Every team has a quarterback coach. Almost nobody has a punter coach. That’s a problem, because a shanked punt or a low line drive can flip field position and hand the other team seven points before your defense even lines up.
If you’re a youth or high school coach who’s been handed “go figure out the punter” with zero background in kicking, this guide is for you.
How Do You Punt A Football?
Punting a football comes down to four repeatable phases: a two hand grip that hides the nose of the ball, a compact two step (or two and a half step for beginners) approach, a controlled drop of the ball onto the leg, and a hip driven leg swing that meets the ball for a clean end over end spiral. Learn how to punt a football correctly in each phase, and the ball flight, nose up, turnover at the apex, spiral down, takes care of itself.
In this article, we’ll break down grip, stance, steps, drop, and contact one phase at a time, then get into the drills and coaching cues I use to fix the most common punting mistakes I see at the youth and high school level.
How To Hold A Football To Punt
Grip is the first thing I check with any new punter, because a bad grip guarantees a bad kick before the foot ever touches the ball.
Think of it as a handshake grip. If you took the ball out of your punter’s hands and handed it back, he should be receiving it the same way he’d shake your hand. The back end of the ball (we call it the butt end) should be hidden inside that grip. If the butt end is sticking out, the nose of the ball drops, and you’re going to get a low, ugly punt no matter how good the leg swing is.
Here’s the visual cue that saves you a lot of guessing: the clock and the river. Picture the ball as a clock face. Straight up is 12:00. You want the nose of the ball sitting at 11:30 to 11:45, not dead vertical. Then look for the “river,” the seam and logo line running down the panel of the ball. That river should flow straight up through your punter’s shoulder. If the river is running outside the shoulder or inside it, the ball is turned wrong in the grip and you’ll see it show up as wobble or off rotation on contact. This single check, ball at 11:45 with the river running through the shoulder, is the fastest way I’ve found to diagnose a bad punt grip in about five seconds, before a single rep is even kicked.
The off hand (the guide hand) stays on the ball the entire time to keep it level. It doesn’t let go until the very end of the drop.
Punting Stance
A two step punter sets up with the kicking side foot slightly in front and the plant foot slightly back. But if you’re working with a middle school or first year high school punter, I’d tell you to flip that: start with the non kicking foot slightly in front instead. That gives a younger kid a half step of extra rhythm (a two and a half step approach) before he has to drive up and through the ball. It’s an easier entry point than asking a 12 year old to do everything a college two step punter does on day one.
Either way, the stance itself stays the same: feet close together, not spread wide, because that’s how we naturally walk. Weight is forward, arms relaxed at the sides, ready position. The moment your punter starts wide and bladed, you’re fighting his balance before the snap even arrives.
Steps A Punter Should Take
Most advanced punters use two steps: a short first step with the kicking side foot, a second step with the plant foot, then the leg drives up and through. The mistake I see youth coaches make constantly is letting punters get big with those steps, like they’re taking a huge stride into a layup. Big steps kill hip drive. Stay small and controlled, and let the hips do the work of generating power, not the length of the stride.
Footwork discipline matters just as much as step count. That first step should stay directly on the target line. The second step needs to land to the outside of that line, not directly in front of it. If a punter stacks that second foot right on the line, his kicking leg physically cannot swing straight through the ball, so he ends up swinging around it. That’s when you see the nose of the ball pop up and the ball come off with an off target left to right rotation.
A simple fix: have him stand still, right foot on the line, left foot off the line, and just drop and kick from that fixed position before you ever add steps back in. It isolates the leg swing from the footwork error.
This kind of small, isolated repetition is the same logic we use anywhere on the field, whether it’s teaching footwork discipline in the backpedal or cleaning up a punter’s plant foot. Strip the movement down before you add speed.
Punter’s Drop Technique
This is where most punts actually get ruined, before contact even happens.
Catch the snap with your pinkies together, not your thumbs together like a wide receiver would catch a pass. If a punter catches it wide receiver style, he has to re-mold the entire grip before he can drop it, and that’s wasted motion in an operation that only has about two seconds. Catching pinkies together means the ball is already close to the drop position the instant it hits his hands.
I use the “drop table” image with every punter I coach, especially at the high school level. Tell your punter to picture an expensive glass table sitting right above the ball and another one right below it, at belly button height.
From the catch to the release, the ball should slide along that table, not bounce up, out, and back in like a lot of untrained punters do. Less movement between the catch and the drop means less room for something to go wrong. The ball should also meet the hands out in front of the body, not get pulled in tight to the chest first. Pulling it in is wasted movement you then have to reverse.
Leg Swing And Contact: Generating Hang Time And Distance
Once the ball is on the drop table, the chest stays slightly forward, not leaning back. I tell punters to think about a hip clean in the weight room: the hips drive up and through, not the shoulders. A punter who leans back at contact is what we call “sitting in the chair,” and it kills power because the hips can’t finish the motion.
