TOO MANY PLAYS!

Question
Hi there. My name is David and I am a slot back in the Senior (Varsity) level of high school football. My main concern is that the coaches and offensive coordinator needs me to learn ALL the plays in our book. In total, I am pretty sure there are a little over 100. Now, not all of these are passing plays so this issue does not apply for any other players. My unique circumstance is that (because I run a 4.6/40) the coach wants me to play running back as well. So, I HAVE to learn all these plays. My question is: Is there a way that would maybe make the memorization of all these plays become easier for me and do you know of any tricks or anything I could use to aid in my memory.

Answer
Hello David and thank you for asking this question.

The answer - memory systems.  I made it through lots of classes, including a fun anatomy and physiology class where you had to memorize EVERYTHING, by using memory systems.   I memorized all of the bones of the human body (all 206 of them) by number.  

So, you can memorize plays by number - the way you do this is to break down the play to a word or something else you can picture, and link it to a number.  It's much easier than it sounds.  If I could do it, believe me, you can do it.

I learned how to do this from a great book: "The Memory Book" by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas.  Lorayne is a memory expert and performer and Lucas is a former New York Knicks championship basketball player.  In the book, Lucas talks about memorizing all of the basketball plays he had to know using these memory systems.  I just looked on Amazon and there are lots of these books available, everywhere from $6.99 new (it's a really popular book - and it came out in 1974) to even cheaper ones.  I really recommend it, I've used the systems from this book for many different things for many years - they work!

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

David

David Kenward, The Mental Coach
Sacramento, California
http://www.thementalcoach.com