How to Structure a Kicking Session: The Hour That Actually Improves You
Most kickers know dozens of drills and have no idea what order to do them in, how many reps to take, or when to stop. That gap costs more than any missing drill ever could.
Here is what an unstructured kicking session looks like. Warm up briefly. Hit some field goals from wherever feels good. Move back until you miss a few. Hit a couple more to end on a make. Go home. Total: about seventy kicks, no focus, no record, and a leg that is more tired than it needed to be.
It is not laziness — it is the absence of a template. Nobody teaches session design, so kickers default to kicking until they feel done, which optimises for feeling good rather than for improving.
This guide gives you a session structure, the reasoning behind the order, realistic rep counts, three session types for different purposes, and how to know when to stop.
📋 What’s in this guide
The Four Principles
Everything below follows from these.
1. Quality before quantity, always. Twenty deliberate reps with a specific intention beat seventy casual ones. Once concentration goes, further kicks are rehearsing whatever you happen to be doing.
2. Precision work goes first. Accuracy degrades with fatigue faster than power does. Whatever matters most should happen on the freshest leg.
3. One focus per session. A session that half-addresses four things changes none of them. Pick the thing, and let everything else be maintenance.
4. Finish deliberately, not on a make. Ending when you have completed the plan is a habit. Ending when you finally hit a good one is how forty-kick sessions become eighty-kick sessions.
The session that improves you is usually shorter than the session that feels satisfying. Those are different products.
The Standard Session Template
Roughly an hour. Adjust the proportions, keep the sequence.
| Phase | Time | What you do | Kicks | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. General warm-up | 8–10 min | Jogging, dynamic movement | 0 | Raise tissue temperature |
| 2. Mobility and activation | 5–8 min | Hips, adductors, glutes | 0 | Range and readiness |
| 3. Steps and no-ball work | 5 min | Re-measure steps; cone plant drill; swings | 0 | Groove mechanics with full attention |
| 4. Short kicks | 5 min | 20–25 yards, 60% effort | 8–10 | Contact feel; ease into load |
| 5. Focus block | 15–20 min | The one thing this session is about | 15–20 | The actual training |
| 6. Pressure or game block | 8–10 min | Consequence reps; hash positions | 8–10 | Transfer to competition |
| 7. Kickoffs (if applicable) | 5–8 min | Near-maximal reps | 5–8 | Most expensive work, done last |
| 8. Cool down and record | 5 min | Easy movement; log the session | 0 | Recovery and data |
Total: roughly 40–50 live kicks in about an hour, with almost a third of the session containing no ball contact at all. That ratio surprises kickers, and it is the point — phases one to three are where mechanics actually change, and they are the ones people skip.
💡 Phase three is the highest-value ten minutes in kicking and the first thing everyone cuts. Re-measuring your steps takes thirty seconds and defeats the silent drift behind most mid-season slumps. The cone plant drill addresses the fault behind more missed kicks than anything else. Neither involves a ball, which is exactly why they get skipped — and exactly why they work.
Why the Order Matters
The sequence is not arbitrary, and each position has a reason.
No-ball work early, because attention is the scarce resource. Mechanical corrections need your full attention, and a ball competes for it. Doing the cone drill first, when you are fresh and focused, is when it works best.
Short kicks before anything longer. Progressive loading protects the hip and adductor tissue, and it lets you establish clean contact before adding distance or pressure.
The focus block in the middle. Warm, not yet fatigued. This is your best kicking of the day and it should be spent on whatever you actually came to work on.
Pressure work after the focus block. Slight fatigue is realistic — games do not happen on a fresh leg. Consequence drills mean more when you are not perfectly fresh.
Kickoffs last. They are near-maximal and cost far more than controlled placekicking. Doing them first means everything precise happens on a tired leg. This is the single most common ordering error.
Recording at the end. Thirty seconds while it is fresh. Our measurement guide covers what to write down.
