Newsletters

Winter Newsletter – February 2024

In this Newsletter:

1. How do I get my leg stronger?

 

How do I get my leg stronger?

 

This is the most common question that I hear as a kicking coach. Answer is as simple as it is complicated.

Simple Answer: Kick a lot and get stronger as an athlete. With time, your kicks will go farther and higher.

Complicated Answer:

You are going to have to read through the information, think, and figure out answer for yourself. And that is a good thing. If you pave your own path, you are more likely to stick with it long term. Studies have shown that self selected means of achieving a goal are more effective than when a person is told what to do. Irony is that if you get educated and pave your own path, it will be similar to everyone else’s with same goals. But if I picked you up and dropped you on top of someone else’s path that is going to the same place, you would not stay on it for as long as you would on your own…Yup, I am starting this newsletter with some practical existentialism.

You need to figure out what is the most effective way for you to add power to your kicks. It could be gaining weight. It could be losing weight. It could be becoming more efficient with skills (usually is). It could be kicking more. It could be increasing flexibility. It could be improving balance. It could be improving core strength. It could be learning how to run properly, etc.

I raised enough questions. Here are some observations based on my experience as a kicker and a kicking coach.

1) Look at how best NFL kickers are built. Look at Justin Tucker, Greg Zuerlein, Cairo Santos, Robbie Gould, Brandon Aubrey, etc. Majority of them are average height, average weight, average leanness. When an NFL kicker walks into the room with general public, they blend in. Being huge and muscular requires energy and time. If you are spending lot of energy and time on heavy olympic lifts and building muscles, you are not kicking as much as you should, or you are not getting quality kicks with fresh legs that you need to keep improving. I am not saying that you need to stop going to the weight room. Every good kicker spends lot of time training in the weight room. What I am saying is that you need to ask yourself a simple question…are my workouts helping my kicking or hurting it? If your maximum distance and long term consistency are not gradually improving with time, they are hurting. If you feel more energized, stronger, more rigid on contact, hear louder pop when you strike the ball, they are helping.

2) In the weight room, stick with single leg movements and keep working on increasing strength and movement smoothness. Single leg squat is one of the most effective exercises that you can do as a human being. Regular squats are fine. But transferability to on the field skill is much lower than a single leg squat. Look up more single leg movements. There are lunges, step ups, loaded knee drives, etc.

3) Train like a sprinter. Leg quickness, running mechanics, ankle and body rigidity when striking the ground are all going to transfer directly to distance and height improvements in kicking. Look up some exercises and guidelines, mix them into your routine. These are couple instagram accounts that have great content to browse through as far as speed and explosiveness training @justjumari and @fred_duncan

4) Cost/Benefit analyze all your training. Everything you do will deplete your energy levels, take time, and produce a body adaptation. If you are training correctly, that adaptation is kicking farther and higher. Training incorrectly will deplete your energy and time without making you better. Not getting better, when your competition is, means that you are falling behind, creating a gap that you can only close if others stop getting better. You can’t afford to use time and energy and not get results.

For example, if you were to run stadium stairs for one hour…nice steady pace with occasional break when needed, you would definitely sweat, you would burn lots of calories, you legs will be sore for day or two. But will you be a better kicker as a result of that workout? It is doubtful. Running stairs at slow pace for a long time is training your cardiovascular and muscle endurance. This workout is also very taxing on your legs. You will not be fully recovered for several days. Your kicking workouts will suffer. Workout cost was high while benefit was low.

What you should have done was do stadium stair sprints that lasted 5 to 10 seconds, taking 3 or 4 steps at a time with each stride, and accelerating as quickly as possible. After each sprint, you should take a one to two minute rest allowing full recovery so that next sprint is at the same speed – maximum speed. And after you do about 8 sprints, you should take an active walking rest for 5 minutes before going into next 8 sprint block of stair sprints. At the end of this workout, your body will be exhausted. But you will have improved you explosiveness, knee drive, body stability under hard impact with the ground…all the things that will benefit you as a kicker. And because you allowed for full recovery and kept sprints short, you did not deplete your energy levels as much, allowing more frequent sprint workouts, better kicking workouts, etc. This is just an example. You have to ask yourself when you train…Why am I doing this? What adaptation am I trying to induce? What is it going to cost me time and energy wise?

