Know your stance!

There is an old adage, “if you start wrong, you’ll finish wrong.” This is the truth! In all sports not just football everything starts with your stance. Think about this without a proper stance a sprinter cannot get out of the blocks properly, without a proper stance a baseball player cannot hit for power. The same argument can be made for and OL having some sort of blocking responsibility, without a proper stance you are going to sacrifice speed and power off the LOS.

Here are a few tips that I will give you to have a better stance that will help you be more efficent getting off the ball, and strike you opponent with more speed and power!

Width of Base 

The width of your base is dependant on the frame work of your body. Someone who is really tall will have a wider base, than someone who is shorter, it’s just simple math. My basic rule of thumb is this, as long as you dont go more than 3 inches on either side of your shoulder structure, you are most likely in the green zone. This will allow you to be ‘wide’ enough to play with power, but also give you coil in your legs to change direction.

Angle of Feet

The angle of your feet in your stance is so darn important, this is the step most young kids dont understand. When you watch pop-warner and see young OL coaches teach “stance” they often tell thier kids to have thier feet pointing “north-south.” For the pop warner level this works, but when you get older and have to change direction with power this will not work. I like to use the hands of a clock as a coaching point for my guys. If we were coaching up a right handed stance, the Left foot our post foot would be tunred to abotu 10:30. Our right foot would be turned out a little more at about 2:00. Have your feet turned out ever so slightly will open your hips up, and it will allow you to play lower and with more power and speed.

Upper Body Posture

The posture in our upper body is just as important as that in our feet and legs. You want to be rigged through the core, but lose at the shoudlers. You chest needs to be up, with your head ever so slightly back. This upper body posture is so imporant because it will allow you to have an airplane take off effect, giving you thrust and power up and through your opponent!

At the beginning of the blog we had a picture of Quenton Nelson; arguably the best OL in the NFL right now and his pre snap set up has all three of the features that I just talked about! There is a reason why the NFL guys set up like this! Come to the Big Man Camp, and I will teach you why!

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