Ball Handling Drills

PE central Basketball Activities Lower School

1) Shark Dribble Protector

Purpose of Activity:

To practice the strategies of putting one's back or side between the ball and the defense, as well as switching the ball to the hand away from the defense. 

Prerequisites:

Students should already be able to dribble with correct form (i.e., finger pads, firm wrist, eyes "looking up" while dribbling at a medium level) prior to playing this activity. Students also should have been introduced to and have had some practice using the strategies named. 

Suggested Grade Level:

4-5

Materials Needed:

One hula hoop for half of the number of students in class; one basketball for each student in remaining half of class; tape or cones to mark playing area (if needed).

Description of Idea

Spread hula hoops out in good personal space in playing area. One student should stand in each hoop "sharks". The other half of the class ("swimmers") begin at the shorter end of the playing area (basketball court). On the "go" signal "swimmers" (dribblers) attempt to cross the ocean as many times back and forth as they can by dribbling around each "shark" without losing control of their ball (stress that each swimmer should visit each shark).

Students should move their back or opposite side to the shark and change the hand they dribble with in order to keep the ball farthest away from the shark (and hence, not lose control of the ball). It is the shark's job to keep both feet inside the hoop and attempt to steal the swimmer's ball by reaching with one's arms. If a swimmer loses control of their ball (for any reason) they dribble in place 15 times before they can continue swimming across the ocean.

To increase difficulty for the swimmers, allow sharks to have only one foot in the hoop at a time which allows them to reach further. Have students switch positions for each new game approximately every minute, so that all students have an equal amount of time as sharks and swimmers.

2) Poly Spot Basketball Pivot

Activity cues:

Plant pivot foot, turn foot 90 degrees in new direction

Prerequisites:

Lessons on pivoting so they would have practiced this skill

Suggested Grade Level:

3-5

Materials Needed:

Poly spots, basketballs

Description of Idea

Spread poly spots out around the gym (equal to the number of students in the class). Have students start by dribbling around the court. On the teacher's command, the students will dribble to a poly spot, plant one foot, pick up their dribble, and pivot around the spot. Once the teacher gives another command, the students can start dribbling again and moving around the court. Encourage students to pivot on a different foot each time. After a few rounds, remove a poly spot or two. The students that are without a spot must dribble to the sideline and complete a predetermined exercise to the game. 

Variations:

Try without a ball first

Have kids use different ball skills (around the waist, around both legs, around right leg then left leg (reverse too), low dribbles, figure eights...) as some of the sideline activities for the older students

3) Basketball Pinball

Purpose of Activity:

To practice basketball dribbling with your hand.

Prerequisites:

Students must have an understanding of the critical elements of dribbling and had a prior practice session.

Suggested Grade Level:

3-5

Materials Needed:

Each pair of students need a hula hoop and a ball to dribble that the student is comfortable with.

Description of Idea

The class is split up into pairs, with each pair needing a hula hoop and a ball to dribble. The activity is usually done on a volleyball court but you can do it anywhere as long as you establish some boundaries. 

The teacher/students will place their hula hoop on the ground within the playing area, with one partner standing inside the hula hoop. Once the activity begins the students are not permitted to move the hula hoop. The student inside the hula hoop must keep one foot inside the hula hoop at all times. The student in the hula hoops goal is to knock away the basketball from the students that are dribbling all over the inside of the playing area. 

The dribbling partner, will try to keep control of the ball while dribbling around the playing area. After a few minutes have the students switch with their partner.

If the ball is knocked away just retrieve and start again.

4) Shoot, Pass and Score More

Purpose of Activity:

To encourage less-skilled members of the team to shoot the ball and to encourage the skilled athletes to pass the ball.

Prerequisites:

This concept can be applied to many sports or games. I just used it during my basketball unit and it worked great! The only prerequisite is that they need to be able to play a small-sided (3 v 3) scrimmage, which should only be attempted after they've learned and practiced many fundamentals and lead-up activities.

Suggested Grade Level:

6-8

Materials Needed:

You will need 1 basketball for every 6 students. You will need 1 basketball hoop for each group of 6 if you are playing half court basketball. You will need 2 basketball hoops for each group of 6 if you are playing full court basketball.

