Basketball practice drills for beginners: six drills, in the order that works

Most drill lists for beginners are sorted by skill. Dribbling here, passing there, shooting at the bottom. That is a useful way to store drills and a terrible way to run your first practice, because it tells you nothing about what to do at 6:02pm when twelve kids are standing on the court looking at you.

The thing nobody writes down is that beginner drills have prerequisites. You cannot run a passing drill with kids who cannot catch. You cannot run a moving dribble drill with kids who cannot dribble standing still. Sort the drills by what each one assumes the kids can already do, and the order picks itself.

Here are six, in that order, with the way each one falls apart and the signal that tells you to move on.

1. Ball slaps

Ball slaps requires nothing. Kids hold a ball and slap it hard with the other hand, then move it around their waist, then between their legs. It is not really a skill. It is the two minutes where a nine-year-old stops being frightened of the object.

How it goes wrong: you do it too gently. A soft tap teaches nothing. Tell them the sound should be loud enough that you can hear it from the other end of the court, then stand at the other end of the court and check.

Move on when: every kid has a ball and is making noise with it. That is the whole bar.

2. Pound dribble

Pound dribble is the first real skill and it assumes only that they can hold a ball. Feet still, knees bent, dribble hard at about knee height. Ten with the right, ten with the left, then repeat.

How it goes wrong: they dribble with their palm and they watch the ball. Both are normal. The palm you fix with one cue: fingers spread, push it down, do not slap it. The watching you do not fix in week one, so do not spend the session on it.

Move on when: count the kids staring at the ball. If it is more than half, stay another two minutes. It will still be more than half. Move on anyway, because the fix for that is the next drill, not this one.

3. Red light, green light

Red light, green light assumes a stationary dribble and adds two things at once: moving, and reacting to you. Green light they dribble forward, red light they stop the ball dead and hold it.

This is the drill that fixes heads-down dribbling, and it fixes it by accident. Nobody looks up because you asked them to. They look up because they will miss the red light if they do not.

How it goes wrong: you say red light and six kids keep going, and you stop the drill to talk about listening. Do not. Say the losers go back to the start line and say nothing else. The rule does the teaching.

Move on when: most of the group stops within about a second of the call. Not all of them. Most.

4. Jump stop and pivot

Jump stop and pivot assumes they can move with the ball. It is the highest-value ten minutes of a beginner season and almost nobody runs it early enough. Dribble three steps, land on two feet at the same time, then pivot on one foot without lifting it.

Every travel your team commits this season is a missing jump stop. Every panicked pass out of bounds is a kid who stopped without balance and had nowhere to go.

How it goes wrong: they land one foot then the other, which looks close enough and is not, and then the pivot foot slides. Watch the feet, not the ball. If you can hear two separate landings you are not there yet.

Move on when: you hear one thud instead of two from about half the group. Pivoting cleanly comes later.

5. Partner passing

Partner passing assumes a stable base, which is why it comes after the jump stop and not in the first ten minutes. Chest pass, step into it, catch with two hands and the thumbs down.

Catching is the harder half and it gets a tenth of the attention. Most of what looks like bad passing in a beginner game is a good pass hitting a kid who is not ready to receive it.

How it goes wrong: you have an odd number. With eleven kids you get five pairs and one trio, and the trio turns into two kids passing while a third watches. Make the trio a triangle and have them pass in one direction only, so nobody is ever idle.

Move on when: the balls stop rolling to the wall. Count the loose balls, not the good passes.

6. One-hand form shooting

One-hand form shooting is last because it assumes the most: a stable base, a controlled ball, and enough attention left to care about a wrist. Guide hand off, shoot straight up, land straight.

How it goes wrong: the arithmetic. The drill puts each kid a step in front of the ring, which is right, but most community courts give you two rings. Twelve kids, two rings, six in a line at each. At roughly ten seconds a turn including the rebound, each kid's turn comes round about once a minute. That is eight shots each in an eight-minute block.

Run the same motion to themselves first, each with their own ball, straight up and catch it. One rep every five seconds is ninety-plus each in the same eight minutes. More than ten times the repetitions. Do four minutes of that, then four minutes at the ring, and the ring time is spent on aim rather than on the motion.

Move on when: the ball comes straight back down to them. If it drifts sideways, the guide hand is still on it.

The shape of the hour

• 0 to 5: balls out, ball slaps
• 5 to 10: pound dribble
• 10 to 18: red light, green light
• 18 to 26: jump stop and pivot
• 26 to 28: drink
• 28 to 36: partner passing
• 36 to 44: one-hand form shooting
• 44 to 56: sharks and minnows
• 56 to 60: finish, one thing each kid did well

That is sixty minutes exactly, which means it is really fifty. Kids arrive late, a ball goes over the fence, somebody needs the toilet. Budget the loss up front instead of discovering it at 44 minutes with three blocks left.

Sharks and minnows is at the end on purpose. It is drills two, three and four at once under pressure, dressed as a game, and it is the part they will tell their parents about. If you are running short, cut partner passing to five minutes and keep the game whole. Never cut the game to save a drill.

What to do next week

Run the same six. All of them. Beginners do not need variety in week two, they need the second repetition, and the drill they were worst at on Tuesday is the one that moves most on the following Tuesday.

Swap something in around week four, when the group has split into kids who can stop and kids who cannot. At that point you are no longer coaching beginners, you are coaching two groups, and that is a different problem.

The rest of the drill library is browsable with the animations if you want to see any of these run before you try to explain them in a sports hall with bad acoustics. Practli will also build the session around them, but the six above in that order will hold up on their own for a month.