BUY THIS BOOK!

First things first:
Link to Apple Store

Next:
What Bdud had to say about it...

To follow up:
Have you bought it yet?

My thoughts:
   I'm super in love with Coach Grabowski's offense at Baldwin Wallace.  It's EXACTLY what I would like to run as a potential HC/OC.  Pistol, 11/12 personnel, Downhill run and playaction focus, concept carryover galore.  It's like he read my mind, then said, "This guy is clearly an idiot, it should be done this way" and then did it.
   For all of that fanboy-ism, I think EVERYONE (note: that's everyone with an iPad since it's iBooks only) should buy this book because of this: it's the best executed example of how to teach an offense to ANYONE I've ever seen.  The book describes the concepts, includes Keynote (Apple version of PowerPoint) presentations of coaching points and key ideas, shows diagrams of the plays, then shows film of the plays themselves.  As coaches, we should aspire to have the most efficient ways to install/teach our offenses or defenses and make sure that our players understand and comprehend what we're trying to get them to do.
   If you want to approach it as a educator, this is a concrete example of appealing to multiple learning styles, especially if you are talking to them as you go through everything, which you will be.  If you have them take their own notes, then you're hitting another learning style.  If you then have an on-field walk-through as your pre-practice, you're hitting another.  I'll defy you to find a better way to present information to kids in a way that they will have stronger recall or understanding, especially when dealing with time constraints like we all have.
   So, again, this book is an amazing example of how to teach ANYTHING to our players.  Plus it's pretty bitchin' technology.  Further reading on Coach Grabowski: Coach Grab on AFM's Site.

BUY THE DAMN BOOK ALREADY.

Book Review: “Whale Done”

A while back I was going through a bit of a crisis of faith, at least in the football context. I was having a real hard time coaching my position the way that our HC wanted me to do it, which felt exceedingly negative and overall-dick-ish. I'm pretty good a putting on a façade/war face in most situations, but my problem was that I'm very fond of the two kids that we had starting at ILB. One played for me for four years, the other is a hard-working, charming, tough kid that I'd coached in a limited role as a freshman and almost started for me as a sophomore. I had a hard time doing what, to me, consisted of constantly running them down. I don't like being negative in that fashion, I prefer to coach and treat people differently.

This resulted in a lot of conflicts with me and the HC, some internal and some external. I got yelled at, a lot. It wasn't uncommon for me to a tongue-lashing in practice at least once a week. Eventually, I got assigned to coach the OLBs and another coach took over the ILBs, which upset me and both of the starters a great deal. I took it in stride, but I became pretty resolved to find a different way to do things. I wanted to find examples from anyone I could that would show me how I can be a positive coach and still be a winner. So, a shopping spree at Amazon resulted in several books by or about John Wooden, John Gagliardi (more on both at another date), and Whale Done! By Ken Blanchard.
http://www.amazon.com/Whale-Done-Power-Positive-Relationships/dp/074323538X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292960129&sr=8-1

Whales? WTF?

Yep. Whales. Blanchard uses the example set by the whale trainers at SeaWorld to lay out his philosophy of positive training. In a nutshell, the philosophy is this: by emphasizing the positive, ignoring the negative, and redirecting the rest, we can build positive relationships with our subordinates and loved ones that enable us to experience a better way of being.

An example he uses is the difference between training a Jack Russell terrier in your yard and a Killer Whale in a tank. If you Jack Russell pees on your shoe, the common reaction is to shout and holler and make sure he knows that peeing on your shoe is BAD. He may never pee on your shoe again, but that hasn't limited him from peeing on the rugs, the couch, your laundry hamper, any number of things. If he nips your kid's heel, you whack him on the nose with the newspaper. So on and so on, training a dog isn't terribly complex in the grand scheme of things.

A Killer Whale, however, is a different task altogether. The whale is a beast of tremendous power and a fantastic killing machine. We can't just smack the whale on the nose when it's doing something we don't like. So, we have to go another way. We ignore negative behaviors and focus on encouraging and supporting positive behaviors. If we want the whale to jump out of the water and over a rope, we have to slowly train him. It starts with putting the rope in the water and giving him a rub on the head whenever he goes over the rope. He associates the head rub with going over the rope and keeps doing it. Then you start raising the rope out of the water. Mingle in feeding him some mackerel, more positive energy, and lots of effort, and you've got a friggin' whale jumping over a rope that's six feet out of the water! But if we had tried to use negative methodology, we'd probably have been marine mammal food in no time.

So… People?