Description of Idea

My idea is an idea to encourage teamwork. The activity is small-sided basketball games. Did you ever watch students play small sided games? Did you ever notice one particular student (highly skilled athlete) does all the work for the team? This one student gets all of the rebounds, does all the dribbling, shooting and scoring. The other students become disinterested. If this has ever happened in your class, try this idea. 

Tell them the team gets 3 points when each student scores their first basket, 2 points when each student scores their second basket, 1 point when each student scores their 3rd basket and 0 points when each student scores their 4th and each additional basket. This concept forces the "star player" to eventually stop scoring, because after his/her 3rd basket, it counts as zero points. This concept encourages all students to score once, to get the full amount of points (3). Then, it encourages each student to score again. I've watched this concept work numerous times in soccer and basketball games.

Tagball - Warm up/movement basketball

4-12 year old basketball Drills

Fantastic video with 10 drills and progressions. Can be used for LS and MS. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-viReV-_lOQ


The second video has great drills but is quite old - well worth watching.

Great drills with a large number of players in a small gym. 

Modified Volleyball

Bound Ball - Great for MS students or less experienced players to lead up to full games of volleyball.

Why girls have more ACL injuries than boys

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, girls' participation in high school sports has increased dramatically,^[11] by one estimate by more than 900%.^[1] The spectacular performance of the U.S. women in the London Olympics, along with the increase in the popularity of women's professional sports, have had a profound influence on a new generation of aspiring female athletes. "Be like Mia" has been replaced with "Be like Abby" and "Be like Hope."

The speed, power, and intensity displayed by female athletes have dramatically increased over the past decade. Such more aggressive style of play has led, predictably, to an increase in musculoskeletal injuries. One of the more common is a sprain or rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).  

Knee injuries are the most common cause of permanent disability in female high school basketball players, accounting for up to 91% of season-ending injuries and 94% of injuries requiring surgery.^[2]  In the United States, 20,000 to 80,000 high school female athletes experience ACL injuries each year, with most in soccer and basketball.^[2] 

ACL: vital role in many sports

Straight-ahead sports like jogging, swimming, and biking place little stress on the ACL. Sports such as soccer, basketball and volleyball that involve cutting, planting and changing direction, in which the ACL plays a vital role, put athletes, particularly females, at greatest risk of ACL injury.

Less than a third of all reported ACL injuries involve contact from an outside force such as an opposing player, goalpost or another object on the field/court. Over two-thirds are non-contact ACL injuries resulting from

• One-step/stop deceleration
• Cutting movements
• Sudden change in direction
• Landing from a jump with inadequate knee and hip flexion (at or near full extension)
• Lapse of concentration (resulting from unanticipated change in the direction of the play)

Women suffer more ACL injuries

Recent studies reveal that young female athletes are four to six times more likely than boys to suffer a serious non-contact ACL injury.^[3]

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than 46,000 female athletes age 19 and younger experienced a sprain or strain of the ACL in 2006.
• Nearly 30,000 of the injuries required reconstructive surgery.
• Overall, girls are 8 times more likely to suffer an ACL injury than boys.^[8] 
• As many as 70% of ACL injuries involve little or no contact with the other player.^[8]  
• At the age of 14 years, girls have 5 times higher rates of ACL tears than boys.^[10]

No easy explanation 

Women may be more prone to non-contact ACL injuries because they run and cut sharply in a more erect posture than men, and bend their knees less when landing from a jump.

Why women and girls are more prone to ACL injuries than men and boys defies easy explanation is also likely due to a number of anatomical and hormonal differences between men and women:

