How to Cook
by Brad Dixon
If you haven’t read my introduction to this trilogy, go back and read Part 1: They Just Want the Damn Recipe!. It will give you the premise for how I got started using Coach Holler’s “Feed the Cats” (sprint-based football) in my program, and why I’m using cooking as my analogy for building a football program where “speed is the priority” and “tired is the enemy.”
Speaking of cooking, I wonder how many coaches reading this article think of themselves as a good cook? Okay, how about this one… how many of you think of yourself as a master cook on the grill?! Yeah, now I’m probably speaking your language. I know I feel like I can hold my own in front of a grill. It’s kind of like a rite of passage to becoming a man! If you are like me, why do you consider yourself a “stud” in front of that burning charcoal (or gas if you prefer)? Is it the recipe or the skill?
I would argue it’s the skill. Take a steak for example. How many of you order a ribeye or a sirloin at a restaurant? Are there certain restaurants where you LOVE the steak, and others where you don’t, even though you ordered it the same at both places? Why is that? If I order a “medium rare sirloin” shouldn’t it taste the same no matter where I go? The answer is no. The best steaks are prepared by the best cooks! The best cooks don’t even need a recipe. The best cooks know how to cook! They understand the key aspects of grilling a steak, but they each have their own unique touch to making that perfect steak. That is what cooking is all about!
I think the same thing goes for coaching. Great coaches understand the key aspects of building a program, but they all have their own unique way of making their program successful. They know how to coach! At Camp Point Central, we have some key principles that we feel are very important to our success. How you interpret or implement these key principles are unique to you. You need to “build your own house” as Coach Holler says. If you don’t believe in what you are doing, no one else will. Remember, you are the cook!
Principle #1: Minimum Effective Dose (Don’t Burn the Steak!)
“We want our players to feel as FRESH as possible and be able to play as FAST as possible on Friday night by using the MINIMUM EFFECTIVE DOSE possible!”
This slide makes it on all of my presentations:
Why? It’s simple…I love these two pictures. On the left, is a picture I stole from one of Coach Holler’s articles where he quotes Paracelsus from 500 years ago, “Everything is a poison, nothing is a poison, it all depends on the dosage.” It’s called hormesis. Webster defines hormesis as “a theoretical phenomenon of dose-response relationships in which something that produces harmful biological effects at moderate to high doses may produce beneficial effects at low doses.”
I witnessed this phenomenon first-hand eight years ago during our first football game of 2011. One of our seniors decided that it would be a good idea to take 16 ibuprofen before the game because he thought it would help him play without feeling pain! Needless to say, it didn’t end well. He ended up taking a trip in the ambulance to the ER after leaving the field in the second quarter. Thankfully, everything turned out okay, but it was a very real reminder that dosages matter. It’s okay to take two of ibuprofen to help relieve a headache, but not okay to take 16 to play “pain-free” in a football game. Remember, small doses can be beneficial, but large doses can kill. Unfortunately, it took me another six years to make this connection to my football practices.
The picture on the right is a caged Panther. This might not have much significance to you, but means everything to our football program. You see, our nickname is the “Panthers,” and our minimum effective dose strategy purposely keeps our Panthers caged up all week. I want our players so hungry to play on Friday night, that I don’t let them out much during the week of practice. (Remember, you have to build your own house!)
However, for too long, I did the exact opposite. I would “burn the steak” every week. I expected our players to practice for 2.5 hours every night trudging through drills at sub-max speed and treating “team time” like an intrasquad scrimmage on most days. Water breaks? You better be running there and running back! Now, that I look back at it, I think about how dumb I was. I mean… who wants to eat a burnt steak?! In football terms, who wants to take the field every Friday night with tired and worn out kids?
But, it happens in almost every program. We confuse activity for achievement. As long as everyone is moving “fast” on the practice field for 2.5 hours, we believe we are getting them ready to play “fast” on Friday night. Most coaches believe that we have to “make practices harder than the games, so that the games are easy.” Unfortunately, the opposite is true. We are actually training them to play at 80% all week, and then expect them to play at 100% on Friday. It just doesn’t add up. The idea that you can practice at game speed every day for 2.5 hours is not realistic.
