Ethan Khoza runs five drills designed to make practice shots stick in games. The "8am AAU" drill has you pick four shots and hit three of four per side. The rest focus on footwork under pressure: float shots, step-outs, catch-and-shoot off bad passes, and five-spot work to handle the messy situations games actually throw at you.
Questions this video answers
Usually two or three sets of at least three out of four made shots on each side.
Chapters
So this is a drill I love to start a lot of my workouts with, and I sometimes call it the 8am AAU drill. We jump right into this as soon as the workout starts. Basically stimulating having to go right into a game and make different sorts of shots. Typically, we'll pick four different shots, and this can vary based on the player. Usually have a conversation about what four shots we want to hit. Usually we'll do two or three sets of at least three out of four made shots on each side. Our four shots on this side were relocation for wing to corner and then from corner to wing. Then we went with a back pedal in the corner and then we went with a pin down on the wing for a three. It's crucial that you have the ability to step into the game and knock down different sorts of shots. So starting off workouts by putting pressure on players to make different sorts of shots in a row, it was one of my favorite ways to build this ability. Here we'll start to work on different sorts of footwork into our shots. Right here we're working on shooting out of a float, getting into that shot. This starts off with a freestyle where you can use any sort of moves that you want to set it up. But we're really focusing on being able to work from going nice and relaxed to selling that drive on the float. So here we're working our pace, which is going to be a really good way for us to get that defender on their heels so that we can then rise up and shoot the ball. Not only that, but being able to shoot out of multiple types of footwork is a super valuable skill to have as a basketball player. When it comes to building skill or getting better at doing something, you have to challenge yourself. And so by expanding the capacity for what sort of shots we can make, it gives us more options in games when your footwork might not always be ideal. Continuing with the pace work, we're going to work shots coming off of a step out or a fake drive right here, where we're essentially going from relaxed getting into a drop stance, which is going to sell the drive. And then after that, we're going to get to some sort of shot after that. So this can be as creative as we want it to be. We can get the shots from three from the mid range, we can string different types of pace moves together where we can go from step outs to floats to. To different sorts of options to be able to keep that defender guessing. But the step out is just a great way to force a reaction from your defender, because obviously if they don't react to it, you can just continue your drive. But most of the time they will react, which allows you to then take advantage of the way that they react to it. Now, we're going to add in this shot, fake hesitation coming off the float right here, to continually work our pace into our different shots here. And for this hesitation, you're really thinking about getting as close to picking up the ball as you can before you decide not to pick the ball up. And then you continue your drive. And there is no exact shot that we'll get to after the hesitation. We're just trying to make every rep a little bit different to simulate the fact that in games you have to be able to hit different sorts of shots back to back. You're probably not going to shoot the same shot twice in a row. So it's the same thing here where we're looking to mix up the shot that we get to after that hesitation. Right here, we're going to go catch and shoot threes, but all of them are going to be off of a bad pass. So you don't need a shooting machine for this. You just need somebody to pass you the ball right here. You'll line up just to the side of where that pass is going to come from. And then last second, you're trying to move right in front of that pass to stimulate having to get yourself reset when a bad pass comes to you. And if you have somebody passing the ball, then they can also throw the ball high, they can throw it low. They can really just make each rep as different as possible, which is the goal here. What you also notice that this is going to sometimes force you to shoot the ball with weird footwork, which again, makes everything much more game like because there's so many times where the game is imperfect and it's going to force you to adapt and be able to overcome imperfection. So, again, a drill like this helps us to do that. Typically, we'll go for a set amount of makes from all five spots, and you can adjust that however you'd like. And then just as a way to build confidence by seeing the ball go through the net and getting up some additional reps, we'll just go normal catch and shoot jump shots right here. Again, we'll go for a set number from all five spots, and you can adjust this however you'd like. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you drop a like and subscribe and click the top link in my description below for my free elite permanent score. Workout. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.
