"Samurai" Football / Martial Arts training for Defenders...

aztec...

good points there - I agree about your assessment of HS pass rushers, which is why I started the thread. The 'combinations' that COULD be taught at the HS level is what I was looking for. The coaching points and visuals to ingrain into a young athlete to rep these fundamentals would allow a good athlete to DOMINATE...which is the source of my frustration in seeing good talent squandered with little instruction.

I've been taught a lot of pass rush / escape moves throughout my career, but here are some that I teach and the kids have fun LEARNING....(to me, the pass rush is as fun as teaching / learning BOXING with the combinations & counters).

The main thing I try to teach in pass rush (and everything on defense) is to be AGGRESSIVE. We can do this by going at a high tempo, instilling confidence, and LET THE KIDS PLAY. When we work our escapes for the first time, we will really shoot for EXAGGERATED movements and in the past, I've made every kid make those silly "kung fu" noises when delivering a blow (Hiii----ya! Kia!), just so they get it in their head HOW explosive we're looking for.

For instance, we will work the rips (same arm / same leg) like puppets in from a 4 pt (knees & toes on the ground) and just rep it like Mr. Miagi . We'll move on stressing the rib punch, with shooting our bicep to his earhole and throwing our hips into his to gain leverage and separation.

On our swims, we teach the inside separation, collapse the blocker's outside arm with either a pull or a fast swat with our outside arm to his tricep. We work the hands individually and rep that to death before practicing on lineman. Once we swat / pull, we tell our guys to JAB to his earhole fast enough so we can stab him in the kidney with an ice-pick. These 'visuals' are what help us FINISH the move. Too many times you see a guy ATTEMPT a rip / swim only to get caught halfway and end up in no-man's land.

Because our Dline was attempting a LOT of spin moves (probably the most over used, under taught, least effective escape EVER!), so I did just say "Screw it! If you're going to use it, at least do it RIGHT!".....we teach the spin as the counter to the initial move going broke. The whole coaching points there are to throw the outside foot back as if to stomp on the blockers inside foot. While doing this we want the rusher to 'wind up' like a baseball pitcher with his 'inside' arm and using his 'outside' arm to elbow the blocker in the solar plexus (to stay tight hipped to him). The follow-through on the 'pitch' should propel the rusher to the inside hip of the blocker and he will have to catch himself to keep from falling on his face....by doing this, he is 'loaded' with enough kinetic energy to propel him into the backfield.

For our OUTSIDE rushers, we have a lot of fun, because those guys have either LONG EXTENSION or are the FASTEST guys on the team (or both). I found a really good way of teaching this, what was described as the "Vader move" where the inside arm comes up like Darth Vader 'choking' someone. This is aimed at the sternum and may slide up....the whole point is to work the half man with ONE HAND with the initial contact setting the blocker off his base. Once we 'jar' him, then we can use a host of escapes and it works wonderfully when you have got SPEED guys out there because it lends itself nicely to the 'hump' move by driving that blocker out into space on the perimeter (walking him back to the depth of the QB).