“You can’t ever rebound too much”, my coach used to say this in college and he was right. Today, we will be sharing the imporance of rebounding in basketball and also drills that you can implement so you can become a great rebounder.

Why is rebounding very important in basketball?

The rebounding war between one team and another is usually the difference between winning and losing. Typically the team that has more rebounds wins the game because the more rebounds you have the more possession and shots you get to take. 

Rebounding Techniques: Wedge Vs. Swim Stroke

Teams that rebound well set a tone for the game.

They crash the boards hard on offense, piling up offensive rebounds creating more and more shots. They also box out and secure the rebound on the defensive end to keep the other team from getting more chances to score. 

There are not too many rebounding drills in basketball that will blow your mind, but it’s more about repetition and fundamentals than it is about creating something new. 

When working out it’s especially difficult to practice rebounding by yourself, but it can be done. If there’s a will, there’s a way. 

So in this article we’ll give you a rebounding drill you can do by yourself, a drill to do with a friend, and a drill you can do with your team. Along with some random tips sprinkled in. All of these drills can be basketball rebounding drills for youth players or more advanced teams that need to practice rebounding.

3 Best Basketball Rebounding Drills

Best Rebounding Drill By Yourself

We call this drill the Chucky Humphries drill.

We call it this because a teammate of mine named Chucky Humphries would do this drill and he was one of the best rebounders on our team. He was an “undersized” big that just had a lot of fight in him that allowed him to be really good at rebounding. 

How the drill works is that you start the drill on the block with the basketball and throws the ball up towards the middle of the square on the backboard. As he did this he would try to jump as high as he could and grab the ball out of the air and land near the other block. 

This drill is great for teaching youth basketball players the idea of trying to jump as high as you can to get the rebound and it works with more advanced players on their quick movements and jumping conditioning so that they bring a certain intensity to rebounding. 

Best Rebounding Drill for Youth 

If you’re with your friend you can do a little bit more than if you were just by yourself. A game that I liked to play with friends is a game I called random rebounding and you can play this with any amount of people you want. 

How it starts is that there is a line of people at the free throw line, and the other players stand anywhere between the elbows. The “defender” stands 3 feet in front of the free throw line with their back to the shooter and their eyes on the rim. 

Now if you have 2 people, these people will just switch positions after every shot. If you have more you will just rotate shooter to rebounder, rebounder off, next person in line becomes the shooter. 

Now that’s understood, here is how the drill works: 

The shooter can stand anywhere along the free throw line or high post area and their job is to “shoot the basketball off the backboard” and miss. They can’t just beam it at the rim however, it has to at least look like and have the trajectory of a normal shot. If the shot bounces off the rim and hits the ground more than once, they get a point. 

The rebounder is able to get a point if they are able to secure the basketball before its second bounce. So securing the rebound is the goal. If they don’t secure it, they don’t lose any points, they just can’t gain points and they go to the back of the line. 

It begins getting fun because the shooter, depending on where they shoot from, can have that ball bounce just about anywhere. And if the players involved are old enough, they can take the amount of bounces needed for a point from 2 to 1. Meaning, they have to rebound the basketball before it bounces.

This is really good for players who need to practice defensive rebounding and it teaches them to just go get the basketball. 

Best Rebounding Drill For Teams

“IN THE HOLE”!!

The game that made the boys on my college team men. This game separated the strong from the weak. Both physically and mentally. This game was a game that the upperclassman usually looked forward to because it was a way to take advantage of the freshman, and show them where they belonged. 

The game is a game of two on two.  The two offensive players start on both elbows and the two defensive players start right in front of them facing them.  Coach shoots from anywhere on the court and one of the four players had to complete secure the ball and outlet pass it right back to the coach. 

The goal of the defense was to either grab the ball or let it stop bouncing, either one gets you a win and you need two wins in a row before you can get out of the hole. 

Every player needed to get out of the hole before we continued with practice. 

This drill was great for teaching proper rebounding techniques for both the offensive rebounder and defensive rebounder. 

Defensive rebounding note: It’s important to first make contact with the offense by laying your forearm into their chest, and then turning to see where the ball goes. If you’re athletic, go get the ball off of the rim. If you’re slightly less athletic for that, well, you better be good at boxing out and waiting until you know you can get the ball when it’s bouncing. 

Offensive rebounding note: It’s important to be agile, throwing in what we called “swim moves” was a way for more athletic guys to get by the box out. We also had the grown men on the team that would just assert their power and go right through you. 

It’s probably important to say that there were very few foul calls in this game (as long as everything was close to legal, it was fair game), and there was definitely no out of bounds.

There ended up being a lot of bodies on the floor. Whether that was from people diving after the ball to get the rebound, getting shoved by someone bigger than you, or the occasional swim move that made guys fall from a lack of balance. 

This drill made all of our teams tough and one of the best rebounding teams for 4 years in a row. 

Conclusion

Rebounding is one of the most important concepts of the game of basketball. Basketball coaches love players who can rebound and teams that rebound end up winning a lot of games. If you are the team´s best rebounder there is a chance that you will play a lot of minutes and be a key contributor on your team. 

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