Coordination – An Athlete’s Most Essential Tool

One of the ongoing objectives of this column is to provide you with as much athletic development tips and drills as possible in order to best prepare your athletes to become better football players. There are seven main components to athletic development; agility, balance, coordination, flexibility, speed, strength, & stamina, that we’ll cover throughout my Youth Evolution Sports columns. Last week I focused on the how to properly throw and catch a football, a coordination skill that most kids rarely fully develop. This week we provide a fun coordination drill for wide receivers, defensive backs, linebackers, tight ends, and quarterbacks, however everyone on your team can benefit from participating as well.

Coordination can be described as the skillful and balanced movement of different parts of the body at the same time. For our purposes, coordination includes any isolated or combined balanced movement of the upper and lower body, the hands and eyes, and the feet and eyes. Athletes are often required to synchronize different body parts, movements, and tasks simultaneously in order to execute a play on the field. A good example is a wide receiver in football stretching to catch a pass while keeping one foot inbounds. This play involves synchronizing upper- and lower-body position while at the same time focusing on an eye–hand execution of catching the ball and an eye–foot element of keeping at least one foot inbounds. These eye–hand and eye–foot dynamics and how they combine with other body movements are the main elements we’ll focus on for this week’s column.

Coordination involves the ability of athletes to visualize a movement in their mind and transform that visualization into motion. For success in developing coordination, athletes must first improve their overall body awareness. By continuously experiencing a movement, athletes begin to develop a feel for how that skill should be executed. As they understand how a movement should feel, athletes establish muscle memory in which the body memorizes the coordination of the movement until it becomes second nature, or automatic. Once muscle memory is established, coordination and execution of a move improves rapidly; athletes can then adjust this memory, or knowledge, to various conditions in order to execute the precise movements of a skill.

Learning occurs best when kids are given opportunities to experience and feel the movement of a skill. Formal cognitive instruction is seldom enough by itself and is sometimes overdone. Lengthy and detailed explanations of how to perform a skill can be detrimental because they can spoil the body’s natural ability to execute. We have all taught ourselves difficult physical tasks through experience and trial and error. We began with crawling, progressed to walking, and eventually moved to such skills as riding a bicycle. We might have needed no instruction or any sort of lesson. We learned difficult coordination tasks on our own by experimenting and experiencing movements. The coordination drills introduced in this column won’t include lengthy explanations that you must pass on to your athletes. We have designed these drills to be developed through experiential self-learning and measuring methods, which involve many repetitions. In experiential learning, athletes find their own customized ways to execute while focusing on key fundamentals. They self-correct based on feel, thus, the following drill should allow coaches to provide guided exploration and discovery for their athletes without a lot of verbal instruction. This saves you time and promotes athletes to self-learn—with support, as needed.

Along with experience, imitation is also a powerful learning tool. Humans, especially children, are hard-wired for imitation. Recently, scientists have begun to speculate that mirror neurons in the brain, which can be triggered by both seeing and performing the same activity, may allow us to train our physical movements based on pure observation. * New York Times Sports Magazine June 2006 – “The Home Screen Advantage” by Clive Thompson. In other words, through watching others perform a skill, athletes subconsciously learn the skill being observed.

Coaches and athletes have long used imagery, such as videos and observation of others, to perfect skills. When it comes to coordinating and perfecting combinations of body movements, we also suggest using sport video games to stimulate the brain’s neurons. Sport video games are now so sophisticated and based on such precise player movements and execution that the need for actual video is no longer necessary. You can now use portable handheld video consoles, such as the Sony PSP, to observe athletic movement and execution. Consider how passionate many kids are about playing video games. Take advantage of this contemporary approach to instruction. We recommend bringing a PSP outside to supplement drills by allowing the athlete to observe the execution of specific drills in virtual reality.

Video games might also help athletes develop eye–hand coordination. Studies by James Rosser of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in New York have shown that surgeons who prepped for surgical drills by first playing video games for 20 minutes performed the drills 20 minutes faster and with fewer errors than those who did not play the video games. Playing video games sharpens coordination, reaction time, and visual skills—all essential elements that are incorporated into the following drill.

Skill Position Coordination Drill & Competitions
Age Range - 8 to 14
Purpose - To improve eye–hand coordination and overall body coordination and awareness for football players
Equipment -You’ll need a football (junior size for 8- to 12-year-olds, intermediate size for 13- and 14-year-olds), four cones, two 6-inch hurdles, and some chalk.
Setup - Square off an area 15-\x\-15 yards using four cones. Line one side with a six- to eight-foot chalk line (or use an athletic field with lines already marked.
Execution - Four progressions begin with athletes executing sideline catches while controlling feet inbounds (one and two feet); this is followed by one-handed sideline catches and a progress to behind-the-back catches.

Progression 1
The first progression involves throwing passes traveling out of bounds to the athlete on the sidelines, making him or her stretch out to catch the ball. Athletes must first attempt to keep two feet inbounds while catching the ball, and then to keep one foot inbounds. The objective is to train the body to simultaneously coordinate two tasks (catching a ball and controlling the feet). Reverse direction after every 10 sets of throws and catches in order to replicate receiving a pass along the opposite side of the field. Once athletes are comfortable making catches along the sideline, advance to the second progression.

Progression 2
Advance the drill by placing a six-inch hurdle along the sidelines and asking athletes to run toward the hurdle, leap over it with two feet at the same time, and immediately stretch to catch a ball traveling out of bounds. Reverse direction after every 10 throws. Repeat the drill but have each athlete leap over the hurdle while attempting to stretch to catch a ball traveling out of bounds and to land with one foot inbounds. Reverse direction after 10 throws.

Competition
Attempt 10 consecutive catches and award 1 point for each successful catch made after jumping over the six-inch hurdle and landing with both feet inbounds while outstretched over the sidelines. Follow this by attempting 10 consecutive catches and awarding 2 points for each successful catch made after jumping over the six-inch hurdle and landing with one foot inbounds while outstretched over the sidelines. A maximum of 30 points can be scored.

Progression 3
Continue to throw passes traveling out of bounds to the athlete on the sidelines, but advance the drill by challenging the athlete to make one-handed catches while stretched out over the sidelines with both feet inbounds. Follow this with catches while keeping only one foot inbounds.

Competition
Attempt 10 consecutive catches; awarding 2 points for each successful one-handed catch made landing with both feet inbounds while outstretched over the sidelines. Follow by attempting 10 consecutive catches and awarding 4 points for each successful catch made landing with one foot inbounds while outstretched over the sidelines. A maximum of 60 points can be scored.

Progression 4
Advance the drill to include each athlete attempting to make behind the back catches along the sideline while keeping one or two feet inbounds. The objective is to learn total body control and to maintain focus while executing multiple tasks with a raised degree of difficulty. This drill should be attempted only after athletes have success with one-handed catches along the sideline. Don’t try this drill with athletes under 13.

Competition
Attempt 10 consecutive catches and award 10 points for each successful behind-the-back catch made along the sidelines. A maximum of 100 points can be scored.