Breakout! - Dribbling

This is a drill designed to improve dribbling skills and get players to keep their head up at the same time. It's easy to set up and fun to do. You need every player to have a ball and as many cones as players.

You will be using the center circle as the starting point of the drill. Place the cones around the circle an equal distance away, say about 10-20 yards, depending on age of players.

Get the players to dribble inside the circle with the emphasis on keeping their head up while dribbling to avoid each other in the confined space. Get them to attempt different types of skills, including “pull backs”, “outside of foot only” and so on.

After about a minute or so, shout “breakout”. The players then have to dribble fast from the circle to a cone, turn around, and then come back to the circle. It’s really important that only one player can go around each cone, so a player has to find another cone if somebody is already ahead of them.

Stand in the center of the circle as the players dribble around their cones. The winner is the first one back to you, stopped, with the ball under control. You can make sure that there are no arguments about who is first back by getting them to slap your outstretched hand to signal that they have finished.

If you don’t have strict rules about how the ball is controlled on the way back, you’ll get them flying all over the place as the players race to get back to you. Remember this is both competitive and can be treated as a fitness drill.

You can also do the drill by how many times each player has come back to the circle to slap hands for a two minute time period.