5) If kicker gets hurt, it is usually in the weight room or as a result of something that he was doing in the weight room – too much volume, too much weight, incorrect mechanics. Weight room injuries are just downright dumb. Weight room is meant to improve your kicking and field activities, not injure you and derail your progress.

Practice complex olympic lifts without weight on the bar. When you are lifting, use less weight but move it quicker though contraction phase. Pushing action in pushing exercises like bench press, pulling action in pulling exercise like pull ups, standing up when doing squats are examples of contraction phase. . You can and should become more explosive without putting too much unnecessary bulk on the body. Power output and muscle mass are related, but separate goals that are results of different training methods.

6) Increased neural adaptations is just a fancy way of saying that when you kick more, you get better at kicking. Increased motor recruitment is a fancy way of saying that when you kick more, you get better at kicking. The challenge is that you can only kick so much before your legs are out of juice. So your goal should be to kick more and to kick better. When you kick with better mechanics, you strengthen the correct neural pathways and you recruit the correct muscle fibers in the right sequence. This is accomplished by analyzing how you kick, and tinkering with details all the time, making movements more precise, smoother, etc. Becoming more efficient as a kicker will always result in ball going farther and higher.

In summary, the question should never be “How do I get my leg stronger?” It should be…how do I kick the ball farther and higher. Answer is to keep learning and keep putting in the work.

 

Post Season Newsletter – November 2023

In this Newsletter:

1. Playoffs.
2. High school career is over. Now what?
3. Planning Ahead for the off-season.

 

Playoffs

If you are in playoffs, awesome! Enjoy these high-intensity, elimination games. Simple advice to stay calm in games…Don’t make any one kick more important in your mind than any other kick. Stay away from your teammates on the sideline who act like cheerleaders, and the ones who are giving you advice. There is a reason why you don’t see anyone talking to NFL kickers before their kicks. Control your environment. You should focus on executing warm up kicks and game kicks to the best of your ability. Yes, you will have more adrenaline and energy coursing through your body. Use it for little extra juice on your kicks by acknowledging it and focusing on simple fundamentals…same ones you have been focusing on during the season and offseason when you were kicking well. Some examples of focal points are smooth and straight steps, seeing foot to ball contact, following through to the target, staying tall, weight off your heels….could be anything. Whatever is one thing that works for you, focus on that.

Weather will become colder. If you are not playing other positions, you have to stay warm on sidelines. If your muscles get cold, you will lose distance and on your kicks and smoothness of your motion. Bring additional layer of clothes for your legs. Move around without wearing your self out. Jog a bit, walk a bit, do some light stretching, tap some light kicks into the net. Find a balance of being warmed up without getting worn out.

High School Career is Over. Now what?

Let’s get the unpleasant news out of the way. Since there are significantly less colleges than high schools, and there is only one starting kicker and one starting punter on a college team, lot of high school kickers will not make it through to the next level. On average, one out of twenty, or 5% of high school kickers will kick in college. As I am writing this, I am hoping to reach kickers on the bubble. Kickers who were better than majority of high school kickers, but not exceptional enough to get a scholarship right off the bat.

Three questions that you need to know the answers to are:

1. Do you really want to kick in college?
2. Do you know your value as a prospect?
3. How does college kicking work in 2023?

If you really want to kick in college, expand your options. Reach out to more schools – farther away, smaller schools. There are almost 900 college football programs. Call, email, send them regular mail. Tell them who you are, what you are capable of kicking wise, and that you are interested in playing for them.

Do you know where you can realistically play based on your abilities?

One of the most visited pages on my website is prospect benchmarks where I list minimum kicking abilities required for different levels of college and show videos of kickers performing the skills. Reaching a prospect benchmark does not guarantee that you will play at that level. It just means that schools will entertain the idea of bringing you on the team if they are in need of a kicker and like you. Good news is that if you really want to kick in college, you can continue to practice, get stronger, and increase your abilities and value. At the age of 18, a kicker is nowhere near his full physical or kicking potential.

College Kicking in 2023 is more and less complicated than ever before.

