Offensive Line Drills for Youth Football

We all know that the success of your offense depends almost entirely on our offensive line’s ability to block the defense. With that said, it’s important that you commit extensive practice time to working with your offensive linemen. You should be doing a variety of different run blocking drills each practice. Here are the best offensive line drills for youth football:

Offensive Line Drills for Youth Football

Offensive Line Stance

It’s critical that all offensive linemen are able to get into a proper stance. If they are off balanced they will not be able to effectively fire off of the football. You have to teach your players how to get into a 3 point stance on the first day of practice. Teaching a proper 3-point stance is something that should be taught from day 1. Stances should be practice throughout the year during individual position practice sessions. Your offensive line coach should always make sure your offensive linemen are in good stances and are ready to come off the ball and block someone. Regardless if it is day 1, or it is week 10, our offensive line coaches are relentless in regards to making sure our offensive linemen are in a good stance.

Stance Technique

• Feet shoulder width apart.
• Instep dominate foot with heel to toe relationship. Foot that is going back is the hand they are putting down.
• Sink hips down, elbows on thighs.
• Dominate hand on the ground.
• Back should be straight, head up, not too much weight on the down hand. If too much weight is on their down hand, they will be unbalanced and they won’t be able to keep their head up.

(See Also) 3 Point Stance for Offensive linemen

(See Also) Set and Punch Drill for Pass Protection

Run Blocking Drills

The success of your offense depends entirely on your offensive line’s ability to block the defense. If your offensive linemen don’t play with proper technique they will not be able to successfully block defenders. An effective run block begins with a good stance, fast get-off, good run blocking technique, power, and ends with a desire to finish. Having the mindset that you will give maximum effort towards finishing your block is just as important as run blocking technique.  As an offensive line coach you need to instill the mindset that every player must finish their block. It’s all about technique, effort, and finish!

This is a drill we do with our offensive line regularly. This is a one vs. one run blocking compete drill. A successful run block begins with the proper stance, fast get-off (fire-out on snap count), solid technique, and a desire to finish, this drill practices all of those things.  This compete drill is a drill that you can make competitive and have fun with. If you make this drill competitive and the coaches have energy the kids will actually look forward to doing the drill.

Hand Placement Drill

 

This is an excellent drill because it teaches your offensive linemen to explode, sink their hips, sky their eyes, and get their hands inside with their thumbs up.

Zone Blocking Technique 

This is an excellent drill progression video for all of our inside zone offenses out there. This video gives  you excellent insight into the proper technique for blocking the inside zone.

(See Also) 3 Drill Progression for Offensive Linemen

Down Blocking Drill 

This is an excellent drill that will teach your linemen how to execute a successful down block. As a Wing T team (we down block almost every play), we work this drill every single day. This drill will teach your offensive linemen how to take the proper leverage step, how get into a wide base, and finish the block. This is a drill that doesn’t take long and it is a drill that can be done with or without pads.

Pass Blocking Drills

The Set and Punch pass block drill is an excellent drill for youth football. It will teach your offensive linemen how set and deliver a punch which will slow down and stun the rushing defender. In youth football pass blocking is very difficult. The biggest mistake pass blocking offensive linemen make is they step backwards and end up getting bulled over. We teach our offensive linemen to step into their block (set and punch) on pass plays. This will actually give our QB more time and room to throw. Asking your offensive linemen to kick step and pass block just doesn’t work. In youth football you need to have quick hitting pass plays, roll out passes, and play-action passing plays. Dropping back and just trying to pass isn’t going to work in youth football. In my opinion, pass blocking is much different on the youth level than it is on the high school and college level.

Offensive Linemen Agility Drills

This is an excellent drill that will help develop linemen explosiveness. This is a great drill that will help develop the power it takes to successfully fire-out of their stance. This drill begins with the offensive linemen in their stance and it forces them to fire-out and finish. This is another drill that works several different techniques at one time.

Other Offensive Line Drills for Youth Football

The Run blocking progression drill is an excellent drill because it practices the 3 phases of run blocking. Phase # 1: Splits, Stances, and fire-out. Phase # 2: Leverage and Power Step. Phase # 3: Drive, Finish, and compete!

(Learn More) Run Blocking Progression Drill

Pulling is something that take some practice on the youth football level. Pulling is something that is underutilized in youth football. Many coaches do not understand how to teach the proper pulling technique. This article will show you how to teach the proper technique for pulling linemen.

(Learn More) Pulling Offensive Linemen Technique 

Skip pulling is probably my favorite type of pull. I prefer the skip pull because it will keep your offensive linemen’s shoulders square to the line of scrimmage. It will allow them to keep their head up and see the defense as they are pulling. Skip pulling is an excellent tactic for teams that love to run the power concept. This is a pull for linemen that are pulling for a second level defender.

(Learn More) Skip Pull Technique for O-linemen