6 Footwork Progressions For Elite Defenders

Awesome video on defensive footwork. How many sets or reps should players do? Max

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Awesome video on defensive footwork. How many sets or reps should players do? Max

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I prefer the one hand up approach as you can maintain better balance since you naturally finish in a stride stop with 1 foot and 1 hand closer to the ball handler. This allows you to move backwards easier. But both methods work as well as they are taught and that is what makes for good coaching and teaching. Make sure as a coach that you learn from your players and if they are able to do a great job with a variation let them do it. Don't coach someone out of being a good defender because of your ego.

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Good stuff.
I might change one thing on the Close-Out drill, and that would be to not teach throwing both hands into the air. For most people, this would cause them to stand up putting them out of good defensive position and take away their use of their arms for defensive reaction turns of their upper body. Bio-mechanically, slowing down is achieved by lowering the center of gravity, not necessarily throwing your weight backwards.
Try one hand up and one hand down (taking away low passes on one side). Emphasis during teaching to keep their low hand below their knee will maintain good defensive stance. As most kids are not EVER going to block a shot on a player who they have to run at to close-out, I REALLY discourage going for the block. Better to be in good block-out position, so the shooter can't follow his own miss.

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Joe Haefner says: 5/2/2015 at 9:27:08 AM Thank you for your points, Chris. Personally, when I have taught close outs, I have used both methods with success. It's a to-may-to / to-mah-to issue to me. But you also have to evaluate your defensive goals and decide what works best for you. From conversations with Coach Huber, he wants to force contested, outside shots and keep everything out of the lane. That's why he likes the two hand up approach on the close out to prevent direct air passes into the lane. Otherwise, the one-hand approach would be sufficient with contesting shots. Also, you don't keep your two hands up. You do lower them to a different position as you transition to on-the-ball defense. Like     login   register

awesome video. i''''m in my 4th year of coaching and looking for some drills exactly like these to teach and emphasize proper defensive movements. I''''ll begin teaching this at tonight''''s practice.
On a side bar when are you guys going to do some camps in the DMV area? Lots of basketball talent in this area that would benefit greatly from what you guys teach. I see one camp in Sterling, but that''''s an hour drive from Washington D.C. Spread the knowlege.

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