Why is it more complicated? Transfer portal that came into existence in 2018 changed the way kickers and athletes transfer between universities. It made transferring easier and it made college sports similar to free agency in NFL. This is how it impacted the world of kicking. There are colleges that everyone wants to go to – big schools and small schools in great locations with winning traditions. Then there are colleges that nobody wants to kick at – small schools in crappy locations, programs that lose a lot. Throughout the year there is a constant flow of kickers between the schools. Kickers that do well at undesirable schools are trying to transfer up after they kick well. Kickers who are not starting at a desirable schools are transferring down to less desirable schools where they can come in on a scholarship and start immediately. A team depth chart is almost meaningless. Fictional but common scenario…you are a 2nd string kicker with no game experience for Michigan Wolverines, starter is graduating, it is finally your turn to play, get a scholarship…wrong! Out of nowhere coaches bring in an All-American kicker from Nicholls State in Louisiana, who decided that after his sophomore season that he went 17/18 on FGs, he is gonna enter the portal and finish his college career at a Big 10 school that he always dreamed of playing. They give him a scholarship. You are a back up again. You say, “to heck with this place, I am entering the transfer portal”. Out of nowhere, St. Ambrose University from Davenport, Iowa snatches you up from the portal and gives you a scholarship, bumping all the kickers on their depth chart down.

Why is it less complicated? Coming out of high school, its impossible to make a perfect move into an environment that is constantly changing. There is no figuring out the best scenario based on your limited information. Kickers who are on the college team’s roster now may not be the ones you will see on the roster in August ’24. So stop trying, and just go to a school where you can realistically play and that you enjoy for the whole environment – education, setting, coaches, culture. Kicking skills trump everything else. If you are objectively better than your competition, most of the times, things will work out in your favor.

Planning Ahead for the Off-Season

 

I look forward to off-season more than the season itself. It is a chance to put in a lot of work and show up new and improved athlete next season. Performing well in games has very little to do with what happens in September and October. And it has everything to do with what you do from November to August. Confidence in games, focus, physical strength, and kicking consistency, are all for grabs NOW. You build those over period of time. Here is how I recommend you use your off-season.

1. Play a different sport or get involved in physical activity of some sort. Kicking all the time and not doing anything else is a recipe for physical and mental burnout. Quality movement is quality movement. It carries over from sport to sport and from activity to activity. Examples of sports and activities that carry over to kicking well are: soccer, track and field, tennis, baseball, golf, basketball, lifting weights, and others. I do suggest that you don’t abandon kicking all together during the season of a sport that you are playing. Find time and energy to kick once or twice per week. Our alum, current NFL kicker Austin Seibert, who was unanimously the best high school kicker in the country in 2014, also played basketball throughout high school…and found time to kick and lift weights all year around. I personally played basketball in high school, and played soccer and racquetball regularly while playing football in college.
2. Plan for winter kicking now. Where are you going to kick? Start looking for an indoor place now if you will not kick outdoors. Whatever you decide, plan on kicking regularly 2 times per week. Make kicking a habit that you will do no matter what. If there is no indoor, you will shovel the snow and kick. Our alums Tyler Perkins and Brady Braun were among best high school punters in the country last year. They have been punting outdoors in the Midwest since they were in middle school – wiping the snow off footballs when needed. They are both college punters now.
3. Attend a kicking camp, find your weak areas, and drill them out of your system this winter. Kicking well is nothing more than executing several movement patterns correctly in sync. If any of the movement patterns are inefficient, and you ignore the issue, it will always be there. If you are athletic and strong, you could compensate for it and still have success…until you get to the level where everyone else around you is athletic and strong too. In that field of athletes, you will be not be able to compete with flawed form. There is a reason why everyone in the NFL kicks with pretty much same mechanics. They did not all come from same athletic backgrounds. But at some point, they consciously addressed and fixed movement patterns that were inefficient, and were holding them back from becoming the kicking elite. You need to get good objective advice, and then fix anything that needs to get fixed.
4. Prepare your body to kick. This means different things to different people. You need to be explosive, strong, flexible, balanced, and with good range of motion in kicking specific joints in order to get everything out of your body frame. Kicking well is a combination of precision and power. Kickers and punters at the highest levels are well-balanced athletes. Most of them are not freaky strong or flexible like a ballerina. You don’t need to be. You just have to be explosive enough, flexible enough, strong enough, etc.

