Fast Feet & Lateral Shuffle
Quick feet on the spot, side shuffles across a metre and small forward-back hops: the footwork a player uses between every touch.
Hear the coach on this drill
Every line the Audio Coach says in this drill, played back to back; the time beside each is when it comes in the 8-minute drill. No account needed.
Set-up
Two markers one long step apart on a clear patch of floor about a sofa's length, with shoes on for grip and a phone timer set to twenty seconds on and ten seconds off. No ball. The parent stands to the side to call the starts and stops and to watch the feet.
What you need
- 2 cones or shoes as markers
The ground: 8 × 6 ft (about 2 × 2 m). One child can run it alone in a backyard. The space and equipment check lists every drill that fits the ground you have.
How to run it
- Set up. Two markers one long step apart on a clear patch of floor. Shoes on for grip. No ball.
- Fast feet. Twenty seconds of the quickest small steps on the spot, then ten seconds rest. Four rounds.
- Shuffle. Side-step between the markers for twenty seconds, low, feet never crossing. Ten rest. Four rounds.
- Hops. Small hops forward and back over an imaginary line, landing soft, twenty seconds. Four rounds.
- Ali shuffle. Front foot back and back foot forward at the same time, like a boxer, twenty seconds. Four rounds.
- Count it. One last twenty seconds of shuffles, counting every touch of a marker. Write it down.
Coaching points
- Feet stay under the hips: wide feet are slow feet
- Land on the balls of the feet, never the heels
- The twenty seconds are flat out and the ten seconds are a real rest
What to watch: Feet drifting wide and the body standing up between rounds. Low and under the hips is where the speed is.
Common mistakes
- Feet drifting wide, which looks busy and is slow
- Standing up tall between rounds and starting the next one from there
- Landing on the heels in the hops, which jars and slows the next step
- Crossing the feet in the shuffle to cover the ground faster
- Cutting the rests short, so the last rounds are slower than the first
What good looks like
A good target: 16 marker touches in a 20-second shuffle round with the feet never crossing.
Progressions and variations
Making it harder
- Level 1: Fifteen seconds on and fifteen off, at a pace the form survives
- Level 2: Twenty on and ten off, all four parts
- Level 3: A ball rolled between the markers to shuffle round
- Level 4: A sibling calls 'change' and the direction switches on the word
- Level 5: The counted shuffle round done twice, beating the first number
- Level 6: Thirty seconds on and ten off, with the marker count held
Alone, with a sibling, or in a group
- Solo: a phone timer at twenty on, ten off, chasing the marker count.
- Sibling: side by side on the same timer, counting marker touches against each other.
- Co-op: a row of pairs, one working and one counting, swapping each round.
Adjusting it by age
- U14: Fewer rounds and longer rests, with the counting done together out loud. Make the boxer's shuffle a game of copy-me before it is a drill.
- U18: Full rounds and honest rests, and the marker count written down week to week. Follow it with a dribbling drill so the quick feet are used with the ball.
For the parent running it
- Call the start and the stop of each twenty seconds and keep the rests honest. Watch that the feet stay under the hips.
On their own: A phone timer set to twenty on, ten off, and the two markers a long step apart. Count the shuffles in the last round.
Safety
- Shoes with grip; a smooth garage floor in socks is where the shuffle slips
- Nothing within an arm's length on either side of the markers
More on training safely at home: Safety at Home.
Related drills
Ladder & Cone Agility
Quick feet through a ladder (or cones as substitutes), followed by short sprints.
Sprint Intervals
Repeated 30m sprints with walk-back recovery.
Cut and Go
Accelerate to a cone, brake properly, cut, and accelerate away again.
Single-Leg Balance Circuit
Single-leg holds, reaches and airplane holds on a square of floor: the ankle strength a sharp first step is built on.
Run it with the Audio Coach
In Spatrian the Audio Coach talks your player through this drill while they play it, and each run goes on their own training record, which their coach or personal trainer can read and, for a homeschool family, counts as PE time. The beta is opening to a small first group of players and families.