Dribble 101

Every Step

Try to touch the ball with each step you take with the ball. In very quick succession touch the ball a little bit ahead of you. This will create both good control and increase your dribbling speed with the ball. With this kind of control you can elude defenders when they try to reach in and steal the ball, you can just cut the ball away since it is always so close to you, this will give you overall greater control when your dribbling. It is almost like you are trying to get as many touches in as you dribble forward with the ball.

Change of Pace

Change of pace is the key to going by a player on the dribble. You don't necessarily need to be extremely fast to go by someone. You just need to kind of lull the defender to sleep for a second and then break past the opponent with a burst of speed.

Improving Your “Other” (Non-dominance) Foot

The best advice is just to use it. Continue to strike the ball against a wall with your bad foot, slowly but steadily you will see improvement, have patience. There is always exceptions, if you look at one of the best players in the world 'Rivaldo', he only uses his left foot, simply because his left foot is so incredible and he positions his body so well to protect the ball. He is a player that is so experienced and so skilled with his left that he can get a away it.

Developing Skills

As a kid, I would act like the weeds were defenders and dribble in out and in, cutting back and forth as I dribbled, trying to avoid hitting the weeds with the ball, make believing they were defenders.

Another great drill is simply weaving in and out of a set of cones, and you can of course get creative, as I was saying before I used to dribble in and out of a field of weeds, you can make variations in the drill and put rules on yourself to make it more difficult.

Put about 8 to 10 cones in a line about three yards apart and dribble in and out of the row of cones without touching or knocking over the cones. Also, try not to touch the ball to far away from the line of cones, keep the ball close to you and don't dribble out away from the row of the cones.

When you have this down you can then vary the way that you dribble through the cones, just with the right foot and then just with the left foot, and then alternating feet, where you touch the ball to the left and then to the right as you weave through the cones, just with the inside of the feet, and so on, you can make up restrictions to put on yourself to try to improve a specific part of your dribbling technique.