 

In-season Newsletter – September 2023

In this Newsletter:

1. In-season Kicking Schedule and Practice Ideas
2. Recruiting Tips

In-Season Kicking Schedule and Practice Ideas

By now you already played in few games and you have a good feel for the weekly team routine. As the season progresses, your goal is to approach every game with maximum focus and consistent weekly and pre-game routines. Your team direction should not impact your routine and preparation. You taking care of you, and kicking at your best is what your team needs.You had a good game. You had a bad game. Your team got killed. It does not matter. You stick to the routine. That is how NFL kickers approach every week.

Friday – Game Day. Don’t over kick and gather information on weather conditions in pregame. Don’t beat yourself mentally over bad kicks. Have fun. Stay relaxed. Bring full focus to every kick. No mindless reps. Two strategies to relax in pregame (or during the game) are deliberate breathing techniques and progressive muscle relaxation.

Saturday – Rest your legs. Don’t kick. Easy bike ride or walk are great.

Sunday and Monday – Heaviest kicking days of the week. I would still aim for about 30 full kicks on each day – 40 to 50 if you kick and punt.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – Team Kicking Days. Your team units (kickoff, field goal, punt) usually practice on these days. Warm up with 10 to 12 kicks on your own or during pre-practice with snapper and holder. Get team kicks in. Stop kicking. Do as many drills as you wish during practice if you are not playing other positions. You can also incorporate practice ideas that are listed below.

Practice Ideas to keep improving during the season:

Goal is to improve your ability to kick well without exhausting your legs.

I am going to ask you to do some research on your own and find exercises. If I start talking details, this Newsletter will become very long very quickly. You can easily find everything you need on youtube.

1. Core strength. Core strength in athletic world means having strong core to transfer force from upper body to lower body and vice versa. And it means maintaining good posture through complex multi – planar movements (like kicking). Look up some “anti-rotation” and “anti extension” core exercises and start doing them in practice.
2. Balance. Spend time balancing on one leg while doing activities. You can do easy exercises on one leg, or you can do activities like throwing a football around with a teammate. Have fun with balance movements. Look some up. They are not hard on the body. But they require focus and will work small stabilizing muscles that will make your swing smoother.
3. Muscle Flexibility / Joint Mobility. Two concepts that are related but different. I suggest sticking with mobility movements before kicking and/or immediately after, while doing static holding stretches toward the end of the practice. Again, look up some movements and have fun with them.

Recruiting Tips

 

SOPHOMORES AND YOUNGER

You need to do nothing. Ranking camps and underclassmen challenges of various sorts are fun to attend. But they are 100% useless in regards to your recruiting. Colleges don’t care about young kickers.

If you want to improve your recruiting value, get excellent grades. High GPA increases the number of schools that will recruit you and the amount of financial assistance that you will receive.

JUNIORS

Start putting together your season stats and videos of your best game kicks. Your recruiting journey begins to intensify after the season. You should start working on kicking field goals off the ground after your last game.

SENIORS

Your recruiting picture should start to take shape. You are either receiving college interest or you are not. Start getting as active as possible with reaching out to college coaches. If you would like more options, reach out to more schools, reach out to smaller schools. I have been telling kickers for years to pick schools that they like for reasons outside of football. Your college education is much more important than football. For 99% of college kickers, there is no kicking after college. But college education and connections will last lifetime. Choose a school that offers a healthy football team environment – winning team, coaches that are good people, and players that are happy to be there are all good indicators.

Transfer portal has changed kicker recruiting significantly. Kickers can start their college careers at a small college, perform exceptionally for a year or two, enter transfer portal, and then transfer to a big school on a scholarship and play right away. It is a much better option than starting out at a big school as a forgotten walk-on, buried on the depth chart, never getting practice repetitions or serious consideration to play.

EVERYONE

There is a lot of lying done by college coaches during the recruiting process. Don’t take it personally. For colleges, recruiting is business. They are trying to get the best kicker possible for the least amount of money. They may and will tell 5 kickers that they are their #1 kicking prospect.

But you should be honest and transparent with your abilities and intentions…for example, how far are you kicking on your average days, your best days…are you looking for walk on opportunity or scholarship, etc. Honesty tends to bring out same qualities in coaches who you are interacting with. If it doesn’t, you don’t want to spend the next four years in that environment anyway.

