The Ultimate Guide To Improving Your Ball Handling (Full Breakdown + Workout)

Ball handling is a must have skill in today's game of basketball. No longer is it acceptable to just have one or two guys on the floor who can handle the ball and then a couple other guys who let those guys do all the work. In today's game, everybody needs to be able to be comfortable putting the ball on the floor. This doesn't mean that every single person needs to be careering with the ball, but every single player should be comfortable putting the ball on the floor if they need to. A lot of times when players think about ball handling, they usually think that that really only has to do with your ability to dribble the basketball. We've all done the timeless stationary ball handling drills, which are great on their own, but just doing those sort of drills is not going to be enough to make you a great ball handler. In this video, I'm going to break down the four aspects of ball handling that you need to master if you want to become great with the ball in your hands. And I'm also going to give you guys a workout that you can use that's going to help you guys to start to master these things. I also want to let you guys know that my ball handling program, Elite Ball Handling, is going to be coming out on Monday. If you guys like what you see in this video, it's going to be full of stuff like this and even more. We're really going to target these four points and you guys are going to see a ton of improvement. If you guys struggle with your confidence with the ball in your hands, if you guys struggle to handle pressure, if you guys just want to have more trust from your coaches and teammates, you want to make more plays for your team, I highly recommend that you guys check out elite ball handling. And like I said, it's going to be coming up very, very soon. Let's get into it. The first aspect of ball handling that we need to talk about is ball control. Now, ball control is where every other aspect of ball handling stems from. If you're not able to control the basketball effectively, then you're not going to be able to do much else with it. Usually when players think about improving their ball handling, the only area they're really actually focusing on is their ball control. And while only focusing on ball control is a short sighted approach to improving your ball handling, it is an area that you need to get down if you want to add the rest of it to become very, very effective with the basketball in your hand. Four specific areas to consider when you talk about ball control are Number one, how hard can you dribble the basketball? Number two, how quickly can you dribble the basketball? Number three, can you control the basketball outside of your frame? Do you have enough control to manipulate the basketball and move it where you want to move it? When we go through each one of these, obviously the ability to pound the basketball is very, very important. The harder you can dribble the basketball, the less time that's going to be between the floor and your hand, meaning there's going to be less time for a defender to steal the ball, there's going to be less time for you to lose the basketball, and you're going to be more efficient overall in your movements. When we talk about your ability to dribble the ball wide, the reason that's so important is because if you go into different sorts of moves that might require you to shift your pace or to change your height, if you're able to move the ball outside of your frame all the time, that can add to those moves that you're going to do. That's why you're going to see guys like Kyrie Irving play with a wide base, because playing with a wide base and being able to dribble the ball outside of their frame actually allows them to be much more effective with the basketball. Being able to dribble the ball quickly and. And specifically being able to get into your counter moves or your crossovers quickly is also an important skill to be able to do. Your ability to quickly react and make the right move at the right time is a skill that you can develop, but we're going to talk about more in this video. But being able to do that quickly all starts with the amount of control that you have over the basketball. And the ability to manipulate the basketball is something you might do when you're doing in and out or a turn dribble. Essentially, it's going to allow you to take the basketball and control it for longer than you would if it was just a normal dribble. And this manipulation ability is something that a lot of players, players overlook. And we're going to go through a series in this workout that's going to help you to target this skill as well. The next aspect of ball handling we're going to focus on is your ability to change your pace. Now, the ability to change pace is so important because players who go one speed the entire time are very, very easy to guard. You'll see this a lot commonly with players who might be really, really fast, maybe great athletes, but they aren't able to change their pace at all. They aren't able to slow themselves down ever. So they become very, very easy to guard because the defender just has to play to that one speed. You're going. If you're able to effectively change your speed and go from slow to fast and fast to slow, you're going to become very unpredictable for your defender. And it's going to be easier for you to get looks, get open, to beat pressure, and to overall make more plays for your team. The next aspect we can touch on is the ability to change your height. Now, this is super important, and I always stress to players when we're doing ball handling on the importance of being able to sink your hips. When you sink your hips, you're able to be more explosive and powerful. Notice how low Kyrie Irving's hips are. Okay, he's got a wide base, low hips, and this allows him to be very, very explosive. This allows him to get low, and it's going to be difficult for any defender to be able to stop him because his center is so low right now. And on the other side of things, it can also be effective to get really good at raising yourself up and then going into something low and explosive out of that. This goes along with pace a little bit, but being able to raise the height that you're at a lot of times will relax the defender who's guarding you. And once they become relaxed and they ease up a little bit, that's when they become vulnerable for you to get low and explode by them. So being able to switch up the height that you're playing at is going to play directly into the pace you can play with. And the better you get at those two things, the