Brad Dixon Episode 28 " The how and why of Sprint Based Football"

On episode 26 I sat down with Brad Dixon, Head coach of football at Camp Point Central High school in Illinois. Coach Dixon first shares what led him down the pathway to sprint based football, in this portion of the conversation Coach Dixon shares some of the ideas from his article They Just Want the damn Recipe. He talks about conversations that he had with coach Tony Holler and how that facilitated his realization that in order to build anything useable and substantial you must first learn how to cook for yourself. Coach Dixon highlights how through trial and error he was able to build a regimen that works best for him. This is a concept that Coach Dixon alludes to multiple times, there is not a one size fits all approach. Sprint based football takes a different approach to more traditional methods, Coach Dixon discusses how his paradigm shifted from trying to throw as much as you can in practice, to trying to facilitate and grow through the week and letting the real performance happen on Friday's beneath the lights. Coach Dixon highlights how a typical sprint based week looks at his high school, that all starts by giving the kids the weekend off to recover. Mondays start with the focus which is sprinting, with some film and board work to prep for the week. Tuesday is what Coach Dixon refers to as a fundamental day, where athletes will be in helmets going over fundamentals and game situations. Wednesday is the only day of the week where athletes will go full gear in their preparation. Thursday is a more traditional walk through as they finalize their prep for the week. Friday is game day and in Coach Dixon's lens it is a sprint day. Coach Dixon really speaks to not wasting time in practice and getting what needs to be done accomplished while leaving the needless volume and fluff on the table. The sprint based model mirrors that of feed the cats; therefore, we discuss the minimum effective dose and how he justifies the correct dosage for his team to be competitive. We discuss some of the common misconceptions based around sprint based football. Coach Dixon throws out a wonderful line of logic that toughness is task specific and that he wants athletes that are precise. We end our conversation by discussing how he facilitates speed work away from the competitive season. Coach Dixon discusses how he likes to utilize variance in his speed drill work to show athletes different mechanical issues that they need to work on. A lot of this work is built into the warm up section of a work out and can be facilitated year around to work on important running mechanics. Coach Dixon shares how his athletic enhancement PE allows for him to make the weight room a constant for not only his athletes in football but all athletes at his school. Check out the links below for some of Coach Dixon's writings at Track Football Consortium based on many of the topics discussed today. 

http://trackfootballconsortium.com/they-just-want-the-damn-recipe/

https://trackfootballconsortium.com/how-to-cook/

https://tfc.coachesclinic.com/speakers/brad-dixon/