Summer Newsletter – July 2023

In this Newsletter:

1. Wrapping up Off-season Training and Kicking
2. In-season Kicking Schedule and Tips

Wrapping up Off-season Training and Kicking

By now you probably accumulated thousands of practice kicks since the last season ended. With about a month left until the first game, it is time to cut back on kicking, and make every kick more purposeful. Kicking too much in August can lead to an overuse injury or simple dead legs. If you start a season with those, it is hard to get them back with all the games and practices.

Cut back on your kicking in August. Two to three times per week is enough. Aim for 150 to 180 full kicks in a week. Make every kick a game kick situation. Take field goals from different spots. Utilize snapper and holder as much as possible. Cut back on kickoffs – 20 to 25 per week. Make them purposeful. Do whatever you will do in games….deep left, deep right, squib, pop up, etc. Take punts from all over the field. Start in your own end zone, hit long punts with hurried steps, move up the field all the way to the 50 yard line, and hit some inside the 20 corner punts, work on some roll-out punts, work on directional punts.

Do not overkick in August ! If you get 250+ kicks per week instead of recommended 150-180, you will add just another 200-400 kicks in a month. That will not make you much more skilled…but it will make you less fresh and less consistent in your practice kicks. Which will get your season off to a rockier start. You want to finish the off-season with freshness and confidence?….Less reps, more focus, more purpose.

But please, overdrill in August ! Punters…you are welcome to do 100s of drop drills every day. You are welcome to catch 100s of snaps or underhand tosses and work on football handling quickly and efficiently. Kickers, you are welcome to do 100s of no-step taps and 100s of field goal and kickoff run through steps with a swing without kicking a ball. If you don’t play other positions, there is a lot of free time in practice. Don’t over kick. Overdrill.

 

In – Season Kicking Schedule and Tips

Generally speaking, during the season you should aim to take a day off after the game, get most of your kicking done on Sunday and Monday, and then scale back as you approach the game day. Your total kicks in a week should not exceed 200, including game kicks. During the pregame, keep your reps down to 20-25 kicks and use it to gather information – evaluate footing, wind, and any other conditions that will affect you in that game. If you feel that your legs are not fully fresh for games, cut back on kicking.

But please, continue drills during the season. Season is few months long. You can end it better than you started. Majority of kickers actually get worse as season progresses – they get bored, their team loses a lot of games and gives up on the season, they practice with less focus, they start with few bad kicking games and get discouraged, etc. Whatever the reason, this is an opportunity for a focused kicker to gain ground on the competition.

Tip#1 – COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR COACH

If needed, talk to your head coach. If there is an issue, speak up. Kickers don’t have a position coach at any level of football. Most common issue is full operation on field goals. If your holder is not good, you are not good. Show him youtube videos on holding if needed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVgkFLj61I). Communicate with your coach on what issues may be limiting your ability to execute well. Most high school coaches were not kickers. They may not know what you are experiencing. Just be respectful and talk to them.

Tip#2 – PACE YOURSELF IN THE WEIGH ROOM

Stay strong but don’t kill yourself in the weight room. You are not going to get stronger during the season. You are working out to minimize strength loss. This means that you don’t need to lift to exhaustion or failure. If you can complete 10 reps of an exercise, stop at rep 7. This is the workout that I share with every kicker that is great for mobility, strength and balance. You can make it more challenging by adding weight, standing on unstable surface, or increasing repetitions – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibgOht3EUH8 . Your workout goal is to feel energized, loose, and balanced…not to feel exhausted. Save that intensity and volume mindset for the off-season.

Tip#3 – STAY FOCUSED ON NEXT KICK, FORGET ABOUT THE STATS

Don’t get obsessed with statistics. Every kicker goes into the season with high expectations and hopes. You want to be perfect on field goals. You want to average 40 yards per punt. You want to hit every kickoff into the end zone. If you are able to do it, great. But individual statistics in a team sport are not 100% in your control. So use them as an off-season goal…not as an absolute evaluation of how good of a season you are having. Weather will play a role. Game situations will play a role. There are many factors that will impact your statistics that are out of your control. It is in your best interest to put the statistical expectations out of your mind once the season starts. Instead, do what every successful kicker does… take it one kick at a time, focus, and execute to the best of your abilities.

