Jackie Bledsoe, Jr. explains that being mentally strong is where toughness and confidence come from, in youth football and in life.
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Last year, I interviewed my friend and former NFL player and two-time Super Bowl champ, Rosevelt Colvin. Along with his experience playing professional football, we talked about life as a football dad. He is an involved football dad and does a lot for our community with youth sports overall.
One topic we addressed was player safety for youth football players and how some of his youth coaches tried to make players “tough.” One story he shared was a drill they used to run called: “the blind side.”
This drill was used to help “remind” players to not go offsides. If you went offsides, you had to start at one end of the field, run with the ball down the field, and someone would come up and blindside you with a hit. It happened to him once. He was knocked clean off his feet, and he’ll never forget it. I believe it because I will never forget it, and I only heard it from him.
As dads, we sometimes struggle with how to make our kids tough enough to play football. However, there are ways to make them “tough” without doing drills like “the blind side” or other things geared toward roughing them up.
Here are three ways to make your kids tough enough for football
- Focus on the mental aspect. I recently read an article about NBA player Kobe Bryant and his ability to focus through pain. To him, it’s 90 percent a mental exercise. Being tough enough for football or anything else is similar. Mental toughness is something all players can learn.
- Teach them proper fundamentals. Injuries happen in every sport. One way to mitigate this is to teach young athletes the proper fundamentals. With proper fundamentals, instead of being tough enough to taking a hit or delivering a hit that causes injury, kids are taught how to correctly and safely play the game.
- Start them where they are. I’ve heard dads say they’re putting their kids in tackle football because it’ll help them get tougher. You may be ready for tackle, but maybe your child isn’t. Some kids need to start at flag football and work their way up.
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Being able to take a hard hit doesn’t help anyone in football or life. Being mentally strong is where toughness and confidence come from. Taking or delivering hits wrong, could eventually result in injuries, and nobody wants children to get hurt.
Work with your kids on all three aspects, and they’ll be tough enough for football as well as other areas of their lives.
How do you help your kids with toughness?
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This post originally appeared on USAFootball.com
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(Photo Credit: Author)
What if your children(esp sons) DON’T want to play football anyway and why must boys in particular always be “toughened up”(as if they wre going into the Parachute Regiment or US Navy SEALs)???