Practice Plans
A practice plan is the blueprint for a single practice session. It brings together drills from your drill library, organizes them into time-based segments, and gives your team a clear, shareable schedule for what’s happening on the field and when. No more winging it.
Creating a Practice Plan
To create a new practice plan:
- Navigate to Practice Planning > Practice Plans.
- Tap + New Plan.
- Give the plan a title (e.g., “Tuesday: Zone O Focus” or “Pre-Regionals Tune-Up”).
- Optionally add a description with notes about the session’s themes, priorities, or anything the coaching staff should know.
- Set the difficulty level for the overall session.
- Start adding drills and segments.
Adding Drills to a Plan
Practice plans are built from time-based segments. Each segment is either a drill or a rest period.
- Drill segments link to a drill from your library and include focus tags and optionally linked plays.
- Rest segments are simple time blocks for water breaks, transitions, or recovery between drills. They have a name, description, and duration but no linked drills.
Adding a Drill
- Inside your practice plan, tap + Add Segment.
- Choose a drill from your drill library or create a new drill inline.
- Set the duration for this drill in this plan. The default is the drill’s estimated duration, but you can adjust it — maybe you want to run a 10-minute drill for 15 minutes today.
- Optionally add segment notes — coaching cues, modifications, or reminders specific to this session.
Reordering Segments
Drag and drop segments to reorder them. A typical flow might look like:
- Warm-up (10 min) — light throwing, dynamic stretches
- Skill drill (15 min) — handler break-mark throws
- Team drill (20 min) — ho stack pull play walkthrough
- Scrimmage (30 min) — full-field, applying concepts from drills
- Cool-down (10 min) — static stretches, team huddle
Removing a Drill
Tap the More menu on any segment and select Remove to take it out of the plan. This does not delete the drill from your library — it just removes it from this plan.
Setting Duration Per Drill
Each drill in a practice plan has its own time allocation. When you add a drill, UltiStackr pre-fills the duration from the drill’s estimate, but you can override it for any given plan.
This per-drill duration is what drives the total practice time calculation (see below).
Running short on time? Adjust individual drill durations on the fly during practice. The plan updates the remaining time automatically so you can see what you can still fit in.
Total Practice Time Calculation
UltiStackr automatically calculates the total practice time by summing up the duration of every segment in the plan. This total is displayed at the top of the plan and updates in real time as you add, remove, or adjust drills.
If you have a hard time constraint (say, your field reservation is 90 minutes), you can set a target duration on the plan. UltiStackr will show you whether you’re under, at, or over your target.
If your total drill time exceeds your target duration, you’ll see a warning indicator. Consider trimming a segment or swapping in a shorter drill to stay on schedule.
Difficulty Levels
Each practice plan can be assigned a difficulty level on a 1–5 scale:
| Level | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | Light — recovery sessions, walkthrough pace |
| 2 | Easy — low-intensity skill work, focus on fundamentals |
| 3 | Moderate — standard practice intensity, mix of skill work and game speed |
| 4 | Hard — high-intensity drills, game-like pressure |
| 5 | Intense — full-speed reps, competitive scrimmages |
Difficulty levels help you plan your weekly training load. For example, you might schedule a level-4 practice early in the week and a level-2 walkthrough the day before a tournament.
The plan-level difficulty describes the overall session intensity. Use it alongside duration to manage your team’s training load across the week.
Linking Practice Plans to Calendar Events
Practice plans become even more useful when connected to your team’s calendar. Linking a plan to a calendar event lets your team see exactly what’s planned before they even show up.
Practice plans are linked to calendar events through the season planner or from the event detail view, not from the practice plan itself:
- In the Season Planner, attach a practice plan when scheduling or editing a practice event.
- From an Event Detail page, select a practice plan to associate with that event.
Once linked:
- Team members can view the plan from the event on the calendar.
- The plan shows the event date, time, and location alongside the drill schedule.
- Coaches can still edit the plan up until (and during) practice.
Link your plans to calendar events at the start of the week so players can review drills and linked plays ahead of time. Prepared players make for sharper practices.
Reusable Practice Templates
Found a practice plan format that works? Save it as a template so you can reuse it without starting from scratch.
Saving a Plan as a Template
- Open the practice plan you want to save.
- Tap the More menu and select Save as Template.
- Give the template a name (e.g., “Standard Tuesday Practice” or “Tournament Warm-Up”).
- The template is saved to your template library.
Creating a Plan from a Template
- Navigate to Practice Planning > Practice Plans.
- Tap + New Plan.
- Select Start from Template.
- Choose a template from the list.
- A new plan is created with all the drills and segments from the template. You can customize it from there.
Templates include:
- All drill segments and their durations
- Segment notes
- Difficulty level
- Description
Templates do not include a linked calendar event — you’ll attach that after creating the new plan.
Templates are especially useful for teams with a consistent weekly structure. Create a “Monday Fundamentals” template, a “Wednesday Scrimmage” template, and a “Friday Walkthrough” template to save time every week.
Personal vs Team Practice Plans
Like drills, practice plans can be personal or team-wide.
Personal Practice Plans
- Visible only to you
- Useful for drafting plans before sharing, or for coaches who work with multiple teams
- Can be promoted to team plans at any time
Team Practice Plans
- Visible to all team members with practice planning access
- Can be linked to team calendar events
- Editable by owners and coaches
To share a personal plan with your team, open the plan and tap Share with Team. To keep a copy for yourself, use Duplicate before sharing.
Editing a Practice Plan
To edit a plan:
- Open the plan from the practice plans list.
- Tap Edit.
- Make your changes — add or remove drills, adjust durations, update the description, change the difficulty level.
- Tap Save.
If a plan is linked to a calendar event that has already passed, you can still edit it — this is useful for post-practice notes. But any changes won’t trigger new notifications to the team.
Deleting a Practice Plan
To delete a plan:
- Open the plan.
- Tap the More menu.
- Select Delete.
- Confirm the deletion.
Deleting a plan removes it from the practice plans list and unlinks it from any calendar event. The drills themselves remain in your library.
Drill Execution Tracking
When a practice plan is linked to a calendar event, coaches can track how each drill went during the actual practice. For each drill segment, you can mark its execution status:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Not yet run — the default before practice starts |
| Completed | Ran as planned |
| Skipped | Skipped during the session (time constraints, weather, etc.) |
| Modified | Ran with modifications from the original plan |
You can also give each drill an effectiveness rating to capture how well it worked. Over time, these ratings help you identify which drills are worth repeating and which need rethinking.
Tracking execution takes just a few taps during or after practice and gives your coaching staff a useful record when planning next week’s practice.
Tips for Effective Practice Plans
- Start with the priority — what should your team be better at by the end of this practice? Pick 1-2 focus areas and build the plan around them.
- Balance intensity — alternate high-energy drills with lower-intensity segments to manage fatigue.
- Include transitions — account for water breaks, explanation time, and setup between drills. A one-minute buffer between segments goes a long way.
- Use your curriculum — check your team’s curriculum to make sure you’re reinforcing the playbooks and concepts you’ve committed to this season.
- Review after practice — add notes to the plan after the session about what worked, what didn’t, and what to adjust next time. Future you will appreciate the feedback.