more unstoppable you're going to become. And now let's talk about the fourth aspect of ball handling. Creativity. Creativity is by far the most overlooked aspect of being a great ball handler. And it's something that most players never train. A point that I always like to make is that no two plays in basketball are ever going to be the same. No matter how close it might seem, there's always going to be minor differences in each play you're ever going to see in a basketball game. And because of that, we need to make sure that you're prepared to react to those different situations. And that's where creativity comes in. When it comes to ball handling, you need to make sure that you're doing drills that force you to just play, be free, experiment with different combinations. So that way, when games come and defenders are playing different ways, and you have to react to different situations. You're ready to go, you can make a reaction, and you're not boxed in to one or two or three different ways of doing something. If you watch guys like Kyrie Irving or Trae Young or Chris Paul play, you're going to see that they're going to have moves and reactions to any way that the defense plays them. A lot of times it's going to leave you wondering how they're able to train all those different sorts of moves. But a lot of times this is just because they develop the ability to be creative and to play with what the defense gives them. And this is a skill that you need to make sure you develop as well. Even though you probably will never dribble the ball as much as Kyrie Irving or Trae Young does. Just your ability to react to whatever the defense gives you is a very valuable skill and is going to make you a much more successful player. So in order to really target our ball control, we're going to work on something called manipulating the basketball. And what this is going to allow us to do is allow us to move the ball in space so that we can have control over the ball for longer. As you see me right here, I'm making sure I'm taking this ball back and forth over this cone. I'm not carrying it. I'm keeping my hand on top of the ball, but I'm making sure that I'm getting the ball from side to side. If you pay attention to my shoulder, you're going to see a slight turn every time that I bring the ball over and back. And this is the base of what we're going to do for this drill. Now we're going to get into our single crossover series. So we're going to go off of this drill manipulation into a single crossover variation. The first variation we're going to go into is a crossover. The second one is going to be between the legs, and the third is going to be behind the back. As you see him going off of these three dribbles. So three manipulation dribbles. Then into our single move. Our next variation is going to be into our double moves. So we're going to go with those three manipulation dribbles. And then you're going to go into whatever double move is called for. So the first double move is going to be a double crossover, as you see right here. After you finish up with the double crossovers, you're going to go three pounds over, and then you're going to Go cross between. After you finish the cross betweens, going to be the same exact thing. Now it's going to be between cross. After the between cross, it's going to go between behind. And then to finish it out, we're going to go double behind. Now we're going to get into our double move shifts. So how this is going to work is you're going to start in a relaxed upright position with your dribble, and then you're going to go into a violent double move. You're going to shift your body weight, shift your shoulder, shift your eyes to sell the crossover before you cross back over. As you see right here, I'm dribbling, I go into my move and I pull myself back in. This is targeting your ability to shift and change pace as well as your ability to change heights, going from a high, relaxed position to a low and explosive position. Sa so now we're going to work on our ability to change our speeds, to change our pace, going from a stop to an explosive start. So as you see, you're gonna set up three cones like this. You're gonna start that first cone. For the first variation, all you're gonna do is explode as fast as you can to that second cone. You're gonna come to a complete stop and go into a little mini hesitation. Right out of the hesitation, you're gonna explode again to that last cone, and then you can repeat it with your other hand. The second variation we're gonna go to is a double move into an explosive attack. So you're gonna pick whatever double move you want. As you see right here, I'm going with cross betweens, and out of that cross between, you're going to explode to that second cone. You're going to slow down to a stop, go into that explosive move again, or a different explosive move, get to that last cone. You can be creative with this drill. After you finish it with your right hand, you go to your left hand. We're going to finish it out with this full court, true creative freestyle. So you're going to start on one end of the court. You're going to go up the entire length of the court, doing whatever sort of freestyle drill moves you want to do. This is your time to be creative, to switch out what you're doing, to work on different sorts of moves, to change your pace, change your height. All the things that we've been working on so far. Now's time where you can put them into action. And again, you can expand your creativity, which we've talked about. Being very, very important. This is one of my favorite types of drills because it allows us to encompass everything that we've worked on and it's also going to help us develop that ability to be creative and to solve those problems and to be harder to stop in games. Like I said, my elite ball handling program is dropping on Monday and it's going to target all the things we talked about in this video and even more. It's going to give you guys structured workouts to follow along so that you guys can see the maximum amount of results and really transform the way that you guys play with the basketball in your hands. Again, if you struggle with your ability to create off the dribble, you struggle with your confidence with the ball, with your ability to handle pressure, this program is really, really going to help you out. So I hope that you guys check it out. Make sure you guys check out my Instagram at Vision Driven Basketball so you know exactly when it's going live. And if you guys like this video, make sure you drop a like and subscribe as well. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.