Three Session Types
Not every session should be the same. Rotate deliberately.
| Type | Focus block contains | Total kicks | When to use it | How often |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technical | Cone drill volume, one correction, film | 25–35 | Fixing a specific fault | Most sessions during a correction |
| Volume | Working-range reps, consistency | 45–60 | Building repeatability | Once or twice a week |
| Competition | Consequence streaks, hashes, full operation | 30–40 | Transfer to games | Once a week, later in the week |
| Light technical | Steps, no-ball swings, few kicks | 10–15 | Day before a game; recovery weeks | As needed |
| Testing | Fixed protocol by distance band | 40 in a set protocol | Measuring progress | Every 2–3 weeks |
The technical session has the fewest kicks and produces the most change. That is counter-intuitive and it is worth internalising: when you are actively correcting something, more repetitions of a half-formed movement is not what you need.
Do not run competition sessions every day. Pressure work is valuable and mentally taxing. Weekly is plenty, and it works best later in the week when you are slightly fatigued.
How Many Kicks Is Right
Fewer than most kickers take, and the number depends on what kind of kicks they are.
Not all reps cost the same. A controlled 25-yard kick is cheap. A maximum-range attempt or a kickoff is expensive — count those as worth considerably more.
A reasonable weekly total for most kickers sits well below what an enthusiastic kicker naturally does. If you are tracking nothing, you are almost certainly doing more than you think.
Alternate hard and easy days. Two heavy sessions back to back is a reliable route to hip and adductor problems. Our injury guide covers why that tissue in particular.
Maximum-range kicks: a handful, rarely. They are the highest-risk rep in kicking and they do not build range.
Count everything. Field goals, kickoffs, punts, warm-up kicks. Your hips do not distinguish between them.
⚠️ The enthusiasm trap is real and it is how kickers lose seasons. A session going well is exactly when you want to keep kicking, and exactly when you should not. Groin and hip flexor problems build over weeks of individually reasonable sessions, and the day you took a hundred and fifty because it felt great is usually the start of it. Have a number before you begin, and stop at it.
When to Stop
Four signals, any one of which ends the session.
You have completed the plan. The intended reason. If you came to do twenty focus-block kicks and you have done them, you are finished regardless of how the last one went.
Contact quality has dropped. When strikes stop being clean, further kicks are rehearsing a degraded pattern under load. This usually arrives earlier than people expect.
Your concentration has gone. Deliberate practice requires attention. Once you are going through the motions, the reps have stopped being training.
Anything hurts. Particularly the groin, hip flexor or adductor. That is not a signal to manage — it ends the session.
What is not a reason to continue: having missed the last one. This is the single most common cause of over-long sessions, and the make you eventually get does not carry into the next game while the fatigue does.
Equipment
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Training Cones
Phase Three Depends On It
The highest-value block in the session — steps and no-ball plant work — needs a cone and nothing else. It is also the block everyone skips, which makes doing it consistently a genuine advantage.
✅ What’s good
- Enables the highest-value phase
- Also marks hashes and aim points
- Packs completely flat
- Trivially cheap
⚠️ Keep in mind
- Move in wind
- Need collecting
👤 Best for: Every kicker running a structured session.
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Footballs (Practice Set)
Reps Instead of Walking
A structured session has defined rep counts in defined blocks. Collecting balls after every three destroys both the block structure and the rhythm the structure exists to create.
✅ What’s good
- Preserves the session structure
- Far less walking
- Shared with teammates
- Long lifespan
⚠️ Keep in mind
- Bulky to transport
- Needs inflation checks
👤 Best for: Anyone whose sessions are currently half retrieval.
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Football Kicking Net
Making the Plan Possible at All
A structured session needs a place to do it. A net removes the dependency on a booked field and a helper, which is what turns a good session template into something you actually run twice a week.
✅ What’s good
- Makes regular sessions realistic
- Ball returns to you
- Works solo
- Folds for storage
⚠️ Keep in mind
- Needs space
- No accuracy feedback
👤 Best for: Kickers whose main obstacle is access rather than knowledge.
