Young QB’s starting to train and develop always need to refine their throwing mechanics. However, getting started throwing the football the right way will help shorten the road towards a well rounded skill set and ensures that our students get the most from our quarterback camps and from our qb training.
We asked Steve Clarkson to give us some tips on the first part of our “How To Throw A Football” series. In this installment we begin with the first things first and discuss how to grip a football to throw an accurate and tight spiral.
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1. Grip the ball correctly. This means placing your pointer finger past the white stripe on a straight line from your arm and keeping your middle and ring finger over the threads, ideally at the first joint of the finger. The pinkie finger should just touch the threads of the ball. Keep in mind that different hands sizes will impact the placement of your fingers on the ball as seen in the examples below.
2. Start the arm motion keeping a straight line from your elbow to the end of our pointer finger. In order to create a balanced motion and to best use the power of your entire body, keep your non throwing arm out in front of you. This will help with both accuracy and power and is a fundamental of throwing mechanics.
3. Starting with a strong foundation in your legs, drive the ball through with a high release and quickly turn your thumb towards the opposite pocket. Make sure your elbow stays in front of your shoulder to create a powerful transition and to lower the risk of shoulder injury.
4. Follow through with your arm across your body. There are many quarterback drills that can help develop this arm motion. One that can be used during your warmup routine is throwing from your knees. This will help warm up the shoulder and the kinetic motion of the arm will naturally come across the body.
Coach’s Transcript:
One of the biggest questions that I get is coach how I grip a football. Well, that will vary from kid to kid, but typically the smaller your hand the higher up on the ball that you will grip. Ideally what I tell my students is the seams on a football, much like a baseball if you’re going to throw curve, how you grip on the seams of the football matters.
I like to basically take my index finger, my wrist and forearm. I want to make sure that they are on a straight line. You’re going to roll down from the pinkie to index finger on a straight line, then turn the thumb over to the opposite pocket and you see my thumb is on the inside so I’m able to turn the ball over. This will send the ball out of your hand with a spiral keeping it on a strong and accurate trajectory towards your target.
