“They Just Want the Damn Recipe!” (Part One of a Trilogy)
by Brad Dixon
It usually goes something like this:
“Coach, I have been following Coach Holler for a while and reading all of the Feed the Cats stuff that he is putting out. I love it and want to convince my head coach to implement it this year into our football program, but I don’t know how. Do you have any advice or information that you could share?”
Or…
“Coach, I have been reading a lot into the Minimum Effective Dose strategy that Coach Holler talks about, but I’m not sure what it would look like for football. Would you mind sharing your practice plans and how you prioritize speed and rest into your football program?”
Multiple times a day, these types of emails show up in my inbox at school. Some days it’s one, other days it’s twenty. As an old-school football coach who “saw the light” two years ago, I understand their intrigue. Football is no longer the “three yards and a cloud of dust” game it once was. In fact, it hasn’t been that way for a long time. Spread offenses, no-huddle tempo, and RPOs dominate the game now. Speed and athleticism are king. 40 times, vertical jumps, and broad jumps seem much more important than 225-pound bench press reps these days.
However, practices have not kept “pace” with these offensive innovations and/or their speed-focused schemes. Coaches have a hard time letting go of their old-school ways and “we’ve always done it this way” mentality. Three-hour practices based on building “toughness” still reign supreme, no matter what Friday nights or Saturday afternoons look like on the field. Gassers and 120 yard shuttle runs are still the standard of most practices, while 40-yard dashes have become the standard of recruiting services and NFL drafts. It seems that speed is always recruited and drafted, but rarely nurtured. Too many old-school coaches still think “you can’t teach speed.”
Enter Tony Holler, a track coach from Plainfield North, IL, whose “Feed the Cats” philosophy has swept across this country like wildfire! I can’t open up Twitter these days without seeing a track or football program implementing one of Tony’s (@pntrack) ideas. It’s kind of become a cult. A cult where “speed is the priority and tired is the enemy!” If you’re not following, then you need to attend one of the upcoming Track/Football Consortiums (Dallas and/or St.Louis), and you’ll know what I mean.
Personally, I stumbled across Coach Holler three years ago during my first year of coaching track. As an “old school” football coach, his Minimum Effective Dose strategy to training and emphasis on speed was blasphemy. How dare he challenge my “Train Insane or Remain the Same” mentality (actual slogan on the back of our summer t-shirt several years ago), or my belief that championships are built in the weight room. I mean, that’s how I was raised. It’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve been a grinder my whole life and I’ve earned what I’ve got through hard work in the weight room. I wasn’t ready for what Coach Holler was preaching. However, as a self-described “polarizer”, I just couldn’t seem to stop reading what Tony was putting out there. I loved it, but I wasn’t sure how it would work for football. I think we can all appreciate SPEED as the focus for track, but how in the world are we supposed to make that the focus for football? Football is a man’s game, and the toughest, most well-conditioned teams win the 4th quarter, right? The more I read, the more I questioned my whole football philosophy.
Then, finally one day I decided to start putting these ideas down on paper. I took the ideas that Coach Holler had been writing about, and I started with what I thought Monday’s practice should look like, then Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on until I got to Friday… gameday! What did I want Friday to look and feel like? Did our Monday through Thursday plan build up to Friday? Well, I thought so, but what the hell did I know? This all seemed foreign to me. I had only one choice.
Mid-July of 2018, I finally worked up the courage to message Coach Holler. I now understand how he feels being bombarded with messages! But, like Coach Holler, I enjoy helping coaches as much as I can. Below is our earliest conversation:
As I sit back now, I can appreciate exactly what Coach Holler was doing in that first conversation. Really what I was wanting, was for him to approve my ideas, and give me his plan for how he would “Feed the Cats” for football. His “recipe” so to speak. What he responded with was not his “recipe,” but rather, “how I should cook.” That thought never came to me until I recently attended TFC-Chicago in early December 2019. During one of his talks, Holler said that most coaches, “Don’t want to learn how to cook, they just want the damn recipe!”
I slumped down in my chair a little bit. That’s exactly what I was hoping for in that first conversation we had. I was one of those coaches who wanted the damn recipe! Thankfully, though, Coach Holler’s response almost two years ago was exactly what I needed. (Funny how that always happens! What we WANT is rarely what we NEED!). Coach Holler urged me to stay focused on my overall mission and the overarching ideas of my philosophy, not the specific details. He made me create my own details, so that I could “build my own house” (one of Coach Holler’s Core Values of Feed the Cats). Essentially, I needed to “learn how to cook” before I worried about the recipe.
That gave me the idea for this article. Over the past two years, as the emails and phone calls have rolled in, I found myself giving our recipe here at Camp Point Central High School more often than not, instead of helping coaches “learn how to cook.” In reality, if there was really only one recipe to be successful, why wouldn’t everyone just do that and be successful. Why don’t we all just do what Alabama does, or the New England Patriots? I mean, they are the most successful football programs of this era, so why don’t we all just copy their damn recipe? The simple answer… they know how to cook! Yes, they have a recipe, but they know exactly WHAT they believe in and exactly HOW they want to do it.
You are never going to be able to copy what Alabama or New England does. Just like you are never going to be able to copy what we do here at Central. There are too many variables to consider. Enrollment, location, athletes, scheme, and culture all play a role. Yes, I understand that the details matter, but the overarching ideas behind the great programs are what matters most. For Coach Holler, that’s exactly what he preaches. He challenged me to think big picture, and then grow and adapt along the way. Hopefully, over the next two articles, I can share some of the big ideas that have helped us be successful in our football program and make you a better “cook” in your program.
Article 2: How to Cook
Article 3: The Basic Ingredients
Coach Brad Dixon
Central High School
Camp Point, IL
@coachbdixon
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TFC-Dallas coming soon! Jan 25-26.
TFC-St. Louis Feb 7-8.
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