The IFP is a great option for rainy days (less slippage - less injuries) and obviously when there is lightning. My question is how much it will be used on hot sunny days. In just over 4 weeks we play at 11am at Rice and a week later at 11am in TDECU. Will we be practicing indoors on hot sunny days or outdoors? Should we be practicing indoors on hot sunny days or outdoors?
I have zero knowledge or experience on this subject so would like to hear from others that know the plans, experienced practicing at the college level or have researched the pluses and minuses of indoor vs outdoor in the summer.
I’d say you practice outside as much as possible. It’s always to our benefit to be conditioned Houston heat to a point. Sometimes it’s simply too hot though and it’s a greater safety issue than anything else and you have to go to the IPF.
I think if real feel gets above 93ish we should be inside but we should practice outside as much as possible. Even if its raining. So i suppose my answer is 80% outside 20% inside unless weather becomes aggressive.
If you look at the practice schedule you will notice that we are having a lot of early morning practices which will be outside weather permitting. The IPF is for afternoon practice when the temp is extreme, inclement weather, and when the coaches want to keep something secret.
They can always make the IPF warmer if they want to simulate a little bit of heat. If it’s 100 F outside but they want to make them sweat just run the A/C at 85 F. Plenty warm but not dangerous.
I just watched a clip on Twitter of CMA saying the offense wants to run as many plays as humanly possible. If that’s the case, they need to be conditioned to running fast in this heat. First 3 games are 11AM at Rice, 11AM at TDECU, 3PM at Tech. We better feel good about running uptempo in the heat for those 3 games alone!
I remember back in 89 when we played a game at Arizona State. I think the announcers were complaining about it being around 25% humidity. I smiled and knew what was coming next. By the second half we were running circles around Arizona State.
I feel like if we spend most of our afternoons practicing indoors, not only will Rice be more prepared than us but we will lose our advantage that we would have gained on Arizona.
Yep. I’m ok with practicing in the IPF as long as we are spending more time outside than in the IPF. Save the IPF for inclement weather, practicing special/secret plays, or walk throughs at the end of the day. Full speed stuff needs to be outside with plenty of hydration.
That lack of humidity thing got to Tech when we beat them at Robertson in 2009. Lubbock is obviously very hot and Tech plays very much uptempo, but their defense couldn’t handle our uptempo in the September Houston humidity in the second half of that game. I remember pretty much all the Tech defenders with hands on knees between every play during Case’s game winning drive. It was glorious.
I’m sure there is a breaking point for temperature plus humidity in which it does more harm than good to practice in, but 95 degrees and 30% humidity shouldn’t be that point. If it was, games would get canceled in those conditions.
Guessing you mean how often it gets down to 30%? Guess I could have said 95 degrees and 50% humidity shouldn’t make 100% of the practice time indoors. What is extreme heat and humidity (at the same time) in Houston?