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Training Log
Thirty Seconds at Phase Eight
The final phase of the template is recording it. Kick count, focus, miss directions and conditions — thirty seconds that turns a season of sessions into evidence you can reason about.
✅ What’s good
- Completes the session structure
- Reveals load and patterns
- Cheap and simple
- Compounds over a season
⚠️ Keep in mind
- Requires the habit
- Easy to skip when tired
👤 Best for: Anyone who does not currently know how many kicks they took last week.
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Phone Tripod
The Focus Block Needs Feedback
A technical session is only as good as its feedback. Filming the focus block from directly behind is what tells you whether the correction you are working on is actually happening.
✅ What’s good
- Verifies the session worked
- No helper required
- Consistent comparison
- Cheap
⚠️ Keep in mind
- Needs stable ground
- Requires a consistent position
👤 Best for: Kickers running technical sessions during a correction.
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Resistance Band Set
Phases One and Two
The mobility and activation block is a third of the session template and needs almost nothing. Bands cover hip, glute and adductor activation in a few minutes before any ball contact.
✅ What’s good
- Covers the whole warm-up block
- Packs into a bag pocket
- Also builds strength
- Cheap
⚠️ Keep in mind
- Needs correct technique
- Bands perish over time
👤 Best for: Anyone currently skipping straight from arriving to kicking.
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When You Only Have Twenty Minutes
Which is most of the time, realistically. The template compresses without losing its logic.
- Five minutes: warm-up and mobility. Non-negotiable. Kicking cold is not a shortcut, it is an injury.
- Three minutes: steps and cone plant drill. No ball. Re-measure, then ten to fifteen plant reps.
- Two minutes: short kicks. Five or six at 60 per cent to establish contact.
- Eight minutes: one focus. Ten to twelve kicks on the single thing you came to do.
- Two minutes: record it. Count, focus, miss directions.
That is roughly twenty live kicks, properly warmed up, with real attention on one thing. It is a genuinely productive session and it beats an unstructured hour comfortably.
What to cut if you must: the pressure block and the kickoffs. Never the warm-up or the no-ball work — those are the parts doing the actual improving.
Common Mistakes
❌ 1. Skipping the no-ball block
The highest-value ten minutes in kicking, cut first because it is boring and has no ball.
✅ Fix: Steps and cone plant drill before any ball contact, every session.
❌ 2. Kickoffs before field goals
Near-maximal reps first means precision work on a tired leg.
✅ Fix: Kickoffs last. Costs nothing to change and improves what matters.
❌ 3. Having no single focus
A session that half-addresses four things changes none of them.
✅ Fix: Decide the one thing before you leave the house.
❌ 4. Finishing on a make rather than on the plan
The single most common cause of sessions running long past their useful point.
✅ Fix: Have a number before you start and stop at it regardless.
❌ 5. Starting long
Skipping progressive loading is both an injury risk and a poor way to establish contact.
✅ Fix: Short kicks at 60 per cent before anything else.
❌ 6. Running competition-style sessions daily
Pressure work is valuable and taxing; every day makes it neither.
✅ Fix: Once a week, later in the week.
❌ 7. Not counting kicks
If you are tracking nothing you are almost certainly doing more than you think.
✅ Fix: Record the count at the end of every session.
❌ 8. Continuing once contact quality drops
Further reps rehearse a degraded pattern under load.
✅ Fix: Treat poor contact as a stopping signal, not a problem to kick through.
Frequently Asked Questions
How should I structure a kicking practice session?
Warm-up and mobility first, then steps and no-ball plant work, then short kicks, then a single focus block, then pressure work, then kickoffs last, then record it.
Roughly 40 to 50 live kicks in an hour, with about a third of the session containing no ball contact at all — because the no-ball phases are where mechanics actually change.
How many kicks should I take in a session?
Typically 40 to 50 for a full session, fewer during a technical block where you are actively correcting something, and 10 to 15 the day before a game.
