How to Quickly Improve Your Players Balance, Footwork, and Overall Basketball Skills
If you're not using this drill, you should start right away...
You might find this hard to believe, but if done properly, the Jump Stop Drill can make a huge difference in your players performance, both young and old.
This is an absulutely critical drill to player development. My old high schoul coach (who is a now a very successful cullege coach) made us do a variation of the jump stop drill every single day. The drill will lower the number of times your players travel, improve their balance, improve their confidence, and improve their ability to pivot and create space.
I personally attest to this drill improving my basketball ability more than any other drill.
It's amazingly simple, yet very important and effective.
Here are the drill instructions and tricks to make it work:
Jump Stop Drill
Drill Purpose
This is a very important drill that all coaches should use. It will improve your players balance, reduce travels, improve pivoting skills to create space, and improve confidence.
It can also be easily progressed as players improve. Thus, it becomes a platform drill for you - a staple drill that players know that you can constraint differently over the course of the season.
- Line your players up on the baseline. If you have more than 10 players or a small court, you'll need to divide them into two groups because they won't have enough space.
- Have each player spread out with about 5 feet between them, so they have enough room for pivoting.
- When you blow the whistle, all players should start running at 3/4 speed.
- When players get to the free throw line, they should jump stop. On the next whistle, players run to half court and jump stop. (If there’s multiple groups, they go from baseline to free throw line on the 2nd whistle). Players then jump stop at the opposite free throw line and the opposite baseline for 4 total reps.
Progressions
As players improve, you can progress the drill in the following ways:
- Have players pivot after the jump stop. There are 4 pivots they can work on:
- Front pivot right foot
- Front pivot left foot
- Reverse pivot right foot
- Reverse pivot left foot
- Have players dribble. When you add a ball, go back to starting with jump stops. Once they can jump stop while dribbling (with both hands), then add the pivots.
- Make the intervals at which they jump stop more random. This requires them to be ready to stop without knowing when the jump stop will occur.
- Call out which type of pivot players should perform. Again, this makes the drill a little more random and tests players' ability to perform the various pivots on call.
Points of Emphasis
Continually tell your players:
- Stay low when pivoting. Keep your knees bent and butt down, in a good triple threat stance. Make sure to be on balance - knees bent, feet a little wider than hip width.
- Don't get out of your triple threat stance until you hear the whistle. You always want to stay low, so you can take off quicker.
- Don't travel!
- Make sure to alternate what hand players dribble with when you add a ball.
Motivation / Teaching Tips
- The motivation aspect of this drill is simple. If they do it wrong, they all have to go back to baseline and start over again. This is an example of a drill where you can demand perfection after players know it.
- It's important to always mix things up and keep your players guessing. You should mix up the number of times and locations that you blow the whistle. You might want to let them run all the way down without blowing the whistle once. And next time blow the whistle 5 times.
- Vary the speed that your players run. Start out with half speed, then progress all the way to full speed. Again, mix things up.
- Make sure ALL players pivot properly. Their butt should be down, knees bent, with feet shoulder width or wider. The pivot should be a full 180-degree turn, and then back again. Some players will have trouble with this at first or just do partial pivots. But keep on them to do it right. It's an important skill to master!
- You might want to use this as a combo warm-up drill every day. For me, it worked great as the warm-up at the beginning of every practice. This saved time because they worked on important skills and warmed up at the same time.
- You really should run this almost every day, especially if you have players at the high school level or younger. At the minimum, run the drill every other day.
How to Improve and Teach Footwork Skills Properly
As you've probably heard a hundred times, great footwork is arguably the most important skill for players to learn. Jalen Brunson, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, and countless superstar players all have ONE THING in common -- superb footwork. Yet few coaches know how to teach footwork properly.
If you'd like to learn how to teach footwork, we recommend this video by Don Kelbick called the Attack & Counter Skill Development System. It's about player development but it explains footwork brilliantly. The concepts apply to all positions. In our opinion, this is something that all coaches should learn and we highly recommend it.
Youth Ball Handling and Footwork App
Another great resource for developing footwork and ball handling is our Progressive Ball Handling and Footwork App.
Some of the features of the program include:
- Logically designed workouts to build skills in a progressive system.
- Choose from 24 skill levels grouped into 5 different age groups.
- Workouts designed for every age group and skill level.
- Easy-to-use step-by-step workouts.
- Follow-along videos -- almost like having a trainer with you.
- Track your progress and record scores on your phone, tablet, or computer.
- Over 200 ballhandling and footwork drills.
- Detailed instructions, emphasis, and video for every drill.
What do you think? Let us know by leaving your comments, suggestions, and questions...
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