On a serious note, players KNOW when they have made mistakes, punishments are not really necessary – unless the level of motivation is not high enough, and that points to other problems. In a game, if someone (say) drops the ball, it usually means that team has to move further away from the target area (try line), so do the same in practice. Urge them to react to the miss – “Arghh – dropped ball, get back onside, defensive line (or whatever the consequence might be)!!!”

Press up are too good an exercise (especially for young players) to be viewed as negative. Tell players you don’t want to see their collar bones in two months. Ask them to do press ups last thing in the day – before the evening shower, or whatever. Ask the players to find out how many they can do max. Then, next day, do 10 sets, starting with their max, subtracting one each time (so if the max is 20, the sets are 20, 19, 18, 17, and so on). Pretty soon, they will be stronger in the shoulders and core region, and pretty positive about doing them. As they do more, they will do them better (because we enjoy what we do well), and so on and so on. You could even have a “championship” if that works for you and the players……