5 Drills to Help You Improve Your Basketball Game

Training can help you improve physical strength, which is essential to enhance your game on the basketball court. However, you also need to practice basketball drills to keep improving your game.

The drills might not feel as intense or real as playing a basketball game, but they are designed to enhance different aspects of your game, including your agility, strength, hand-eye coordination, speed, and more. Here are five drills that can help you improve your basketball game. You can modify these drills to suit your specific needs.

Full Speed Shooting

This drill is designed to improve your shooting skills when running at full speed. It can also help you develop the explosive speed required to create space for stop-and-pop shooting. Lastly, this drill will help you improve your endurance to keep up intensity throughout the game.

To practice this drill, start by running at full speed from half-court towards the left or right of the court when you get close to the arch to shoot, stop, and pedal back a few steps and take your shot. You can try shooting from different positions. Repeat this process 20 times while trying to maintain top speed through the drill.

Curl, Fake, and Cut

This is the ideal drill if you play as a small forward or guard. This drill is designed to improve your agility to allow you to blow past the opposing defenders. To practice this drill, you will need another player to play as a defender. When a defender tries to follow behind you, you should try to curl as an offensive player. As the defender goes near the top of the screen, you should try to fade. This might trick the defender into thinking that you are going to pass the ball. That is the time to go for a quick cut for a layup. Read up on health and fitness tips before getting into any extreme workouts for your own safety. 

Defensive Lane Slides

This drill is designed to improve overall speed and agility as a defensive player. Lane slides are a common drill for most types of basketball training, but they can be challenging to master. To become a master of defensive lane slide, you need to practice staying low, keeping your feet apart, and learning how to pivot.

To run this drill, start with a simple slide at one way line and halfway line followed by touching both lines with your outside hand, chopping the hands to complete the motion. Next, slide to get both feet outside the two lines, followed by touching the lines with the inside hand. Repeat this drill to getting used to essential lane slides before moving to more advanced moves. You can get more details about this drill from this website.

Lateral Speed Drills

The lateral speed drill will help you improve your overall footwork and explosive lateral speed. To run this drill, you will need an agility ladder. You will begin one side of the ladder using your foot near the ladder to start first. Starting with that inside foot, you step in the first square quickly, followed by your second foot. Now using the same second foot, step out of the square to step into the next square. Keep alternating between the lead foot, but never cross the foot.

Two-Ball Passing

The two-ball passing is designed to improve your hand-eye coordination and overall passing skills. To run this drill, you will need a total of two players and two basketballs. Start by standing opposite the other player. 

The other player will do bounce passes to you while simultaneously chest passing the ball to the other player. As you get used to this drill, you can try variable speeds and passes using different angles. You should always warm up before doing any drills and wear comfortable clothing such as a basketball jersey and shorts. Go to Wooter Apparel for a custom basketball jersey.

Remember that you have to consciously analyze and improve your game if you want to stay on top of your game. These drills should help you improve your basketball game, but you need to keep practicing more drills like this. The more your practice off-court, the more confidence you will find to execute these moves.