Kickers mostly train on their own, well, almost all the time. The human holder (player who catches the snap and holds the football for them to kick in games and practices) is generally not there for private training practices.

For parents new to kicking, this means making or buying a device to ‘hold’ the football when a human holder is not available. This is where artificial football kicking holders come in.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with kicking holders for my entire kicking and coaching career. The kicking holder is a critical device, you HAVE to have one to practice as a kicker.

And yet, the market is flooded with more cheap metal holders today than I’ve ever seen. Mass produced metal holders are often poorly made, and have a real tendency to fall apart soon after purchase.

Many kicking holders that do stay together for years, don’t hold the ball very well because they simply are not designed for stability.

I’m going to to look at two options that every parent can consider when looking for that first (or last) kicking holder:

1. Make your own holder
2. Buy a stable commercial holder

Before the age of the ‘commercially mass produced’ football kicking holder industry, I used to make my own kicking holders out of PVC from the hardware store. In fact, the Colossus holder I made and sold to parents for years was just that….a furniture grade, colorful version of a basic (and very stable) PVC design.

You can do this just as easily, just head to the local hardware store and grab the following:

• Three 12-15″ pieces of 1.5 inch PVC pipe
• One three way joint adapter

Attach the legs to the joint adapter and you have a very basic, but stable, kicking holder.

The holder shown below is right from a local hardware store for less than $10. It works the SAME as so many of the “cheap” metal holders that fall apart (if you have that experience).

I know many of you don’t want to mess with ‘arts and crafts’, besides, pushing that Amazon button is so easy! Let’s take a look at the online holders because if you grab the wrong one, it could fall apart or simply not work properly.

If you are not in the mood to build a holder yourself, the next option will be a sporting goods store, or an online retailer like Amazon.

Another warning as mentioned above, these days I see a TON of $20 metal holders coming out of China on Amazon among other online retailers. Although the idea is good, the actual designs are suspect (to be kind) from what I’ve seen in person with my students.

IF the holder looks like the many varieties of holders shown below, I’d avoid these, and here is why. Let’s start with the comical product photos below.

ONE: If you see a kid wearing baseball cleats and catchers leg guards running toward the football from the wrong side of the holder, stop and pick another product immediately.

TWO: If you notice the device looks like it is a perfect 90 degree angle (like BOTH of these) between the vertical legs and the attached horizontal arm , this design is very likely to topple over due to instability. I’ve just seen too many of them during my private lessons and the student is frustrated in every case.

Ideally, that 90 degree angle between the holder arm and the legs should be wider, let’s just start with ‘more’ than 90 degrees. This way, the holder can ‘lean’ TOWARD the ball and stabilize the hold pressure.

Below is a sample of the concept, and from the photo, the angle should be obvious (that it’s greater than 90 degrees).

You can find this particular holder on Amazon with this link.