Combatives

One of the hallmarks of the Pete Carroll legacy at both USC and Seattle is competition. The idea of competing every day is ingrained throughout the entire team and reinforced at each practice in some form or fashion.

I think that there are a couple of interpretations and uses for combatives in the women’s game. One use would be some limited martial arts training – understanding how to break holds and control arms is highly useful.

For instance, when in pass pro, my offensive linemen are trained to use their elbow as a pivot point. When a defender on a pass rush comes in and slaps at their wrists or forearms, we simply rotate around the elbow and repunch. But if the defender understood that the elbow controls the arm, they would attack the elbow instead of the wrist. Once they have control of the elbow, they can move the entire arm pretty much wherever they want and even dislodge the blocker’s balance point. Taken in the extreme, this would be Reggie White’s famous “hump” move, where he would hit the OL’s triceps with a cupped hand and just lift them up over the OL’s head.

To counter those sorts of moves, the OL has to be adept at either “short setting” on her punch (not extending the hands out all the way) or as soon as she feels pressure withdrawing the affected hand and repunching. One of my mentors, Brent Myers (currently at Weber State) taught his OL to set with their hands down low, near the rib cage and concentrate on punching the DL in their rib cage. He feels that it opens the OL up to fewer pass rush moves – it is awfully hard to rip when the hands are held that low, and it is harder for the DL to dip under them as well. Myself, I haven’t quite bought into that strategy, but I’ve always kept it in my back pocket for an occasion where it might be useful.

The point is, you have to drill these kinds of automatic responses, which looks an awful lot like a martial arts lesson. There are coaches out there, namely Mark Miller (https://coacheschoice.com/m-325-mark-miller.aspx) (who I’ve actually taken lessons from), former Steelers All Pro OL Tunch Ilkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunch_Ilkin) and others who teach martial arts concepts to teams. Once you understand it as a coach, then you have to instill those abilities in your players via drill.

The other interpretation of combatives would be competitive drills. I’m sure when I say that most coaches immediately think of things like Oklahoma drills or bull in the ring, or some other “toughening” exercise.  What I’m thinking about is a little more out of the box….if you had a relatively light standup bag, for example, you could have two players grab hold of it any way they wanted. The whistle blows and basically, it is whoever ends up with it is the winner. You could have a time limit – or not. You want to see who has a competitive, never-give-up spirit? That’s one way to do it.

You can also do the same thing with a towel taped at both ends and in the middle. Each player grabs an end, and whoever ends up with it wins. I remember seeing a TV spot when the University of Texas was in a bowl game a couple of years ago, and they were touting the training methods of their strength coach. What he had was a sanitized, fancy version of my taped up towel. And the announcers were going crazy about it. I said, “Shoot, I was doing that in 1992.” So think out of the box a little on those types of things.

I do believe that “some” of the old stand-byes still have merit. The Oklahoma drill for example, is good, IF it is done in the correct way! Too many defensive coaches want to set it up where there is one blocker, one ballcarrier and two defenders. To me, that is fundamentally unsound, because you’re running the ballcarrier into an unblocked defender every time. Who does that by design?  A much better barometer of your defender’s ability to shed blocks and still make a tackle would be to have 3-on-2 – two blockers and a ballcarrier versus two tacklers. Or even better, how one university (I want to say it was Clemson) sets it up: you have an OL and a DL together at the bottom (narrow end) of a V-shaped cone formation. About five yards back, you have a FB/RB and a LB paired up, and then out in the wide side of the V you have a WR and DB paired up. Thus the ballcarrier starts in a confined area, and as s/he gets more yaradage s/he also gets more room to play with. Also, the blockers who are responsible for those areas get a more realistic look at the amount of time they have to hold their blocks. I think that is a great drill.

When I drill my OL as a group, I’ll do what I call “King of the Hill”, and basically it is just that – two OL driving at each other, with one important change: I only put their helmets about 6” from each other. I’m not interested in them looking like a couple of mountain goats butting heads with the attendant risk of injury. I’m more interested in them developing quick hands and keeping their feet moving. Each rep only lasts about 5 seconds, especially if they start turning around each other or go straight up – then I blow it dead immediately. No sense in getting bad form as muscle memory!

So those are my thoughts on combatives in modern football. This weekend I’ll be out in Las Vegas at the Glazier clinic. The plan is to talk next week about some of the things I picked up at the clinic, so who knows what it’ll be?

Thanks again for reading!