Youth Football Training Drills

One of the fun youth football drills that really gets kids involved is the splatter drill, which teaches tackling. One player holds up a pad in front of them and stands in front of a cushion of some sort, whether that's an air mattress or large foam pads. Another player lines up in his stance several yards away and tackles the player holding the pad, driving him to the ground. It's a great way to teach proper tackling form and follow through, and it's certainly fun and exciting to do.

To pick up the intensity with your youth football drills, you can incorporate the compete drill into your practices. Basically what this is, is that at any point you stop what you're doing, the offense and defense lines up against each other and practices plays with full intensity. The idea is to teach intensity, performance under pressure and execution. The kids won't know when to expect it, so they will have to be alert at all times.

You can improve conditioning and strength at the same as having fun with the best youth football drills. An example of one of these is a relay race involving sandbags, or bags of mulch or other heavy but transportable objects. Divide the team into smaller groups and at the starting point leave a bag of whatever you are using on the ground. The first team member pick up the bag, carries it over his head and runs a certain distance, coming back and throwing the bag to his next teammate. The fastest team wins, and the slowest team has to carry all of the bags back to the equipment or storage room.

There is an infinite array of youth football drills that you can incorporate into your practices. These are just a few that should help you spark some creativity and develop your own as well. The key is that kids aren't grownups and they aren't professional athletes. Of course you need to teach skills and develop ability, but you also have to let them have fun.