Hard work is a priority in football. It’s part of the game’s DNA and one of its defining characteristics as a truly American sport.

Hard work separates the good players from the great ones, and it is a prerequisite for stepping onto the gridiron.

Every practice, every game, every snap demands extreme mental and physical toughness – and that’s how it should be, especially when it’s Friday night under the school lights.

But a common – and dangerous – misconception is that young athletes can handle a severe physiological workload of practice and competition more commonly reserved for higher levels.

The latest exercise science research confirms that athletes have only a finite amount of energy available to them before the physical stress begins to pile up, diminishing their ability to produce quality work and putting athletes at risk for injury.

This is why the practice of utilizing exhaustive post-practice conditioning sessions – or punishment running – may do players more harm than good.

One common football coaching fallacy is placing too much value in demanding hard work from athletes. Some coaches associate high levels of fatigue and exhaustion with a successful training session, but research continues to show this is not only false, it potentially dangerous given the extreme physical nature of the sport.

Tired athletes are more easily injured, and athletes who are chronically fatigued from grueling conditioning sessions are even more at risk. With a few shifts in perspective, coaches can improve the quality of their training sessions by helping athletes develop a healthier relationship with conditioning and hard training.

Some coaches at the end of practice feel the need for athletes to be conditioned to the point where they feel completely gassed out. The common thought is that this builds mental toughness or team unity through group suffering.

The first step for coaches is to ask this question: Is this training protocol for the sake of progress or punishment?

Fatigue is related to hard work, but it is not the goal. Simply running athletes for the sake of making them tired does little to improve performance all while reinforcing a negative relationship with the idea of conditioning.

The accumulation of fatigue in a training session can limit the overall quality of subsequent training sessions and ultimately impede an athlete’s skill and tactical development.

Furthermore, on a psychological level, athletes begin to view running and conditioning as intrinsically linked with punishment. Rather than seeing training as a beneficial tool, athletes begin to resent the work being done.

But in order to succeed in football, athletes must be able to embrace all aspects of training as having positive impact on their physical and mental toughness – and it is the job of the coach to contribute to that mind set by being smart about conditioning.

As coaches, we must be tactical with the stress we apply to our athletes. Athletes vary in their levels of physiological preparedness. Some can handle an intense workload right off the bat. Others cannot.

If you continue to run your athletes after practice, you must be flexible in managing the workloads for athletes of varying levels. Trying to play catch-up on conditioning in-season because an athlete didn’t train on a structured program during the offseason is a losing battle. It will only serve to alienate the athlete from a healthy relationship with anaerobically demanding work.

Athletes need to work hard in order to earn the right to work harder. This idea is one that coaches sometimes miss, and it can curtail athlete development.

Players do need to work hard to play football. That’s not up for debate. But because players have a finite amount of quality work they can produce in a given training session, once they cross that threshold you, they are only accumulating more fatigue without developing actual skill and speed.

Identify which athletes can handle more stress than others and structure the conditioning work accordingly. If you like team runs at the end of practice, get creative with how you group your athletes so that each player can make positive adaptations without being buried beneath an unattainable workload. Start with an easy team run in the beginning, for example, allowing all athletes to train together, then divide them into groups based on position, age, etc.

As hard as it may be, make conditioning and training two different experiences. Some track teams wear shirts that say, “My sport is your sport’s punishment,” and that is not the mind set we want football players to take into a conditioning program. Give your athletes the skills they need to develop a desire to improve beyond the football field. Similar to fatigue, success and motivation can also be accumulated through repeated stimulus.

Increase the amount of an athlete’s work capacity – both physical and mental – with progressive and continuous development through the offseason. It can’t be developed in a single training session or a week of training sessions. Athletes need to have earned the right to work at higher rates for longer times by training on a yearlong periodized plan.

When a coach does implement “punishment” running, let it actually work toward the goal of improving the team. If athletes are left in such a depleted state that doesn’t allow them to get quality work in the next day, they have essentially wasted a day of potential improvement.

A great coach will improve how much quality work athletes can produce, not the quantity of poor work. It’s not an easy task, but once you find the appropriate stress/recovery response your athletes can handle, skill development will continually improve.

Always encourage them to build good habits, and make adjustments once those good habits deteriorate. Progress in speed, conditioning and skill is gradual and can’t be forced. Guide your athletes in the right direction by encouraging them to consistently improve the quality of their efforts.

Each time they sprint, they should be working on the cues that are going to help them be faster and better conditioned athletes – not just tired ones.

Jace Derwin is the lead sport performance specialist at Volt Athletics, the official strength and conditioning provider for USA Football and the U.S. National Team program.