Basketball warm-up drills that cut injuries

Most basketball warm-ups are laps, a few stretches and a layup line. That gets players warm. It does not do the one thing a warm-up can measurably do, which is reduce injuries. The evidence for that is better than for almost anything else in practice planning, and the warm-up that earns it looks different from the usual one.

This guide covers what the research found, what the proven programmes contain, where stretching fits, and four drills from our library that put it on the floor.

What the research says

The clearest summary is a 2015 meta-analysis by Emery and colleagues in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Pooling 25 studies of youth team sports, it found that neuromuscular training programmes, mostly delivered as the warm-up, reduced lower-extremity injuries by about a third (incidence rate ratio 0.64). Knee injuries showed a protective trend that did not reach significance. The authors named the main problem plainly: teams stop doing the programme.

Two of the trials were in basketball:

• High school basketball. Emery’s 2007 cluster trial followed 920 players aged 12 to 18 at 25 schools. A basketball warm-up plus balance training at home cut acute-onset injuries (relative risk 0.71). Compliance was only about 60%.
• Young club players. Longo and colleagues used the FIFA 11+ warm-up with 121 players from one Italian club, mean age 13.5 in the intervention group. Over nine months, injuries fell from 2.16 to 0.95 per 1,000 hours of exposure. It is a small study within one club.

The best-known trial outside basketball is Olsen’s 2005 handball study of 1,837 players aged 15 to 17: a 15- to 20-minute structured warm-up roughly halved acute knee and ankle injuries.

The evidence is strong that a structured routine works, if it is done regularly. It is not evidence that any warm-up works.

What a neuromuscular warm-up contains

The FIFA 11+ programme, which started in football and was tested in basketball, has three parts and takes about 20 minutes, at least twice a week:

1. Running, about 8 minutes. Jogging between cones with hip-out and hip-in movements, sideways shuffles, jumps with shoulder contact, quick running forwards and backwards.
2. Strength, landing and balance, about 10 minutes. Planks, single-leg stance with a ball, squats, jumps with a soft landing on the balls of the feet.
3. Faster running, about 2 minutes. Running across the court at 75 to 80%, bounding, planting and cutting.

The cue that runs through all of it: never let the knee buckle inward. Olsen’s handball version put it as “knee over toe”. The PEP programme leaflet from the Royal United Hospitals Bath uses the same idea with small hops over a low cone and the instruction to land softly.

Balance work is the part most coaches skip. In a 2021 survey by Räisänen and colleagues, only about a quarter of 50 youth basketball coaches used balance exercises in their warm-ups, although the evidence for them is among the strongest.

Dynamic first, static after

The other half of the question is stretching. A systematic review by Behm and colleagues found that static holds of 60 seconds or more per muscle lowered immediate performance by about 4.6%, while shorter holds cost about 1.1%. Dynamic stretching close to activity improved performance slightly. Static stretching showed no clear effect on injury either way.

The NSCA’s coaching guidance reaches the same conclusion: warm up dynamically, avoid long intense static stretches right before play, and put static stretching after the session.

In practice that gives a simple rule. Moving stretches before practice: knee pulls, walking lunges with a twist, skips, carioca. Long holds in the cool-down.

Four drills that build it

Our library has a shortened, adapted version of the 11+ and three drills that pull out its parts. Each was researched from two or more of the sources above.

1. Injury-prevention warm-up

Two lanes of cones, partners, one ball per pair. Easy running with hip-out and hip-in at the cones, shuffles and contact jumps, then single-leg passing with squats and soft jumps, and finally bounding and plant-and-cut.

It takes about 12 minutes. That is shorter than the 15 to 20 minutes of the tested programmes, and the shortened version has not been tested on its own. If your gym time allows it, the full length is the one with the evidence. The drill is tagged U12 and up, because the trials were in players 12 and older.

2. Jump and land

Three lines with low hurdles. Two-foot hops forward, then sideways, then a vertical jump with a held landing. The point is the landing, not the height: quiet, on the balls of the feet, hips and knees bent, knees in line with the toes.

Move on to harder versions, such as single-leg hops, only once the landings are clean.

3. Hop and stick

Pairs about three metres apart, one ball. Stand on one leg and pass, then hop forward and hold the landing, then hop sideways. It is the balance work players skip, done with a ball so it does not feel like physiotherapy.

4. Plant, cut and bound

Cones in a zig-zag up each side. Decelerate, plant on the outside leg with the knee over the toes, cut and accelerate; bound back down the middle. This is the third part of the 11+, done at about 80% once the plant is clean.

A 12-minute warm-up for a youth practice

Minutes	What	Drill
0–3	Easy running, hip-out and hip-in, shuffles	Injury-prevention warm-up, step 1
3–5	Moving stretches: knee pulls, lunges, carioca	Dynamic warm-up lines
5–8	Hops and landings	Jump and land
8–10	One-leg passing and hop-and-stick	Hop and stick
10–12	Plant and cut, then two-line layups	Plant, cut and bound; two-line layups

For players under 12, keep the same order but make more of it a game. Red light, green light drills the jump stop, and jump and land and hop and stick are both tagged from U8, progressed only when the landings are clean. The trials were run with players aged 12 and older, but the landing cues are the same at every age.

Make it stick

The trials agree on one practical problem: the programmes only work when teams keep doing them. Three habits help.

• Same routine every practice. After two weeks, players run it themselves while you set up the gym.
• One cue at a time. “Knee over toe” this week, “land quiet” next week.
• Count it as practice time. A warm-up that is skipped when the gym opens late is a warm-up that is not working.

Putting the warm-up in your plan

Every drill above is in the drill library, with its sources, coaching points and age groups, and you can change any of them in the drill designer, for example to fit the cones to your gym.

The practice planner, on the paid plans, has a dynamic stretching block and a static stretching block among its quick blocks, and its coach notes point to the sources in this guide. When a plan does not start with a warm-up, it says so. On the opening warm-up it reminds you that dynamic movement comes first, and on the cool-down that this is the place for long static stretches. The notes are advice, not rules: they never stop you saving a plan.

How long the whole practice should be depends on age; our guide to practice length by age has the published numbers.