Tip#4 – THIS IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT KICK OF YOUR LIFE

A simple trick to stay calm in games and perform at your best is to not assign unnecessary importance to any one kick. Kick is just a kick. You go through your routine and you execute to the best of your ability. You make some, you miss some, you learn from the kick what you can, you move on.

Sometimes your body is filled with nervous energy. Some of that energy is good and will make you kick better. Too much of it will make you out of control. Calm your body down by controlling eyes and breathing. Gently gaze at grass, football in your hand or something simple that does not move much. Breathe slowly and deeply. This will calm you down, and slow down your thoughts every time.

 

April 2023 Newsletter

In this Newsletter:

1. Spring Training Focus
2. Kicking Tip of the month

Spring Training Focus

With warm weather here, time has come to increase your kicking volume and frequency. Our schedules in the spring tend to be busy with school, school activities and other sports. Luckily for us, kicking is not very difficult to plan for.

All you need is couple footballs, holder, blocks, and some open space. Football field and goal posts are nice…but not necessary. Try to put as few obstacles between you and your kicking practice. If you have a big backyard or a field down the street, it would be more convenient than a football field that you have to drive to. Have all your kicking gear and footballs in one bag, somewhere where it is easily accessible.

You can do drills in your house or in your backyard. Most drills don’t require you to warm up. All you need to do is grab a ball and get into it.

• Aim for 3 kicking workouts in a week – field goals, kickoffs, punts. Total number of kicks in a week should be around 200. Some guys will be closer to 300. That is too much kicking for most. But it is doable. Keep your number of full kickoffs around 10-15 per session.

• Aim for minimum of 3 drill sessions in a week. There is no limit to how many drills you do. But I would shoot for 15-20 minutes per session. Work on your kickoff steps, go through your field goal steps, punt drops, punt steps and swing without a ball, etc. Mix it up. Find a way to make it fun for yourself – listen to music, count the drill reps and success rate, write down what you did, etc. Doing drills makes your mind body connections physically grow stronger and faster. It will literally increase your foot speed, thus kicking the ball farther and higher. Check out this short article on skill building and how it changes your brain (and make you kick farther) – LINK HERE.

• If you are not playing a spring sport, I suggest enrolling into a performance gym in your neighborhood. Even if you attend only once per week, it will yield massive benefits. There is not a lot of movement coaching in team sports. Most of you reading this played, or are still playing soccer. Has your soccer coach ever taught you how to run properly,,,how to change direction efficiently? There is a reason why NFL prospects go to performance gyms to prepare for NFL combine. In few short months, they improve their 40-yard dash, their vertical leap, agility, and power. Physical gains take a lot more time than that to develop. Most of their improvement comes from trained strength coaches, paying close attention to quality of every more that they make, and making many tiny adjustments to increase overall speed and power output. As a high school kicker, you are barely scratching the surface of your athletic potential. There are infinite number of improvements that can be made with everything that you do athletically. Join a performance gym. Let certified strength coaches teach you how to move. Put yourself in an environment around other very driven athletes. And you will reap the benefits every time you that you step onto a field or a court of any kind.

Kicking Tip of the Month

Learn kickoff steps that work. Adopt them by practicing them regularly. And you will never have to think about kickoff steps again. They will be there for you always…at any level of football.

Few weeks ago I worked with Riley Patterson, very consistent NFL kicker for Jaguars. Goal was to improve his kickoffs. After several hours of making small adjustments with mixed results, Riley asked, “What steps would you do if you were me…if we were to change them completely?”. I said I would make them shorter, simpler, more efficient, thus more consistent. More confident you are in your steps, more aggressive you can be with your approach and swing. Uncertainty makes you slow.

Starting distance is around 7 yards back and about 4 walking steps to the side. From there, you walk two steps and run four. Starting stance is same as field goals with kicking foot back in the stance. No jab needed. You start by walking with kicking foot, walking with non kicking foot is next, spring of your non kicking foot into jog pace and pick up pace steadily in a straight line toward the ball. That’s it. Riley messed around with it for 15-20 minutes. And felt right at home with new steps.

Most high school kickers will mess around with their steps excessively. They feel right one day. They feel horrible the other day. That is uncertainty. You don’t need that. Adopt these steps and they will always there for you.