• Narrower intercondylar notch and smaller ACL: Not only does the intercondylar notch (the groove in the femur through which the ACL travels) tend to be smaller in women, but so is the ACL itself, leading it more prone to injury.
• Wider pelvis: Women typically have a wider pelvis, which makes the thigh bones angle downward more sharply than in men. The greater the so-called "Q" angle, the more pressure is applied to the inside (medial aspect) of the knee, which can cause the ACL to tear.  "One thought is that women have more of a knock-knee alignment," says Dr. Barry Boden of the Orthopedic Center in Rockville, Md., who is conducting research on the injury with funding from the National Institutes of Health. "The alignment of women's knees tends to bend inward when women land." Some researchers believe that this inward bend may predispose women to ACL injuries.^[8]
• More lax ligaments: Women's ligaments tend to have more "give" (laxity) than men's (what one docter characterized as "ligament dominant" rather than "muscle dominant.")^[8] Research has also shown that women's muscle tissue is more elastic than males. Excessive joint motion combined with increased flexibility may be a significant contributing factor in the higher rate of torn ACLs among women.
• Slower reflex time: Research shows that the muscles stabilizing the knee may take a millisecond longer to respond in women than in men. Scientists suspect that this small difference in contraction time also leads to a higher rate of injury.
• Greater Quadriceps/Hamstring Strength Ratio: It is well-established that female athletes typically have poor hamstring strength,^[3] which is considered one possible risk factor for ACL ruptures.^[4] If the hamstring cannot balance the power of the quadriceps (front thigh muscle), the imbalance can cause significant stress to the ACL, leading to injury.
• Changes in estrogen levels: One recent study^[9] suggests that changes in estrogen levels during a woman's menstrual cycle may affect ACL strength, predisposing women to the higher injury rate. A 2007 article in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, however, found "no conclusive evidence directly linking an increase in ACL injury to a predictable time in the menstrual cycle." 
• Flat-footed landing: Dr. Boden believes that one of the major reasons any athlete suffers ACL damage is because they land in a flat-footed position, as opposed to landing on the balls of their feet. "If the calf muscles are not absorbing the force, and if the knee is not in the proper position, the knee buckles and tears the ACL," explains Dr. Boden.^[8]

Strength training, conditioning, coaching reduces risk

Several recent studies demonstrate that the rate of ACL injury among women can be significantly reduced by following a proper neuromuscular training and conditioning program.

According to Dr. Thomas Haverbush, a Michigan orthopedic surgeon, a training program developed at the University of Vermont Medical School designed to prevent ACL injuries in skiers led to a 69% decrease in the number of knee injuries among ski patrol personnel and instructors who received the training compared with those who did not.

In the same article, Dr. Haverbush reported that a six week training program in Cincinnati in which athletes were trained to rely more on hamstring muscles than quadriceps in order to protect the knee could reduce the ratio of knee ligament injuries in female athletes as compared to men from five times higher to only one or two times higher.

More recently, a study reported in the American Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that the ACL injury rate for female athletes, particularly non-contact ACL injuries, can be significantly reduced if the athlete follows a specific exercise program called the Prevent Injury and Enhance Performance (PEP) program before practices and games. 

Designed in 1999 by a team of experts at the non-profit Santa Monica Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation, the PEP program consists of a series of 19 warm-up, stretching, strengthening, plyometric, and sport-specific agility exercises that can be completed in less than 30 minutes without any specialized equipment.

Two prevention programs reduce risk, increase performance

A 2011 study in the journal Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach,⁵ found that two prevention programs, Sportsmetrics and PEP not only significantly reduced ACL injury rates but improved athletic performance. 

In general, experts say there are four ways to reduce the risk of ACL injury: 

• Proper leg muscle strength training and core training;
• Proper neuromuscular (balance and speed) training;
• Proper coaching on jumping and landing and avoiding any straight knee landing;
• Proper footwear and orthotics if necessary (the amount of traction or "grippiness" of athletic shoes needs to fall within an optimal range that minimizes rotational friction to avoid injury yet optimizes transitional friction to allow peak performance in activities such as cutting and stopping).

A recent meta-analysis of published ACL injury prevention programs determined that plyometric and strengthening components were more important than balance training and that the favorable effects of training were most pronounced in female soccer players younger than 18 years.⁶

Another meta-analysis⁷ found that various types of neuromuscular and educational interventions appear to reduce the incidence rate of ACL injuries by approximately 50%, but that the estimated effect varied appreciably among the studies, the reasons for which were unexplained. 

Read more:  http://www.momsteam.com/health-safety/muscles-joints-bones/knee/acl-injuries-in-female-athletes#ixzz4KymHHwpv

Great workouts

Body Weight - No Equipment Needed

15 minute workout

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Tic-Tac-Toe speed and agility.

A great warm-up game/exercise to train speed, agility and quick thinking in a sprint version of tic-tac-toe.