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.

Instructions 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. At various intervals, blow the whistle and yell out their pivot instructions. Your choices are: front pivot left foot, front pivot right foot, back pivot left foot, back pivot right foot. When the whistle blows, the sequence for the player consists of: jump stop (both feet should hit the floor at the same time), pause for a second, do a full 180 degree pivot, pause for a second, do a full pivot bask to starting position, and stay in triple threat position until whistle blows again. Watch every player to make sure they did the jump stop and pivot properly. If anyone traveled or if they're goofing off, make them start over again, back at the baseline. If everyone did it correctly, blow the whistle again. All players should start running. At various intervals, blow the whistle and yell out their pivot instructions. Your choices are: front pivot left foot, front pivot right foot, back pivot left foot, back pivot right foot. When all players reach the end of the court, start over again. You can blow the whistle anywhere between 1 and 5 times during their trip down the court. You should run this drill so players run down the court at least 5 times.

Points of Emphasis

Continually tell your players...

• Don't travel!
• Stay low when pivoting. Keep your knees bent and butt down, in a good triple threat stance.
• 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.

Motivation / Teaching Tips

Tip #1 - 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.

Tip #2 - 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.

Tip #3 - Vary the speed that your players run. Start out with half speed, then progress all the way to full speed. Again, mix things up.

Tip #4 - Add a ball. Generally, you should use a ball for this drill and have them dribble while they are running. However, you might want to start without a ball, especially when first teaching younger players how to run this drill. Or if you don't happen to have enough basketball balls, they will still get benefit without it.

Tip #5 - 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!

Tip #6 - 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.

Tip #7 - You really should run this almost everyday, 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. Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, 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 this is something that we highly recommend.

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.