that know how to coach tackle football. We don’t have a staff of former NFL wide receivers, so we don’t pretend we know how to coach better ways to catch the football to pad out our camps and clinics.
A company throwing a camp needs to know what they are good at, what their bread and butter is. We believe in our methods and tools, just like the best quarterback camps will believe in their methods to churn out better quarterbacks. Look into the backgrounds of the coaches that are at a camp to see if they are really specialists enough to make your son or daughter a better player.
Is Your Kid Ready
This can be a tricky question. Specialized training will always make a player better. You don’t want to throw in your kid with only basic skills alongside a group of high schoolers that have been playing for the best part of a decade. This will (obviously) be no good for anyone involved.
Finding that line is tricky. This is where your research comes in. No kid wants to be the weak link in the chain, whether in a camp or on their high school team. Specialized coaching will make your child better and safer on the field, and neither should be underestimated. Find the right camp and watch your kid become a better player overnight.
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