At Your Fingertips
I know working on your handles seems tedious and repetitive and boring at times, but getting better comes from challenging yourself to do and be more than you did and were before. So this week I’m listing the drills below that will help you improve your handles. For anyone reading this you can copy and pass them on to a teammate (personally…I’d send them to the site to check out this and some of the other blogs available).
This is called “The Five-Minute Dribbling Drill”. Well, I guess a handful of dedicated players could get it down to five minutes…after training for a month or so. LOL this here’s H A R D. In saying that, I’m giving you the full set of drills but take it in bite-size portions, and each time add on the next one then the next. It’ll take you a while to get through them all, then build consistency, then speed it up, THEN you’ll get those supreme handles.
Start off with a little warm-up and stretch, then jump right into:
- Ten Ball Slaps
- Five Up & Down Fingertips
- Five Times Around the Head
- Five Times Around the Head (reverse direction)
- Five Times Around the Waist
- Five Times Around the Waist (reverse direction)
- Five Times Around Both Legs
- Five Times Around Both Legs (reverse direction)
- Five Times Around Right Leg
- Five Times Around Right Leg (reverse direction)
- Five Times Around Left Leg
- Five Times Around Left Leg (reverse direction)
- Five Figure Eights
- Five Figure Eights (reverse direction)
- Five One-Leg Two Legs
- Five One-Leg Two Legs (reverse direction)
- 20 Low Dribbles (both hands) → The Ball Should Not Go Above the Calf Muscle
- Ten Pound Dribbles (both hands)
- Five Times Around One Leg With One Hand (both sides) → Right Leg Right Hand, Left Leg Left Hand
- Five Quick Dribble Figure Eights
- Five Windshield Wipers (both hands)
- Five Walking the Dogs (both hands)
- Five Dog Wipers (both hand)
- Ten Crossovers → Two Crossovers is one (Right to Left then Back)
- Ten Between the Legs (both sides)
- Ten Figure Eights
- Ten Behind the Back
- Ten Between the Legs Cross (both ways)
- Ten Between the Legs Behind the Back (both ways)
If at First You Don’t Succeed
I make sure to tell the player at 3Ball-West that they will NEVER get it the first time, so they’ll understand how hard it is and give it a go over and over again throughout the drills. Stop and repeat each time until they’re successful. And once they’re successfull we add on, and start combining drills, and before they know it they’ve successfully completed what they at first thought they couldn’t. Then we do it again!
So work at it, get those supreme handles, it’s a key fundamental of basketball that will help give you the advantage in game situations. Work on practicing a counter move in case your first option gets shut down. If you’re not then you’re putting extra pressure on yourself to adjust and finish during games in real-time…and who needs extra pressure during game time.
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