It is 5 a.m. The lights buzz on. You stand in an empty weight room with a clipboard full of someone else's program.
You stitched it together from a Twitter thread, a podcast, and a clinic from three years ago. The squat day looks fine. The conditioning day is a 300-yard shuttle because that is what your coach made you do in 2004. You hope it works.
Hope is not a program.
While you guess, three things happen. Your fastest kid pulls a hamstring in week one of camp because he never sprinted at full speed all summer. The kids who showed up in June stop showing up in July because none of it looks like football. And in August, you find out the hard way that being strong in the weight room is not the same as being a football player.
The enemy is not your kids. It is not the parents. It is not the schedule.
The enemy is bad information.
Gimmicks. Recycled drills. Programs built by people who have never had to win a game on Friday night.


