A good kicking coach costs real money. A bad one costs you a winter. That math is worth taking seriously before you hand anyone a credit card, because the kicking instruction market is crowded, unregulated, and full of people who can kick but cannot teach. Here is how to tell them apart — and how to use a coach once you have found one.
Green Flags: What Good Coaching Looks Like
Watch for these in the first session. They are cheap to give and impossible to fake for long:
- He watches before he talks. A coach who starts changing things on kick three has not diagnosed anything. Good coaches watch a full block, find the one fault causing the most damage, and start there.
- He charts. Makes, misses, distances, hashes. If nobody is writing anything down, nobody is tracking whether the coaching is working.
- One fix at a time. Swing path this week, contact next week. Kickers who get five corrections in one hour fix none of them.
- He explains the why. “Because I said so” and “pros do it this way” are not explanations. You should be able to repeat the reasoning back.
- He gives you homework. A drill you own between sessions, with a success test attached, so progress does not live only on his field.
- He follows up. Film notes after the session, not silence until the next payment.
Red Flags: Walk Away From These
- Guaranteed yardage. “Ten more yards in one lesson” is not coaching, it is marketing. Range comes from contact quality and it moves over weeks, not hours.
- One mold for everyone. Every kicker’s swing has to work with his own body. A coach who copies every student onto one pro’s mechanics is selling a costume.
- No film. If a coach works from memory instead of video, he is guessing at 20 mph. Frame-by-frame review is where the real teaching happens.
- All hype, no plan. Loud encouragement feels great and changes nothing. Ask what the next three sessions fix and listen to how specific the answer is.
- Never involves a snap and hold. If every kick is off a perfect ball placed by him, you are practicing a game that does not exist.
Know the Species of Coach
“Kicking coach” covers several different jobs, and knowing which one you need saves you money. Some coaches are drill architects — great for young kickers building fundamentals. Some are film-first technicians — best when your mechanics are set and something specific has broken. Some are operation coaches who run live special-teams reps — priceless in August, unnecessary in January. The differences matter enough that I wrote a whole guide to the types of kicking coaches, because hiring the wrong species is the most common way families waste a season of budget.
Remote Coaching Is Real — With Rules
The best coach in your state may not be in your state. Remote film coaching works, and it works well, but only when the film is good. Here is the standard:
- Camera behind the kicker, on a tripod, at hip height, far enough back to see the whole operation including the hold.
- At least ten kicks per session, ideally from both hashes, at a distance you should own.
- Note the field, wind, and distance on the video — context changes the diagnosis.
- Expect a real return: frame-by-frame comments, one priority fix, and a drill to prove the fix by next week’s shoot.
If a remote coach just sends back “looks good, keep working,” you have paid for a compliment. The upside of remote work is price and access — you can get weekly eyes on your swing for a fraction of private-lesson rates, which is why I compare the full economics in camps versus private lessons.
What Coaching Should Cost
Prices swing by market, so treat these as ranges rather than quotes. Group camps commonly run a few hundred dollars for a day. Private one-on-one lessons often land somewhere between hourly rates that reflect the coach’s experience and demand — ask what is included, because some coaches bundle film review and others charge for it separately. Monthly remote film review is usually the best value per dollar for a kicker who already has fundamentals, because you get repeated contact instead of one expensive afternoon. Whatever the number, judge it against feedback quality: a session that changes one thing permanently is worth more than three sessions that change nothing.
Test Before You Commit
- Book one session or one month, not a package.
- Before it starts, chart ten kicks from your consistent range so you have a baseline.
- Ask the coach for the one change he wants you to keep for two weeks.
- Re-chart after two weeks. If your percentage did not move — or worse, your swing feels worse and you cannot explain why — you have your answer.
That test works because it measures the only thing that matters: did the coaching change the kicks?
When you are ready to go that route, I run exactly this kind of work through remote film review coaching — you send clean film and a chart, I send back the specific fixes and the drill to build them, and we re-test on film in two weeks. If you want to think through whether a coach is right for you at all, start with should you consider a kicking coach, and bring your camera to your very next session either way — film is the whole game.
