7 Basketball Agility Drills to Improve Speed and Coordination

Agility drills help improve your quickness, the explosiveness of your movement, and your ability to change direction rapidly. In addition to the fundamentals, such as dribbling and shooting, basketball training requires agility, speed, and strength. Agility training is important in any physical activity, but basketball is a swift and unpredictable sport, with major changes occurring rapidly in a relatively small physical space. Agility drills help with many aspects of a basketball player’s performance in the sport: acceleration and deceleration, footwork, dribbling, body control, ball handling, and shooting.

As with any physical exercise, it’s always good to warm up before moving on to more high-intensity drills. Some of the most effective drills for building agility on the basketball court include:

1. 1. Lane agility drill: Setting up evenly-spaced cones around the lane helps keep players from crossing the lines. At its most basic, place cones or flexible disks at the four corners of the rectangle in front of the basketball hoop. Have the player start on the right side, accelerate forward, then, at the corner, switch rapidly to the defensive slide, shuffle to the next corner. Now the player backpedals to the third corner, before switching to their breakdown and shuffling to the corner where they began. The drill begins again in the opposite direction. Extra push-ups can be a penalty for disturbing any cones.
2. 2. Agility ladder drills: The agility ladder is one of the most common agility training devices. Using an agility ladder (or evenly spaced low hurdles), players can perform running variations in specific rhythms. Players can alternate their feet on the rungs or the holes, perform single-leg jumps, and hop inside and outside of the holes with increasing rapidness and frequency. Players can also use an agility ladder laterally for practicing their defensive position while moving.
3. 3. Figure-eight drill: Practice this cone drill to improve coordination while dribbling. Set up two cones about fifteen feet apart. In a low athletic position, the player goes around the first cone’s right side, then, moving diagonally, the left side of the second cone, turning 180 degrees, and then making the same movements in reverse. All the while, the player should stay low, keeping a steady dribble going.
4. 4. Weave and shoot: Three or more players typically practice this drill. As the players cross the court, they pass the ball and cross in the opposite direction, weaving across the court. One player ultimately shoots a basket. To practice this drill with one player, set cones to mark where the player should dribble, turn, and shoot. Incorporating a crossover can add a level of extra agility training to this drill.
5. 5. NBA pro agility drill: This drill, typical for high school teams to professional basketball leagues, involves three cones along a fifteen-foot stretch. Sprinting from the center cone, the player goes to one side, puts their outer leg beyond the cone, and touches the inside court surface with the opposite hand. Then they rapidly change direction to sprint to the farthest cone, staying in a low athletic position and placing their hand on the sideline. They then change direction once more, sprinting to the center cone.
6. 6. Zig-zag drill: This drill involves using several cones—up to eight if you are crossing the entire court from one baseline to the other—placed at roughly-even intervals in a long zig-zag shape. The goal is to use the whole length and width of the court, sprinting and switching direction rapidly. This can also be done while dribbling and helps build overall athleticism.
7. 7. Plyometric drills: This family of exercises involves stretching active muscles before they contract with a single, rapid, high-intensity movement. Examples include vertical hopping, jumping, and bounding in various directions. Using a single leg to jump left, then right, and so forth can condition muscles for strength and speed, building agility in the process.

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