Go to Archive Index July 1, 2013     Newsletter #15

Dear Coaches, Players, Friends,

Today's Quotes
"Nothing will work unless you do." - John Wooden
"Failure to prepare is preparing to fail." - John Wooden


Today's theme is "Planning Practices".

You must plan each practice. John Wooden has said he and his assistants often would spend more time planning a practice than the actual practice itself lasted. Keep a loose-leaf notebook of each of your practices that you can refer back to. After each drill or after practice, you can scribble additional notes on your practice plan from that day.. things that you have learned, or things that you feel need special emphasis. Don't just come to the gym each day without a plan and think you can just "wing it". You have to plan for success and plan your practices just like a teacher creates a lesson plan for his/her English or math class. Your practice should be like a classroom and you are the teacher.

Stretching exercises.
Stretching is done at the start of practice in order to avoid injuries (although some recent studies have shown that stretching really may have little value in reducing injuries). I always dislike wasting precious "gym time" on stretching exercises. So players are asked to come 10-15 minutes early and do their stretching on the sidelines, so we are ready to go once practice starts. This might not be practical, and you may need to do 10 minutes of stretching at the beginning. While the team is stretching, you can discuss your plans for the day, or explain what things need to be worked on, use the time to praise good things that have happened, reflect on your "quote of the day" (see below), etc.

Selecting drills.
Select drills that help teach individual and team fundamental skils, as well as teaching what you are trying to accomplish, or trying to correct. Use the guidelines below. Select your drills from the "Selecting and Using Drills" page, which gives a brief description of each drill and about how much time to allow. You might have a "core" of selected drills that you use all the time. But you can throw in other drills from time-to-time to teach a specific skill, or just to avoid boredom and spice things up a bit.

Move quickly from one drill to another.
Don't spend half of your practice time on one drill. The kids will get bored and won't learn much after the first 5-10 minutes into the drill. If they mess up, they will get another chance to run that drill tomorrow.

Make drills competitive.
Whether you are doing 1-on-1 or 5-on-5 drills, shooting drills, etc., make them competitive with a winner and loser. We have losers do 5-10 push-ups. In free-throw shooting drills, we will often have missed shots followed by running a lap, as this simulates the running and fatigue in game situations.

Budget your time for each drill.
If you are introducing a new drill, play, offense, defense, etc, you will have to allow more time the first time. If you are reviewing something, like a set of plays or your out-of-bounds plays (that they should already know), move quickly through these... you are reinforcing their memory (a brief repetitive exercise that can be done each day).

Follow an up tempo exhausting drill with 5 minutes of something less aerobic.
Make them work hard, but don't be unreasonable.

Free-Throw Shooting
Do your free-throw shooting after an aerobic, running drill when the players are tired, in order to simulate the leg and body fatigue that occurs in the real game setting.

Have every player do dribbling and ball-handling drills.
I have been asked, "Why have my post players waste their time doing guard-type dribbling drills?" Doing these drills will make your post players better athletes in general, will help their overall coordination, and will improve their "hands". Also, how do you know a certain player will be a post player all his/her life (especially younger players).

Break-down post/perimeter drills.
If you have a good assistant, you can plan some time for individual skills with perimeter players on one end of the floor, and your post players on the other end. See: Low Post Offensive Drills, Guard Breakdown Shooting Drills, and Motion Offense Drills.

Do not show favoritism.
Do not favor certain players in practice. Make them all work equally hard. Try to instill in your star players that they must lead by example, and be willing to work harder than anyone else on the team to be a great player. Don't ignore your "role players" (a better term than "subs", or "bench players")... make them feel they are contributing and encourage them.

Conditioning drills
Early in the season, I would run a lot of conditioning drills. I believe your players and team will improve much more by doing conditioning drills than a lot of push-ups and running without the ball. If you are going to make your players run, make them do it with a ball... like full-court speed dribbling, using the right hand one direction and the left hand coming back. Rather than running a "gut buster", or a "suicide" (which is a terrible name), do a fast-paced aerobic drill like speed dribbling. The kids will get just as tired, will hate it just as much, but their dribbling and conditioning will both improve.

Tournament time
Getting into tournament play, or a crucial game, you might spend most of your time on team skills preparing for the big game, working on any special situations necessary to play the upcoming opponent. For example, you might want to refine your press break, or your full-court press, or how you will defend a certain star player, or how you will attack their zone defense, etc. Later in the season during tournament time, we will often reduce our practices from 120 minutes to 90 minutes or less and focus on team skills and the upcoming game. It has been said that more tournament games are lost by over-practicing than under-practicing. Players can get "burned-out" by the end of the season. We want our tournament run to be fun... mostly looking forward to playing games, with short practices in-between.

"Open" or "closed" practices
Whether to allow parents, spectators in the gym during practice is up to you and your philosophy. But make sure you have rules established from the start of the season. If you allow parents in the gym, make sure they understand that it is a classroom and they must keep quiet and not "coach" the kids from the stands. In the event that this becomes a problem, you reserve the right to close your practices at any time.

End practice on an upbeat, positive note.
We like to end our practices with a drill that builds team spirit. This is fun thing to end with. With our varsity and JV teams, we have each player shoot a shot from half-court. If no-one makes it, everybody runs. If just one player makes the half-court shot, NOBODY runs! So when a player makes the shot, usually the team celebrates with a lot of "high-fives" and hugs, since they don't have to run. Sometimes, when we feel we've had a really good, hard practice and no-one makes the shot, coach will have one of the assistants or a manager try a 3-point shot or free-throw to "save the day". Sometimes we will tell them that they don't have to run if John (the smallest player on the team) can dunk the ball in 10 seconds... they quickly realize that they must grab John, as a team hoist him up to the rim, as John dunks it. All these little things help build team spirit.

Also take advantage of the Practice Planner Live program below to help organize your whole practice schedule.


Practice Planner Live
Use this online program and get access to the tools professionals use. Plan practices easily, quickly and more effectively. Have all your drills and thoughts in one place. Get access to your practice stats and see if your team play reflects what you are working on... See statistics of your practice. Are you focusing too much time on one aspect of the game? Now you never have to guess! Baseball, Basketball, Football, Soccer, and More! Get the Practice Planning Edge Today!
More info

Practice Planning Tip from Mike May @ Practice Planner Live: Track practice time spent in specific areas of your system and then compare them to your game statistics, identify greatest areas of need.



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