Coaching speed - tennis ball.

This will be my final post on coaching speed. It is not, by any means, the final say on the subject. There are other new ideas out there that have been shown to be effective, such as running downhill and plyometrics.

"Tennis ball" drill is an "explosion drill" designed to get quick movement out of your offensive line as well as a superior drive block. It is because I "frog race" my kids and "tennis ball" drill them that I am able (combined with my stance) to totally dominate defensive lines with drive blocks instead of having to resort to the usual "shoulder block". "Tennis ball" lets your linemen hit hard and "frog race" lets them finish off and overpower the defender by continuing to drive him back after the initial contact.

"Tennis ball" is performed with a tennis ball. Always have at least two tennis balls in your football bag - one for every player you intend to drill. I keep one tennis ball for myself and I hand out the other to any dad who wants to make his kid better. I only "tennis ball" drill one player at a time and I start with my worst offensive linemen. You could start with your best linemen but your worst will never catch up with your best if you do. My goal is to bring up the performance of my worst blocker - not my best. It's the bad players that hurt you in a game - Not the good ones. Make your bad players good, then proceed to make your best players better. Players that are tennis ball drilled find themselves improving relative to the other players (particularly in our Sumo drill) and this encourages them to try harder and get better. "Tennis Ball" drilling my studs has the opposite effect. The losers get crushed worse than ever and their efort and enthusiasm goes downhill. To me, it is more important to teach my second best lineman to become my best than it is to keep my best lineman in first place. If I have one stud lineman and I can teach my second best lineman to beat him, I now have two studs. If I just "tennis ball" drill the stud, I still only have one stud.

Okay! So what is "tennis ball" drill? Basically, you stand out in frint of a lineman in a three point stance and you either toss the tennis ball up in the air, or you drop it in front of him, and he has to catch it. The technique used (drop or toss) depends upon his ability to see the ball. If he can't see up high enough to see you drop the ball, you hold it down low in front of him and toss it up. If he has the ability to see, you hold the ball out in front of you, chest high, and drop it. As you repeat the drill, you gradually move further away from him so that he must move further, and faster, to catch the ball. Nearly every kid can be improved by his distance and speed by a full foot the very first time you run the drill. This improvement equates to your linemen in two different ways. A lineman who learns to travel one foot further in the same time that he could before, can now take an additional one foot line split and still be able to cover his inside gap the same as before. This is a TREMENDOUS improvement/advantage in your line and it is very easily accomplished. Further, traveling an extra foot in the same amount of time as before means your lineman can get "into" a defender aligned over them faster - And this is why I can use drive blocks over shoulder blocks. Traveling that extra foot allows him to get under the pads of his defender and - if that happens - it's all over. You win, even with "Fat Freddy" making the block. But we can can still do even better! Two to three days later, tennis ball drill the lineman again. As long as you DON'T make the MISTAKE of tennis ball drilling the same player TWO nights IN A ROW, you can get yet another six inches to a foot of improvement out of him. What is happening now though is something completely different than our first night. We're not working his explosion as much as his angle of coming out of his stance. He learns that if he catches the ball closer to the ground he can catch it further out. The result is that he begins to dive outwards to catch the ball close to the ground. He'll probably end up doing a face plant to get it, but he is now executing the form of an absolutely devastating drive block. John Carbon posted here awhile back what happens when linemen learn to lunge out on a "head up" (even tech) defender with the expectation of finishing the block lying on the ground. In a game situation, however, the odds are they won't "face plant" into the grass. Instread, they'll "face plant into the defender WHO WILL HOLD THEM UP and keep them from falling. The blocker's center of gravity is now WAY forward. The laws of physics say the blocker will transfer his "out of balance" forward momentum into the defender. Since the defender will be in a balanced center of gravity, having that blocker's momentum transferred to his body will cause him to move backwards. Meanwhile, the initial "stop" of contacting the defender holds the blocker up until he gets his feet under him and drives. So the defender goes back. Okay! So now we're kicking ass with this kid and we've done it in just two nights. The trick though, is to get the physics right. The blocker should CATCH THE BALL at his own belt buckle height. So, if you get this kid stretching out so that he can catch that ball five feet out in front of him and 6 inches off the ground, you may have accomplished a neat feat, but it's not the feat you want him to accomplish. This boy is transferring his momentum into the ground. We don't want that. He's coming out too low. Likewise, if he catches the ball at shoulderpad level, he's coming out too high. Either move closer to him or further out to make that catch at belt buckle level. He's now transferring maximum energy to the defender's midsection - or the center of the defender's gravity. Being temporarily stopped by the defender restores the blocker's center of gravity while changing the defender's center of gravity.

Now! Of course, to complete the drill we need to add a defender. But we don't actually use a real defender. We use a blocking bag placed off to the side of the blocker so that only his shoulderpad and not his helmet will hit it. Now drop/toss the ball for him to catch. We want him to catch the ball plus have his shoulderpad hit the bag at belt buckle level. Work on getting that bag out in front of him as far as possible while still catching the ball and hitting the bag at belt buckle level. Imagine the force of that hit! Who wants to be standing in front of that blocker? Okay! Final point! The blocker MUST take a short, six inch POWER step with one foot before diving out. THIS HAS TO BE DONE! NO EXCEPTONS! Include this from the first day of "tennis ball" drill. From the coaches perspective it will look like this on the third day: You'll be balancing/holding a blocking dummy in front of yourself (but slightly off to the side) in one hand while holding a tennis ball in the other. The blocker will be shaded towards the tennis ball side of the bag. The bag will be at the maximum distance the blocker can handle while still hitting the bag at belt buckle level and taking a six inch power step. Now call a snap cadence, dropping/tossing the tennis ball at the same instant the center would snap. WHAM! You will FEEL the impact. In fact the big 12-13's should just about send that bag to Whichita. Of course, this is only a useful drill if "on" blocking is one of your blocking rules. But if it is, this is a post you copy and save.