Right hands are better than tight hands

Welcome to another episode of O-Line TV. I'm LeCharles Bentley, joined by CJ Davis. This particular episode, we're going to focus on tight hands, or I should say the fallacy of tight hands. Now, many of you coaches out there and even you players that are listening to this content, you've been coaching or have been coached under the idea of keeping the hands tight. I know CJ was coached that way. I was brought up that way as well. But what we're seeing now as we kind of continue this evolution of football, we're seeing tools being developed that are building or focusing on the development of tight hands in player development. Tools like the X-Bag, they don't focus on tight hands, they focus on proper hand placement. But that concept is being lost because we're seeing many coaches deciding that the med ball is a better option for developing tight hands. We love seeing coaches progress. Get rid of your flat bags. If you can't use an X-Bag, use a med ball if need be, but you have to understand the potential downside to that once you're beyond the youth level. Youth level, this particular tool here is great. This one you don't need. But at the youth level, you're dealing with a smaller athlete, an athlete with a smaller frame. With that being said, when a youth-level athlete strikes a med ball, generally speaking, their thumbs are going to be in line with the shoulders. But the wider and the older the athlete becomes, they're now starting focusing on bringing the heads more inside, thus the concept of tight hands. Here's the issue with coaching and developing your players through this concept. What we never want to see with players is our offensive line athletes give away their leverage, give away their hard-earned advantage. So if CJ here strikes his hands inside, what me as a defensive player, what I now have is a leverage point. To work off of. As opposed to CJ striking more with his thumbs in line and targeting more of my outside of the numbers armpit area, he hits me here. It forces me now as a defensive player to now round my edge versus I showed here. If I'm tight, boom, I now have the advantage on CJ. It's the same thing in the run game. Imagine in a run game trying to take a triangle. You put a triangle here and then you put a rectangle on top of it. You can't balance it. And in the run game, that's ultimately what we're trying to do with the defender, thus control the defender. Ultimately what we're really saying is I want to be able to balance that defender in the run. Same thing in the pass, but you see it most definitely in the run because in the run he's coming this way and I'm going this way, so that control is much more needed as opposed to it is in the pass game. So with that being said, the idea of coaching your players with tight hands can create more of a disadvantage than it is an advantage. But as we always want to do at OLP, we want to try to give you something that you can use today. First off, in terms of actionable language, we're striking thumbs, shoulders, thumbs, shoulders. We want to keep that in line. Again, younger athletes they're naturally gonna be in this position and be relatively tight because their shoulders are more narrow. The bigger your athletes get, we still want to maintain that thumb-to-shoulder relationship. Secondarily, if you don't have an X-Bag, perfectly fine, and you have a med ball. Cool, Coach. Let's use a med ball. But let's not use the med ball to strike with two hands at one time. Because if I'm using the med ball and now CJ may offer my offensive line athlete and he strikes with two hands at one time, he's coming tight as you can see here. So now at that point I can work off of him. But if we focus on more individual hand usage, we can align ourselves more effectively and efficiently and thus keep our actionable language in line with our drill selection. So as I come here, Boom. I can now help CJ maintain this proper thumb and shoulder relationship by focusing on this med ball in independent hand situations. Now in the run game, you lose it because if CJ comes off the ball in the run game, boom, same thing. I can now work myself off of him. So in the pass game, work with the med ball. Definitely use it because it's more advantageous than a flat bag, but work independent hands. In the run game, you're better off just using an opponent and just having guys line up against one another and use the actual body if you don't have an X-bag and you're going to be forced to use the med ball, just don't use the med ball in that particular situation. So hopefully this clears this up for you, and hopefully this is something that you all can use today to get your players where you want them to be. Thank you.