I know what you’re thinking. “How are we going to be “in shape” to win the fourth quarter?” Well… I’m not going to get into energy system talk, and anaerobic vs. aerobic, but I want you to use common sense. Let’s say an average play lasts about five seconds with a little more than thirty seconds rest in between. If there are a total of 120 plays in a game, that’s ten minutes of work with sixty minutes of rest, not counting time between quarters or halftime. If we look at ten minutes of football in a game lasting two-hours, the work-rest ratio is more than one to ten. How many of us actually do the opposite in practice? We attempt to maximize the amount of work! Most football coaches want to work ten times more than they rest! How does that impact how our players perform in the 4th quarter on Friday? Did those thirty second gassers we ran on Wednesday at the end of a 2.5 hour practice really help us “finish the 4th quarter?” Or did it really just make us slower and more tired for Friday night? I think you know my answer.
In fact, I think Coach Holler says it best. “We want our guys to be 80% in shape and 100% healthy.” Okay, so what does that look like? That’s where the cooking comes in. Remember, you are the cook of your team. You know your offense, defense, athletes, depth, tempo, etc., etc., etc. In my next article, I will give you a few of the key ingredients we use in our Minimum Effective Dose Strategy, but I want you to think about things that you can cut out of your current practice schedule? What are you currently doing that really doesn’t show up on Friday night? Are you doing things that are counterproductive to your team’s success? Remember, don’t burn the steak!
Principle #2: Pareto Principle (Keep the Recipe Simple)
I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the Pareto Principle. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist in the late 1800s who recognized that 80% of Italy’s land was held by 20% of the population. He argued that there was an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. In other words, 80% of what you have comes from 20% of your work. See the diagram below:
I believe the same principle applies to football. I hear football coaches use the word K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) all the time at clinics, but I’m not sure they all actually live by that belief. I think too many coaches think they are going to out-scheme their opponents every Friday night, instead of focusing on what their team can actually execute well. We’ve all been guilty of seeing a play on College Football Saturday or NFL Sunday, and trying to implement it the next week. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it’s a waste of time. You have to ask yourself the question: What does it cost? In other words, how much time are you spending on the fringes of your offense or defense? If you are spending a lot of time in practice working on a specific offensive scheme or a particular coverage or blitz, are you seeing the fruit of your labor on Friday night? If your answer is no, then you might need to refocus your energy.
I know I have been guilty of focusing too much energy on WHAT WE CAN’T DO in the past. As coaches, we believe some aspect of our scheme SHOULD be able to work because we’ve seen it work before or it looks great on paper, and it robs our focus. We spend so much time and energy trying to fix this or fix that, but we don’t see the desired outcomes. If we change our mindset to WHAT WE CAN DO, then we can maximize our time and energy and actually get big returns on our investment.
For example, if your team is pretty good in zone coverage, but horrible at man coverage, why spend all the time and energy working on your man coverage if you’re not seeing the results on Friday night? Maybe your time would be much better spent getting even better at your zone coverage, and even adding a few more wrinkles to it. Don’t complicate your recipe. Focus on what your team CAN DO and build around their strengths.
When you take this minimalist approach, you will be amazed at what you can cut out of practice. You’ll no longer need 30-minute individual periods or 40-play team sessions. Find the three or four run schemes you CAN execute and a few pass concepts you CAN actually COMPLETE. Then, pair that with a BASE DEFENSE that fits your personnel and you are well on your way to building a Minimum Effective Dose Football Program!
Once your base schemes are established, you can build wrinkles and adjustments into your schemes that make yourself appear multiple, but allow your guys to play fast because of how easy and simple it is. At Camp Point Central, we are a base Wing-T offense and 3-5 Defense and that is our focus all throughout camp and pre-season. As the season goes on, we add certain things that maximize our personnel, but don’t cost us much time. However, our practice time is always focused around the 20%. Here’s what the Pareto Principle looked like in our 2019 Wing-T offense:
Yes, we had 39 different play calls on the year, but many of those were “shot plays” that we maybe called one time. When we needed a big first down or the game was on the line, we were going to run what we ran best.
I don’t know what that looks like in your program, but that is something you have to figure out. How simple is your recipe going to be? How exactly are you going to cook it effectively? In the next article, I will give you a few key ingredients that we used to help us accomplish these key principles. I’ll share some ways we focus on speed and prioritize rest. I’ll also share how we survive without conditioning and use Reflexive Performance Reset (RPR) to help prevent injuries. Some people will agree and others won’t, and that’s okay. Build your own house!
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Coach Brad Dixon, Central High School, Camp Point, IL, bdixon@cusd3.com, @coachbdixon
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Article 1: They Just Want the Damn Recipe!
Article 2: How to Cook
Article 3: The Basic Ingredients
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TFC-Dallas coming soon! Jan 25-26.
TFC-St. Louis Feb 7-8. Coach Dixon will make two presentations here!
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