Yep. People. I'm pretty committed to trying this out in certain aspects of my life: coaching track, teaching, training my parents new puppy. I really dig the theory and the methodology. I'm still working on planning how to incorporate the whole deal into football, since football is such a complex environment. People like being told what they're doing or have done was good, they like being rewarded, and they like pleasing the other people in their lives. It's not terribly outrageous to presume that we would get results from accentuating the good in people.

The trickiest aspect, in my mind, will be the ignoring of the negatives that people put out. It's one thing to accentuate the positive, that's fun and easy. But to ignore the negative efforts or actions of others is really, really hard. Imagine your two kids come in from outside and one tracks mud all over the floor, which you just cleaned. First instinct? "Get off the carpet with those shoes!" Whale Done philosophy says a more useful reaction would be to look at the one who is taking their shoes off by the doorway and say, "I love how you're minding the clean floor, go ahead and grab some couch time with the remote for a bit." You've accentuated what's positive about their behavior, you've rewarded it, and you've made it expressly clear to the other kid want kind of behavior you want without attacking them. Good stuff, right?

One Caveat, Though…

The ideas are great. The writing, however, is kinda painful. It reminds me of a philosophy book that I had to read for a class in college where a group of 'college students' seemingly had a series of debates about the nature of 'knowing', just for the hell of it. It all just felt forced and annoying to read, I hated the book and it was a terrible intro to philosophy for me. This book is the same thing. Lo and behold, a perfectly crafted story just happens to appear that reinforces exactly what the author is talking about. It's not like reading Twilight or anything, but it got to me.

Book Review: Football's Eagle and Stack Defenses by Ron Vanderlinden

Buy This Or You're Dumb

It's really about that simple folks. I don't care what your defensive system is, 3-3, 3-4, 4-3, 4-4, Bear, Variable UFO Defense of Doomination, this book has something in it that you'll read, re-read, and realize that it's not only good, but it can help you. I read it in about 2 days, which is saying something because it's not a light book at 248 pages which are largely dense, technical football writing. It's not a book of diagrams and whatnot, it's friggin' WRITING. It's cheap, it's thorough, it's one of the best football books written in a long time.

So, What's It About?

Imagine if you could buy the basic, nuts and bolts knowledge needed to install and coordinate a defense that's flexible, multiple, and fairly simple. This is your chance to do that. It's no Tony Franklin System for defense, but it IS quite excellent for gaining a very functional understanding of exactly how Vanderlinden's scheme works. He gives you a thorough explanation of how they set and dictate the fronts, how that overlaps with the coverages, and how people's run responsibilities play out. Not only that, he gives you very easy to understand directions regarding how his defense would defend common run plays versus the different fronts that he runs.

That alone would be good stuff, very valuable for everyone's growth as a coach, regardless of scheme. But what I really, really like is he gives a pretty sweet explanation of coverages, techniques, and defensing some common routes that might be an issue. I'm the first to admit that my knowledge of DB play is quite limited. This gave me some really great insight into HOW some coverage components work, from a schematic and a technical perspective. I'm no DB guru now, but reading that was quite helpful for me personally.

Lastly, Vanderlinden explains a few of his favorite blitzes. I love blitzes, I love blitzing. One of the things I grew to love about running a 3-4 defense was how damn flexible it was for blitzing and blitzing creatively. Being a football coach, I love to steal, and Vanderlinden's got some good stuff. He explains them pretty thoroughly, which is cool, but he also explains a lot of his thought process behind them and when/why he uses them. Getting insight into the mind and motivations of one of the best coordinators around is precious information and he offers it readily.

Oh, there's also a fairly extensive section on technique for positions.

So, What You're Trying To Say Is...

First, buy this book. Second, read this book. Third, ???. Four, Profit!

Book Review: Coaching Pattern Read Coverage by Tom Olivadotti

A few weeks back I picked up the very cheap book Coaching Pattern Read Coverage by Tom Olivadotti off of Amazon. Found HERE

For me it was a quick read, probably finished it in about 5 hours on the first time through, cover to cover. The terminology is understandable, the diagrams make sense and correspond to the stuff happening on the page (not always a given, in my experience).

The second time through I did what I usually do, highlight and/or circle things with my red pen while tabbing various things with multi-colored post-it tabs. The three things I focused on were: technique or coaching oriented comments or passages I liked, good examples of playing specific pass plays from various coverages, and individual free-standing morsels. There were lots of things I liked which provided me with a few phrases and 'buzz words' to use while coaching up the guys. What I realized while going through the book the second time through was that this book would be fantastic for my JV DC, who is a great, great guy but never played the game at a high level and doesn't have a large knowledge base yet, as well as the guy we're grooming to become frosh DC. It's not terribly complex or complicated, it won't revolutionize the way someone coaches (I hope), but it's easy to understand and gives a very good base that will help to catch up lower level coaches who may not 'be there' yet.