Football Coaching Drills – Stance & Start

One of the [tag]football coaching drills[/tag] that I would like to share is called Stance and Start. It is the very first drill I have players do after stretches.

The first thing I do is have my players get in a what most coaches call a ready, ready position with knees bent, butt down, and head up with elbows resting on their thighs–more or less proper stance. From there I have the kids go into a lineman’s 3pt stance. From this stance I will have the players do a couple of different things.

First we start with lead step right on our cadence. This is also another part of the drill that gets players uses to our count.We simply call it on quick. So on quick, I call Set, Hit.

On the call which is the same as the snap of the [tag]football[/tag] the players fire out with one step towards the right in proper position as if he were firing off of the ball into the hole the ball is run to in order to get proper blocking position on a defender. I will do this until the footstep of every player is in sink. I will then switch to the left with a lead step left.

After lead step then we go to pro step which in our program refers to a lineman taking a proper step as if he were pulling down the line such as for a trap play. So we have lead step right and pro step right, lead step left and pro step left from our count.

The idea is to teach the kids that the first step done correctly is the most important step of a play while also remembering the count. If a player jumps off sides then the whole team will do 5 up downs. If no mistakes are made then I will knock off a sprint from one of the conditioning drills in practice. It also allows us to evaluate each player to make recommendations on what they need to do to maintain proper footwork.