Q: Hi mi name is Hugo Oviedo, from Mexico, I want to know if I have to plan my daily practice with a month of anticipation, I'm asking that because in my work told me that I have to do it; I told them that is a long time, what do you can tell me about. thanks a lot.
Q: I'm a coach from Belgium. I train young people. For the moment I am training boys 15-18 years old. Next year I will train younger boys (12-13). Now I want to train them in a non-European way because it's too static. What I am looking for and hope that you can help me with is the following: I would like an example of a month-plan. A plan on which I can base my training. Second, on what I best could work with those boys in the early beginning season. Could you send me a plan for one month so I can get an idea of the way I should work the rest of the season.
Coaches,
I get a lot of requests from coaches out there to give me a season plan, a month plan, an offense that works, a pressing defense. I certainly understand the frustrations of young coaches, especially those who don't have mentors, to build a basketball system of play and it's facilitator, the practice plan, into a successful season. I don't normally answer these questions because I believe young coaches should learn to think for themselves and develop their own systems of play. While granted, most coaches are copycats and "good one's at that", what is more important is that you take the time to sit down and think out what you do, why you do it, and evaluate both daily, weekly, monthly and before, during and after the season what works, and doesn't work. The skills you develop as a coach learning and refining this process have probably more to do with your ability to over the long haul be a successful coach than your ability to draw X's and O's. Asking me is the easy way out. Getting someone else to do your work because you are not studious enough to dig amongst your peers coaching libraries, talk to numerous coaches in your area, spend hours planning and organizing your season does not justify me spending hours to create one for you.
However I know there are some coaches who simply have too few contacts and experience to organize practice plans so I have chosen to address this question at least once here to give you some ideas and examples. First every practice plan for each individual team will have a uniquely individual look. No two coaches or teams do everything exactly the same, nor do they have the same practice facilities, times, players, or support staff (athletic trainers, strength coaches, athletic development coaches, assistant coaches, etc.). What you do in your practices are affected by all of these variables. Less staff means you have to simplify and be more than organized so that you draw the best possible results out of your limited time and energy.
Here are some basic rules for practice planning:
1. Plan your whole season ahead of time. This doesn't mean you have to plan every daily practice but it does mean that you have a year calendar from which you list periods of weeks when you will attempt to emphasize conditioning, transition game, a particular half court offense, individual skills, press defense, etc. As you become more experienced as a coach you will learn to use previous years' plans to simplify this process and they will assist you in better gauging how much time you need to spend on different areas.
2. Plan month by month, gauging where you want your team to be physically, emotionally, and in terms of what skills and team offenses and defenses you want them be competant in executing.
3. Plan each day to do conditioning (I like to do the greatest percentage of my conditioning in drills with a ball in their hands), improving or stretching their athleticism, working on maintaining and improving their basic fundamentals such as passing, shooting, dribbling, pivoting, defensive footwork, 1 on 1 skills, and rebounding, work on position specific skills (guard, forward, center), work on team skills (half court offense, half-court defense, transition game).
4. Evaluate with your assistants, or staff each practice and make notes during practice about what went well and what areas need more work.
5. Keep drills to less than 10 minutes preferably 5, and keep them moving and thinking. Keep your comments to one or two key concepts or points so keep their attention.
6. If possible teach them team tactical things in locker rooms sessions if you have limited practice time, and then polish the tactics on the court.
7. Instead of copying someone else's drills which sort of teach or emphasize the skill your team needs to improve be creative in designing your own which specifically practice your teams or players weaknesses.
8. The speed, intensity, and concentration levels you create in practice will be those you display in game situations. Make sure your drills and scrimmages reflect game situations.
9. Use the sandwich method both for giving feedback (compliment-correct-compliment).
10. Use the whole-part-whole method to teach skills. Give your players an idea of how the whole skill or team pattern is to be executed, then break it down into smaller practicable portions. Once the smaller chunks are automated then rebuild the whole.
So coaches,
with respect to the question above. I'm not sure in the first question you need to have every single drill for the first month drawn out because you may find the speed with which a specific team learns or progresses may vary from year to year and you will be redesigning your practices. In this sense 30 fully scripted practiced may not be the best use of your time. However the point I believe your supervisors are making is that they want to see that you have sufficiently thought out what you are doing and why. In a sense, yes I have scripted 4-6 weeks as part of my year long practice plan. Sit down and write out the first month, and think about it. How much time do you want to spend on individual skills and why. Scripting your practices in this way will let you sum up how much total learning time you actually are spending on practices. If you haven't seen it already you may want to check out Practice Planner Pro software from SportsNet USA which is a windows based practice planning software which will save you considerable time and effort in organizing your practices and allow you to record your notes as well.
In regards to the question from the second coach I would try to block my time so that 25-35% of your daily practice time for this age group was on individual skills. That would mean that if you had a two hour practice block at least 30 minutes would be spent on 3-4 individual skill drills. another quarter of the practice time would be spend on team skill drills, such as 2 and 3 man drills including passing, screening, cutting, defense on and off ball drills. Another quarter of the time would be spend on transition which could easily include rebounding and passing drills in the open court and the final quarter of practice would be on half and full court scrimmage situations. Early in the season of course you spend considerably more time on building individual and team fundamentals while introducing some team offenses and defenses. As the season progresses your individual skill time is more for maintaining a high level of performance, and correcting errors and more time is spent on team aspects. I also like to introduce press defenses fairly early in the pre-season because most teams have not become automated enough with their pressbreaks to consistently handle full-court pressure early in the year. Plus practicing pressbreaks and press defenses have built-in conditioning as a component to their execution.
Stagger your the time you spend on individual or team offensive and defensive skills if you have limited practice time so that on alternate days you emphasize one more than the other, and in general you should do more teaching early in the week and more scrimmaging as the game day on the weekend approaches. Keep your practices shorter the day prior to a game but keep the intensity up.
Well I'm not sure I have adequately answered these coaches questions but in reality you could write a book about practices. If you want more detail or exmample practice plans I would highly recommend Morgan Woottens Offensive Notebook which has been an industry standard for years about how to develop your teams offense and practice plans.
Thanks for Asking the Coach!