Basketball Warm Up Drills
Top Basketball Warm up Drills
Basketball warm up drills can mean the difference between a crisp successful team and the kind of imprecision that can cost a team a season and a coach his job. What a coach does at the beginning of a practice session often determines the quality of the practice. The quality of the practices is the best predictor for ongoing success not just in an individual game, but also over the course of a season.
The following are a series of basketball warm up drills aimed at increasing ball control and game skills.
Basic Warm-ups
After the usual leg and body stretches, have the entire team take five laps around the court dribbling balls. The main idea should be always to have the players holding a ball or about to hold a ball. The more you get the ball in a player’s hand, the more of a consciousness of it the player gets.
The Hula Ball Drills
One of the great practice tricks to make your team see how important warm-up drills are to improving ball skills are the “hula ball drills”. Here is what you do. You have three of the players shoot free throws right at the beginning of the session and tally how many they make. Then you have them do the following practice.
You take a hula-hoop and have one player stand at the other end. Then have the players dribble by the hoop at varying distances and bounce pass to player through the hoop. Give everyone a chance to do this, then switch to another player at a different more acute angle and lift the hula-hoop slightly off the ground. Repeat this about five times creating more and more difficult angles.
When the drill is over, have the same three players shoot free throws again. You will probably find at least a 25% improvement. This tends to make players start believing in the system you are teaching. (Careful that you don’t overdo it on the drill, however, or fatigue may ruin the result and undermine the lesson.)
Shimmy Back and Shoot
Have the players line up at mid court and slowly back up, bouncing the ball as they would if they were trying to back a defender up to the basket. Only let them turn and shoot when they get into the paint.
Stop! Thief!
Have the entire team (or set up to separate games with half the team) form a wide circle around one player at center court. Give the center player the ball and tell him to keep dribbling. Either assign each player a random number or use the players’ jersey numbers. While the player dribbles call out one of the jersey numbers. Have the players charge by the player trying to steal the ball as they go by. The dribbler’s goal is to turn out of the way without leaving the center circle. Keep calling separate numbers. The longer the game goes the quicker you call numbers and the smaller you make the circle, until you get so many players charging consecutively that the center player can no longer control the ball.
Whoever gets the ball gets to replace the player at the center.
Be Creative
Make sure to repeat and vary your basketball warm up drills as needed to keep your team sharp and to get them to learn certain skills that address the team’s needs. You should always be flexible. Each team will require a slightly different touch to achieve the best effects. So don’t be afraid to add new wrinkles to old drills or to make up new drills meant to develop particular skills. Always look to the team’s greater needs. Don’t just get stuck into the same dull basketball warm-up drills every practice.