How Marion Hobby teaches violent hands

iolent hands are essential for controlling your opponent, getting knock back and throwing off to make the play.

And Coach Marion Hobby (Clemson, Bengals & Dolphins) has an amazing progression for instilling this key principle in his D-Line.

Check it out below and let me know if you have any questions...

Step 1: Improve pre-contact explosion

It's counterintuitive, but the foundation for violent hands starts with your lower body. Your hips, glutes and lower back are the power system from which you generate force.

That force then is channeled through your hands and into your opponent, but it all starts with lower body explosion.

The following series of drills focuses on just this:

Get offs (2 reps x each stance)

Get off is the #1 fundamental for generating force. Just think if you're at full speed before your opponent has moved, you'll easily knock him back.

6-point explosion (2 -4 reps)

This particular drill focusses primarily on exploding out with full extension By over-emphasizing full hips extension, it instills the need to engage the lower body to generate force through your hands.

Cage fits (2 reps x each stance)

D-Line is a game of leverage. So, to generate knock back it is essential to stay low while exploding out and cage fits are a great way to practice this!

Step 2: Develop post-contact shedding

Once you've made contact with your opponent the key now is to violently create separation, locate the ball and throw off to make the tackle.

It's impossible to make plays with a 300 pound blocker holding onto you, so the following drill is designed to teach violent lock out, press and shed:

Shuffle shed (2-4 reps)

Use the shuffle shed drill to practice fighting pressure with pressure by violently pressing w/ the outside hand, pulling w/ the inside and violently shedding.

Step 3: Combine pre & post

The first two steps separated pre & post contact drill work into two distinct drill groups in order to practice the fundamentals needed for violent hands; however, once you're D-Line is familiar with these skills, next step is to drill both pre & post contact together while facing different types of blocking schemes.

That way your D-Line can translate all of what you've incrementally taught into actual real life game situations.

The following drills are great for this:

Combo drill (2 reps)

The key to defeating a double is to split it. To do this you need to punch with violent hands (to get the double on different levels), drive the hip and throw off when pressure leaves.

2-on-1 (2 reps)

With the 2-on-1 drill, you can work multiple blocking schemes in a short amount of time which will allow you're D-Line to practice using violent hands against all different types of blocking schemes.

Well that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed it!

See you again next week.

And whenever you are ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. Learn how to turn your D-Line into a block destruction machine here (1,100+ students)
2. Learn how to develop top tier pass rushers and a lethal pass rush attack here (1,000+ students)

Best,

Craig

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