Ok, I now have some sense of direction.....I think.

I bought the online course "The Fundamentals of Coaching Football at NFHS Learning Center for a few  reasons.  First, the course is a national recognized course that many states actually require of their coaches.  Secondly,  the website also provides many resources such as practice plan templates and animated video drills.  And lastly, with my subscription to the course, I also got a free membership to USA football which is the governing body for youth football where there are a whole cache of tools and resources.

Now as for what the actually course entails, it is a five unit course that must be done in order and has assessments to make sure you understand the material.  I figure I can do at least one unit every one to tow weeks.  The biggest drawback is that the lessons are all videos that take a long time to load.   The first unit was all about player safety.  I did learn something that was not practice when I was a player, the levels of contact.  This where you control the type of contact your players have with each during practice.  There are 5 levels of contact:

Air-simulating drills in the air to check for proper form and technique.
Bags-same as air, but gives the player a target to practice technique on.
Control- Player on player contact, but the outcome is predetermined for one side of the ball.
Thud- Player vs player, but the drill stops before any players go to the ground.
Live- Full, game simulated contact that only should be done in a team setting.

I am kind of confused by this because there are drills I did as a player that were one on one like tombstones that was entirely full contact.  Are these type of drills not considered safe?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNk5IFZ0FpQ

Where to Start?

Learning how to coach football is pretty daunting without having some sense of direction.  Obviously my goal someday is to coach at the high school level since I will be the teaching profession at that level and I want to make myself a better teacher candidate.  So where do I go first?  Do I jump right in and YouTube videos of position coaches that I know to be experts at their profession as did when I first started exploring this topic?  Finally I decided to do what I usually do when I want know about something, I Googled it.

I ended up just searching the query "how to become a football coach."  This led me to a whole array of quality search results.  I got to reading a couple of blogs about coaching which were pretty helpful in explaining what I would be getting into as a football coach. 

http://strongfootballcoach.com/how-to-become-a-football-coach/

This blog is by a football coach who I now follow on Google + by the name of Curtis Peterson.  He gives a well thought out guide in becoming a coach and he emphasizes things I hadn't thought about.

Step 1: Analyze the time I have to devote to coaching.  Curtis suggest that you make sure you are physically able to do it.  In high school, we are talking about 30-35 hours per week.  For me I think that commitment is entirely possible since I will not be in the credential program anymore and I won't have to (hopefully) wait tables anymore for an income.  My biggest hurdle in this will be with my wife.  But I know she understands my passion for this.  Curtis goes into some other things like what level to coach and what financial compensation to expect.  But most importantly he writes about what coaching is really about, having a positive impact not just on the players, but impacting the community as well.

Other resources I explored.

http://coachhuey.com/ This is an online forum where coaches discuss the game of football and share ideas with each other.

http://www.nfhslearn.com/sportDetail.aspx?sport=football This is an online coaching football course that the state of Ohio has as a requirement for all coaches to complete.  It is 50 bucks to take the course, I haven't decided on it yet.

Welcome to my Learning Experience!

Hi all,

I have been given the opportunity to spend 20% of my time in teaching credentialing course to learn how to do something that I have a passion for.  While being able to talk about History everyday is great by itself, one the reasons I want to become a high school teacher in the first place is because I have always dreamed about coaching a sport that I love, Football.  While I played the sport when I was in high school and remember many of the drills I participated in, that does not mean I can walk on a football field and be an effective coach.  So when this opportunity was presented to me by my university professor, I knew exactly what I wanted to devote my time towards.  This blog was created so I can share my learning experience with the rest of the world (mostly my professors) and I will update what I have learned weekly.  If anyone would be willing to share their knowledge about coaching the game of football, it would greatly appreciated.  As of right now I plan watching a lot of YouTube videos to build up my knowledge because it has helped me in the past when I have coached for kids' baseball teams.  I also plan on attending a coaching conference this semester, so if anyone has any ideas on that, I would love your input.