Check out this 1 minute video for a clear demonstration of the steps –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9CI5IxDIY

 

February 2023 Newsletter

In this Newsletter:

1. From College Coach’s Mouth
2. February Focus and Resources

From College Coach’s Mouth

 

At the Michigan Winter Kicking Camp, staff and athletes had an opportunity to hear a short presentation from Jack Shuggars, special teams coach for Ferris State University, back to back Division 2 National Champions. The fact that Ferris State won two championships in a row, and have been to the national championship game three years in a row, and that kickers love playing for the team, means that they have something very special going on.

I asked coach to talk about:

1. What he looks for in high school kicking prospects?

2. What kickers can expect when they get to college?

These are few main points that coach touched upon.

1. He recruits kickers that he sees in person. Kickers should be going to college 1-day camps, kicking in front of coaches from that school, meeting them in person, making a strong impression.
2. For division 2, he looks for 65 yard kickoffs consistently and ability to do different things like pop up kickoffs, directional kickoffs, etc.
3. Kickers and punters needs to be game-skilled. Sometimes you have to be able to run out there and kick without a lot of time to measure steps, get settled in, etc. This means practicing adopting to different environments, and being able to execute in a game. He looks at high school game film to see how kickers perform in pressure situations.
4. He expects kickers to kick all year around in college and high school. “Kicking is not a seasonal sport”, he mentioned several times. Kickers need to be practicing and actively work on improving skills all year long. Utilize resources like kicking coaches or older kickers in the area who are wiling to work with you.
5. He expects kickers to be coachable. Can you accept coaching advice and implement it? Can you be flexible enough with your kicking skills and your mindset to be able to execute in the way that we need you to for our team.
6. They scholarship one kicker every 2 to 3 years. Colleges are not looking for a kicker every year. Keep that in mind when you reach out to schools to generate interest. Reaching out to 15 schools could mean that you reached out to only 5 since the other 10 are not in the market. He tries to respond to athletes’ messages and say that they are not looking. But many college coaches don’t. If you are not getting a response, try couple times to make sure they got the message, and then move on to a different school….yup, doing recruiting right is exhausting…thus, an endurance event, not a sprint.
7. As far as college environment and how FSU has been able to have so much success, he talks about “love” being one of their program’s pillars. They accept athletes from all walks of life and support them. I heard this about the program from outside sources and I believed it 100%. There are a lot of college programs where environment is cold or downright abusive. As a high school kicking prospect, you need to look to attend a school where college coaches care about kickers. Some college coaches downright dislike kickers and send them away to a separate field during the practice (usually not successful coaches). Coach Shuggars runs his own kicking camp and is fully involved in what and how kickers are practicing all year around.

If I can summarize coach’s presentation…I would say that kickers need to practice all year around, utilize resources, practice game situations, have love for kicking…and when it comes to recruiting, know your value (if you are hitting benchmarks that school is looking for), and attend 1-day college camps where you will meet coaches from that school; and pick a school that shows you love.

February Focus and Resources

 

Most of you reading this live in the Midwest. Winter is on. Your goal is to get 150 – 200 kicks in a week in any way that you can – small group kicking practices, outdoors on mild days, kicking nets, baseball batting cages, racquetball courts, etc. By the time real spring arrives in late April, you should be in decent kicking shape. More kicks you get during the winter, more coachable you are at camps. And you will be able to coach yourself more effectively at solo practices. Your body will learn how to listen to your mind’s requests. You will be able to make adjustments quicker and improve at a significantly faster rate. Not kicking during this time means that you will spend spring and early summer just building the foundation to start working on your kicking. Build that foundation now.

This is somewhat of a non-ending process. Better kicker you become, more detailed and tinier adjustments you will need to make to keep improving. Smaller the adjustment needed, more kicks you need under your belt to make them. Your kicking career is essentially a never ending process of adding kicks to your lifetime kick count and keep increasing the level of detail in your kicking that you care about. To take this process all the way to the NFL level…NFL kicker’s mechanics are pretty good. They have many practice days that they are perfect. Kickers will then try to figure out what lead to those those perfect days so that they have them most of the time. They will look closely at equipment, warm up, nutrition, thought patterns, etc. At the highest levels, kicking becomes an obsession out of necessity.