Increase Your Power with these Pro Offensive Line Drills

Is there one physical trait that leads to success more than any other for offensive linemen? Yes there is, and that one trait or ability is called power. Having power will enable you to stifle your man, block for the run and protect your quarterback. Even if you don’t consider yourself naturally very powerful, you can use offensive line drills to hone your body and increase your effectiveness.

There are many different offensive line drills that you can practice, but you should first understand what power actually is. Power is scientifically defined as the result of force times velocity. Your force is your strength with your body’s weight behind it. Your velocity is how fast you can explode and complete the movement. Improving your explosive speed and your overall body strength will both improve your power.

You can start on this work in the weight room. Considering how linemen are graded on their bench press and their overall strength at the combine, there’s no reason to not include effective weightlifting in your offensive line drills. The types of exercises you do should be explosive, compound exercises that bring many different muscles and joints into play.

Exercises you should be performing to increase your power include the clean and press, the squat, the dead lift and the bench press. With all of these, you should focus on performing the exercise with a weight that you can do no more than 5 times. This will place a maximum amount of stress on your body and will make your muscles explosively respond and grow.

Outside of the weight room there are of course many offensive line drills to increase your power. One popular one is running with a weighted sled. Get on the field and attach a weighted sled around your hips using a belt and rope. Experiment with different weights to find out what you can handle and what works best.

Now explode out of your stance and sprint down the field. You can practice the 40 yard dash or you can run in smaller spurts with breaks in between. Having the extra weight restricting you will lead to increased explosiveness when you’re coming out of your break without the weights attached. Since velocity is one half of the power equation, this increased acceleration will provide increased power, and therefore, increased effectiveness.

Another offensive line drill you can try to increase power is the medicine ball toss. For this you’ll need a partner. Each of you should get in your 3 point stance about 5 yards apart from one another. One of you has a medicine ball at your feet. The one with the medicine ball explodes out of his stance as if the play just began and with two hands shovel passes the medicine ball as powerfully as possible to the other lineman. That lineman explodes out of his stance to catch the ball, and then passes it back. Do 10 tosses each before resting for a minute and repeating the entire drill.

There is an infinite amount of offensive line drills that you can use to increase your power. You can increase power by increasing strength or by increasing speed. Keep in mind the best drills incorporate movements or techniques that you will be actually using in game situations. Find the drills that work best for you and you’ll begin seeing increased success.

Tips for Coaching Youth Football

Recently a youth football coach asked, is he missing something? Because he can’t seem to get through to his young team. So lets take a look at some of the things that a coach needs to be successful.

1) I believe you must know the game basics. Its crucial that your team performs and understands the basics of football. The basic fundamentals begins with you the coach.

You as the coach must increase your knowledge of the game. You should look for books on coaching football, attend football clinics, watch football games on TV, and speak to other coaches with more experience.

You can also go online to different forums and chat rooms. the key is to search out as many online and offline sources as you can.

2) Character building is another fundamental foundation for your players. Be consistent. You must not show favorites. When you say your are going to do something do it.

3) Communication- seek out ways to improve on getting your point across. Every player receive information different.

4) Stay Positive- Simple as it may seem.

5) Let’s have fun- enjoying the process will make your team learning process more enjoyable. Always allow a little humor and laughter when mistakes are being made.

The goal in the article above is to shed some light on the basics that we as coaches forget at times. Now that you have found some tips on being a successful youth football coach, you just have to implement them and keep being a student.