Youth Basketball Coaching – Give Me Eight

This is a basketball drill for youth basketball coaching called “give me eight”.  One of my assistants used it with his youth team and the kids loved it.  Try it with your team; the results speak for themselves.

Tell your basketball team that you want to see who has enough gas to go all out for 8 minutes. (It doesn’t sound like very long to them.)

• Begin with all the boys spaced out across the court and have them slide/ shuffle their feet in a defensive posture, with hands up.
• At the sound of each whistle they have to reverse directions, (they go for about 2- 3 minutes).
• On the sound of two quick whistle blasts they have to run to the baseline and line up to run line drills (this goes about 4 minutes).
• The last minute, make them go back on defense and have them shuffle side to side for the remaining time.

Before they know it they have completed a full quarter of non-stop running!