The kicking arm should stay parallel to the ground through the swing. Drop it too low or raise it too high and you change the ball’s angle at contact, which changes the flight. On a clean punt, the nose of the ball rises through the air, turns over at the highest point of the flight, and spirals down.
That end over end rotation is what gives you real hang time, and hang time is what lets your coverage team get downfield before the returner ever touches the ball. As a rule, hang time should roughly match distance: a 40 yard punt should carry close to a 4.0 second hang. A 60 or 70 yard bomb with a low hang time actually hurts you, because your whole punt team, which you can build out using our guide to installing an effective punt team, won’t have time to get down and cover it.
How Do You Coach Directional Punting?
Directional punting (sometimes called the Aussie punt or nose down punt) is how you flip the field and pin an opponent deep instead of just kicking for distance. The grip changes slightly here: instead of the handshake grip, the punter uses more of a “soda can” grip, holding the ball like it’s a can in his hand, with the back line of the ball lined up to shoot straight through his hip.
The key coaching point on the drop is the angle. Don’t let the ball point straight down, or the foot makes direct contact with the nose and you lose power and hurt the foot. Keep the ball flat through the swing, then push the nose out slightly right before contact. That gets the “meat” of the foot on the ball and produces an end over end punt that bounces backward instead of forward, which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to bury an opponent inside their own 10.
This is the kind of situational skill worth building into full special teams periods, not just individual punter reps. Our complete coaching guide to punting walks through how directional punts fit into your overall field position strategy on Friday nights.
What Drills Help Punters Increase Hang Time?
- The stack drill – Right foot fixed on the target line, left foot off the line, ball dropped and kicked from a stationary position. Isolates leg swing from footwork mistakes.
- The drop table drill – Catch, mold, and drop with no extra movement, checked by having the punter freeze at the mold position before completing the kick. Rewards minimal wasted motion.
- Game situation reps – Run first through fourth down as a mental rep: stay loose on first down, grip and drop on second, take the operation steps on third, full punt on fourth. This trains punters to treat every offensive snap in your own territory like a punt is coming, since you can’t afford to be surprised in a real game.
- Hang time versus distance charting – Time every punt in practice with a stopwatch and log it against distance. A punter who can’t see the number can’t fix the number.
If you’re building out a full period of these, vIQtory Pro has drill libraries you can drop straight into your practice plan without having to build the reps from scratch.
Common Mistakes When Learning How To Punt A Football
- Stacking the feet. The second step lands directly in front of the first instead of to the side. Fix it with the stack drill above and check foot placement on tape every rep.
- Catching like a receiver. Thumbs together instead of pinkies together slows the mold and adds wasted motion. Cue “pinkies to the ball” on every catch.
- Getting big with the steps. Long strides feel powerful but disconnect the hips from the swing. Cue small, quick steps, like a basketball layup, not a long jump.
- Sitting in the chair at contact. Leaning back at the moment of contact robs hip drive. Cue “chest forward, hips through.”
- Ignoring the clock and river check. If the ball isn’t at roughly 11:45 with the seam running through the shoulder, the nose angle is wrong before the leg even swings. Check the grip first, every single time, before you diagnose anything else.
Coach’s Takeaway
Learning how to punt a football is a grip and footwork problem before it’s ever a leg strength problem. Fix the handshake grip, keep the clock and river aligned, keep the steps small, and slide the ball on the drop table. Do those four things consistently and the height, distance, and hang time show up on their own.
FAQ
How do you hold a football to punt?
Use a handshake grip with both hands, keeping the butt end of the ball hidden and the nose angled to about 11:30 or 11:45 on a clock face, with the ball’s seam running straight up through the kicking shoulder.
How many steps should a punter take?
Most punters use a two step approach, kicking foot first, then the plant foot, before driving up through the ball. Younger or first year punters often start with an extra half step (two and a half steps) for rhythm before progressing to a true two step approach.
How do you fix a punter’s drop technique?
Catch the snap with pinkies together, mold the ball at belly button height right in front of the body, and slide it straight down to the leg without extra movement, using the “drop table” image to eliminate wasted motion.
What drills help punters increase hang time?
The stack drill (fixed feet, isolated leg swing) and the drop table drill (minimal ball movement) build the consistency that produces hang time, and charting hang time against distance every practice shows a punter exactly where to improve.
How do you coach directional punting?
Directional punting uses a soda can grip and a flatter ball angle through the drop, with the nose pushed out slightly right before contact, producing an end over end punt that bounces backward and pins the return team deep in its own territory.
What is the correct punting stance for beginners?
Beginners should start with feet close together and weight forward, often leading with the non kicking foot for an extra half step of rhythm before progressing to a standard two step punting stance.
If you want a deeper look at how the NFHS football rulebook defines a legal punt, or the biomechanics research behind punting technique from university sports science studies, those resources are worth a look once your punter has the fundamentals down. From there, the best way to keep improving is reps, film, and the same clock and river check every single time the ball comes back to the punter’s hands.