Basketball Drills - Lay-up Drills

From the Coach’s Clipboard Basketball Playbook, @ http://www.coachesclipboard.net

Here are several lay-up drills beginning with the old simple 2-line lay-up drill, a 3-line drill (a good pre-game warm-up drill), and several full-court dribble lay-up drills that also help with conditioning and speed-dribbling. Be sure to see the 2-minute drill (one of our favorites). For correct lay-up technique and footwork, see: Lay-ups

2-Line Layup Drill

This classic drill has been around since basketball was invented, and is still a good drill for practicing lay-ups, both right and left-handed. See the diagram. There are two lines, a "shooting" line and a "rebounding" line.

The drill starts with the first shooter dribbling in and shooting the lay-up, while the first rebounder rebounds and passes to the next shooter cutting toward the basket. The shooter goes to the rebounding line and the rebounder goes to the shooting line. After a few minutes, switch sides so that now the left line is the shooting line (for shooting left-handed lay-ups). As an option, run the drill with two balls.
 		Lay-up Drill
Pointers:

3-Line Layup Drill

This drill helps improve players' passing, cutting, receiving and ability to make lay-ups. You can use it as a pre-game warm-up drill.

Drill:
A few players line up at the top of the key, one player in the right corner, and the rest of the players line up at half-court near the right sideline. Use two balls as seen in the diagram. Player #1 passes to player #2 and cuts down the right sideline, then makes sharp cut to the basket. Player #2 passes the ball back to #1 who shoots a lay-up (see diagram A). After shooting, #1 goes to the top-of-the-key line.

Player #2 rebounds the shot and passes to player #4 in the corner. Player #2 then follows the pass and goes to the corner. Player #4 passes to the next player in line, and follows the pass, going to the end of half-court line. Run this drill for both right and left handed lay-ups.

You can vary this drill by having the shooting line shoot jump shots. You can also make another variation… pass it into the high post, and have the high post player take a shot or make a step hop move, while the original passing lane now gets the rebound and makes the outlet. 		3 Line Lay-up Drill setup

Running the 3 Line Lay-up Drill

2-Minute Full-Court Left-Hand Lay-up Drill

This is a favorite drill that we often run at the end of practice. It helps us with our left-handed lay-ups, left-handed dribble and conditioning. It is a competitive drill where the team has to make a certain number of left-handed lay-ups within 2 minutes. We use 75 for high school boys varsity and 65 for girls varsity. If they fail to make the goal, they run or do push-ups.

Drill:
Half of the players are on each end of the court with the first two players in each line having a ball. On "Go!" the first two players from each end start the left-handed speed dribble and shoot the left-handed lay-up. The next player on that end gets the rebound and speed dribbles up the other side. Players must speed dribble quickly and make most of their lay-ups to achieve the goal.

If the team fails to make the goal, they run or do push-ups. If we have had a good practice with good effort, we give them a "second chance" by allowing everyone a chance to make a half-court shot. If just one player makes it, nobody has to run and instead they should celebrate as a team mobbing the shooter with lots of "high-5's" ... it's a fun thing and a good way to end practice on a positive note.
 		basketball lay-up drill

Of course, you could run this drill with right-handed lay-ups as well, especially for younger teams and make the goal easier to achieve.

For additional full-court dribble-layup drills, see:
Piston drill
Pitch and Fire drill
Laker drill