Today we’re going to be talking about how to keep your shoulders in the right position at contact so that you can give yourself a good, nice posture.
Shoulders at contact, what does that actually mean? Often, whenever you are swinging for a field goal, a lot of you would want to crunch over and hug your shoulders down and in. Ultimately, what that leads to is compromising your foot-to-ball contact.
Whenever your shoulders come down and in, you’re gonna be doing a sweep or scraping action. You’re throwing your entire body down so that your chest comes down as well. It leaves you with a lot of room for error in your contact.
Ultimately, what you want to make sure you’re doing is whenever you’re set, you are pulling your shoulders back and down, so that you’re giving yourself an engaged, chest-open feeling.
So, whenever you come in to make contact, you’re not dipping down and everything falls as a result, and there goes your clean contact. Then you get way under the ball, the ball goes way up and doesn’t go anywhere.
Rather, what you wanna do is whenever you set, take your sets back and over. You pull your shoulders back and down as if you’re trying to keep a book in between your shoulder blades, or squeezing together or holding a pencil, whatever you want to think about, and make sure that it stays there.
Try to maintain that throughout your approach. It’s, obviously, a lot to think about and that’s why you practice it in your drills, in your own time, in your own way.
One more time. Whenever you’re set, you get back and over in your approach, you bring your shoulders back and down. It opens up your chest. You maintain that. You should feel nice and relaxed after a week or two of doing it. So, keep a nice, tall chest and make sure that you do not crunch over whenever you make contact.
Level Shoulders for a better pop on the ball
Another thing to note is making sure that your approach is nice and level. You’re not jumping up and down like a ballerina. In your steps, you’re keeping your shoulders and your hips on a smooth plane right to the plant spot, and you’re gliding into it. So, you’re not jumping up and down.
What you think about is you imagine having two bottles of water on both sides of your shoulders, and you’re making sure that those are not gonna spill over the edge from you doing all this extra motion.
So, you’re nice and easy. You’re sliding into it. The water is gonna stay right on your shoulders, and you’re gonna kick. Same thing after contact; you don’t wanna throw your body or shoulders down to spill all the water. You want to maintain a nice, tall posture so that the water stays in the container.
Finishing up
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