How do I improve my first step quickness?

Practice short, maximal starts of 5–10m from the stances you use in games, forward and to each side, with about 2 minutes of rest. Build leg power with jumps and strength work, and keep every rep fresh so it stays fast.

Is a false step bad for your first step?

Not when you start forward. In one study, athletes starting from a parallel stance reached 2.5m and 5m faster with a small step back than with a step forward. For sprints to the side, a second study found stepping straight out toward the target was faster than a false step.

Do plyometrics make you faster for basketball?

Yes. A meta-analysis of 32 studies and 818 basketball players found that plyometric training improved sprint times over both short and longer distances, as well as change-of-direction speed, jump height and strength.

How often should basketball players do speed training?

Two or three speed sessions a week in the off-season, on non-consecutive days. In season, games and practice already include a lot of sprinting and jumping, so one short session a week is usually enough.

Speed training for basketball: how to build first step quickness

By the Sprint University coaching team

Speed training for basketball means short, fully rested starts over 5–10m from the stances you play in, forward and sideways, at 98–100% effort with about 2 minutes between reps. Add jumps and heavy-but-fast lifting, and practice stopping as hard as you start.

On court, almost every sprint is over in a couple of seconds. First step quickness and acceleration decide them, so that is where your speed work goes: two or three sessions a week in the off-season and one short session in season.

What speed looks like on a basketball court

Basketball is a stop-start game with very short sprints. In a time-motion study of elite under-19 players, each player made about 1,050 movements a game, changing what he was doing roughly every 2 seconds. That included about 55 sprints, each lasting 2.1 seconds on average, and 44 jumps.

Over a 40-minute game, players cover 5–6 km of live play, according to a systematic review of match demands. Guards spend more of that time sprinting and shuffling at high intensity than forwards and centers do. The top speeds stay modest: in a GPS study of a competitive game, guards peaked at about 24 km/h and centers at about 21 km/h. With so little room to build speed, you spend most of a game accelerating or braking.

Braking is a big part of that. In elite players tracked across official matches, every position produced higher peak decelerations than peak accelerations, and guards had more hard decelerations relative to accelerations than power forwards and centers did.

How to improve first step quickness

Your first step depends on where you are going. When athletes started forward from a parallel stance, a small step back (a false step) got them to 2.5m and 5m faster than stepping forward. All of the difference appeared in the first 2.5m. For 5m sprints to the side, a later study found the opposite: stepping straight out toward the target beat a false step, because it produced more acceleration right away.

So drill both directions, and don't try to coach the false step out of a forward start. Use the 10m dose from Sprint University's acceleration days, full effort with 2 minutes of rest, and stop the set when your starts lose their snap.

Parallel-stance starts

3–4 × 10m @ 98–100%, rest 2 min

Start square, feet about shoulder-width, as you would on the wing. Let your feet do what they want on the first step, including a small step back, and push hard into the sprint.

Lateral starts

3–4 × 10m each way @ 98–100%, rest 2 min

Start square in a parallel stance and sprint to your right or left. Step first with the near foot, straight toward the finish, then turn your hips and run.

Defensive slide to sprint

3–4 × 10m each way @ 98–100%, rest 2 min

From a low defensive stance, shuffle two or three steps, then turn and sprint. Finish some reps by stopping under control in a balanced stance.

Falling starts

2 × 20m @ 95–100%, rest 3 min

Stand tall and lean forward until you have to catch yourself, then drive out of the fall. This teaches your first steps to push the floor back.

The acceleration drills guide covers sleds, hills and more start positions, and sprint form explains the body angles of a good acceleration.

To track your progress, time a 10m sprint from your parallel stance and a 10m lateral start to each side. Use timing gates or a phone app that films the run, and keep the surface, shoes and start rules the same every time. Retest every four to six weeks, fresh, at the start of a session.

Jumps and strength

Plyometrics have strong support in basketball. A meta-analysis of 32 studies with 818 basketball players found that jump training improved linear sprint times over 10m and under and over longer distances, along with change-of-direction speed, jump height, balance and strength. The gains in longer sprints and horizontal jumps were larger in players older than about 16 or 17. Program length and weekly frequency did not predict how much players improved.

A separate meta-analysis across sports found that horizontal jumps such as bounds and broad jumps carry over to sprinting best, so include them. The plyometrics for sprinters guide explains how to progress from pogo hops to depth jumps. Pair the jumps with heavy, fast lifting: a meta-analysis found that gains in squat strength carried over to faster sprinting.

The Sprint University app

Train hard on the days your body is ready

Sprint University reads your HRV, resting heart rate and sleep from Apple Health each morning, plus a short check-in, and scores your readiness. On a low day it keeps the session but trims multi-set blocks to about 70% of their sets, with intensity unchanged.

Get Sprint University

An off-season speed week

The off-season is when you can build speed. Week 1 of Sprint University's base program alternates high and low days:

Day 1Acceleration + SledHigh day
Day 2Jumps + ThrowsLow day
Day 3Sprint-Float-SprintHigh day
Day 4Recovery Tempo (optional)Low day
Day 5Top Speed, Flying 20sHigh day
Day 6Active Recovery (optional)Low day

On the two acceleration-heavy days, swap a few of the straight sprints for the first-step drills above. The low day 2 is the jumps-and-throws session:

Week 2, day 2 · Plyometrics

Jumps + Throws

Low day

Block	Prescription
Track warm-up	15 min: easy jog, dynamic drills, build-ups
Straight-leg bounds	4 × 20m @ 100% intent, full recovery
Broad jumps	6 × 3, max distance, never to fatigue
Depth jump to vertical jump	4 × 5, short contact, crisp
Med ball overhead throw	3 × 6, full send, full rest

Start every session with a full sprint warm-up, and keep pickup games and conditioning on the low days or after the speed work.

Speed training in season

Games and practice already give you dozens of sprints and jumps each week, so in season the goal is to keep your speed with as little extra fatigue as possible. A review of elite sprint training gives intensive sprint sessions at least 48 hours of recovery, and a game counts as one. With games on Tuesday and Friday, a week can look like this:

Day	Focus	Speed work
Mon	Practice + speed (high)	Parallel and lateral starts, 3–4 × 10m each, rest 2 min. Lift after.
Tue	Game	Full warm-up before tip-off.
Wed	Recovery (low)	Mobility and light shooting.
Thu	Practice (low)	No extra speed work.
Fri	Game	Full warm-up before tip-off.
Sat	Recovery (low)	Easy movement.
Sun	Rest	Off.

In a one-game week, add a second short session three days before the game, such as a few 10m starts and a low-volume set of broad jumps. Sleep counts as training too. When Stanford basketball players extended their sleep by about 111 minutes a night for five to seven weeks, their timed sprint dropped from 16.2 to 15.5 seconds, and their free-throw and three-point percentages each improved by about 9%.

Common mistakes

Suicides as your speed work: Short-rest court sprints build fitness. For speed, rest about 2 minutes between 10m starts and stop when they slow down.
Speed drills at the end of practice: Tired starts are slow starts. Do your speed work first, while your legs are fresh.
Only training forward: Guards spend much of a game shuffling at high intensity. Train lateral starts and slide-to-sprint transitions each week.
Ignoring the stop: Peak decelerations on court exceed peak accelerations. Finish some reps with a controlled stop and build leg strength to absorb it.

The how to get faster for football guide covers the first 10 yards from a stance in more depth. If you run a 40 at a camp or tryout, you can rate your 40-yard dash or see how it converts with our speed calculator.