Follow Through

Place your punting foot on the line, swing your leg and notice its motion. Your leg should swing effortlessly, like a pendulum, from your hip to your foot. Swing your leg as high as you can, in a path anywhere between your kicking eye side and your nose, but never let it cross the center line of your body while maintaining your balance.

Some things to keep in mind when practicing your follow through.

1. Be sure to lock your leg and point your toe at contact.
2. Kick straight up through the ball.  Explode your hips up and through down your target line.  Your body position after you have completed the follow through will tell you a lot about the actual follow through.   If your leg ends up to the left of your line (very common for a right-footed punter), your body will end up facing that direction after the punt. The ball will likely have gone in that same direction.  
3. The two pivot points in this movement are the knee and hip.  These two pivot points must stay forward and facing down the field during leg swing, lock, and and impact.
4. Try to maintain a forward body lean through as much of the follow through as you can.  Extend your leg as high as possible. The height of your follow through allows you to fully extend and accelerate up and through the ball. Perhaps the greatest punter to play the game, Ray Guy, extended his foot above his head in a perfectly straight line up from his right hip. A nice follow through can make a punt a beautiful work of art.  A great follow through requires a lot of flexibility.  The necessary flexibility can be attained with a good stretching program, which is available in the members section of this site..

Here's another good exercise to try. Get a partner to stand about 10 yards apart (Mom or Dad work great!). 

Try punting the football to each other but under control. You want your partner to stand still without moving and catch your punt. You will kick about 25% but still focus on good form. Once you get that accomplished, back your partner up 5 yards and do the same. This is good for control of the ball and also lets you get a good feel for the ball on your foot.

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