Weight the count — a controlled short kick is cheap, a kickoff or maximum-range attempt is expensive. And decide the number before you start rather than kicking until you feel finished.
Why should kickoffs come last?
Because they are near-maximal reps that cost considerably more physically than controlled placekicking, and accuracy degrades with fatigue faster than power does.
Doing them first — the common habit, because they are enjoyable — means all your precision work happens on a leg that has already done its hardest job.
What if I only have twenty minutes?
Five minutes warm-up and mobility, three minutes of steps and cone plant work with no ball, two minutes of short kicks, eight minutes on one focus, two minutes to record it.
That is about twenty live kicks with real attention on one thing, and it beats an unstructured hour. Cut the pressure block and the kickoffs if you must — never the warm-up or the no-ball work.
When should I stop a session?
When you have completed the plan, when contact quality drops, when your concentration goes, or immediately if anything hurts.
Having missed the last one is not a reason to continue — that instinct is the most common cause of sessions running long, and the eventual make does not carry into the next game while the fatigue does.
Should every session be the same?
No. Rotate between technical sessions when correcting a fault, volume sessions for repeatability, and one competition-style session a week with consequence drills and hash positions.
Add a light technical session the day before games, and a fixed testing protocol every two to three weeks to measure progress properly.
Why Structure Beats Effort
It is worth understanding why a shorter, ordered session outperforms a longer unstructured one, because the reasoning is what makes the discipline hold when you are tempted to keep kicking.
Attention is finite and it is spent first. Deliberate practice requires concentration, and concentration runs out considerably earlier than your leg does. A session that places its most attention-demanding work at the end — which unstructured sessions almost always do, because people drift toward whatever is enjoyable — is spending its hardest currency when the account is empty. Putting the no-ball mechanical work first is not about your leg being fresh; it is about your attention being fresh.
Fatigue changes what you are rehearsing. Every repetition is a rehearsal of something, and once contact quality degrades you are rehearsing a slightly compromised pattern. Take thirty of those and you have spent thirty repetitions embedding a version of your technique that you do not want. This is the mechanism behind the familiar experience of practising hard for a fortnight and getting worse.
Volume without focus produces variance, not consistency. Seventy kicks with no particular intention trains your body to produce seventy slightly different movements. Twenty kicks with one specific intention trains one movement twenty times. Consistency is the thing the whole sport is judged on, and it comes from repetition of the same thing rather than repetition in general.
And the cost of overshooting is asymmetric. The upside of twenty extra kicks at the end of a good session is negligible; the downside — accumulated hip and adductor load across a season — is a genuine risk of losing weeks. When one side of a decision is small and the other is large, the discipline is worth holding even on the days it feels unnecessary.
Session Checklist
- Single focus decided before arriving
- Target kick count decided before starting
- Full warm-up and mobility before any ball contact
- Steps re-measured from scratch
- Cone plant drill completed with no ball
- Short kicks at 60% before anything longer
- Focus block given your freshest kicking
- Pressure work after the focus block, not before
- Kickoffs last, if at all
- Session ended on the plan, not on a make
- Stopped when contact quality dropped
- Stopped immediately for any groin or hip pain
- Kick count recorded, all types included
- Focus and miss directions logged
- Hard and easy days alternated across the week
- Session type rotated deliberately
The bottom line: most kickers have the drills and lack the template. Warm up properly, do the boring no-ball work while your attention is fresh, ease in with short kicks, spend your best kicking on one focus, add pressure after it, put kickoffs last, and stop when the plan says so rather than when you finally hit a good one. It is roughly forty-five kicks in an hour, a third of which involve no ball at all — and it will do more than the seventy you were taking before.
Keep Going
🎯 Field Goal DrillsWhat goes in the focus block
📊 Measuring ProgressThe testing session
🔄 Multiple RolesOrdering three skills
As an Amazon Associate we may earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. General training information, not medical advice — stop and seek qualified assessment for any persistent pain.