ATTN.--Father Judge Drill --- Multi Skill Improvement

Coach,

This is the 64 million dollar question for coaches.  How do you get enough repetitions at the most needed basic fundamentals without boring the kids to death through drone repetition.  The answer lies in creativity and "borrowing" lots of ideas from other coaches you watch.  Drills should be kept moving.  If your drills are running longer than 5 minutes they are too long.  The exception may be a full court team fundamental drill, but in general keep your drills longer than 2 minutes and shorter than 5.  Challenge your players in your drills to compete against; a) themselves (personal goal setting), b) the clock, or c) others in competitive situations.  Keep scores, count posessions, turnovers, great passes, most consecutive, or whatever you need to have them playing against a clock or a goal.  This will keep them motivated as they work on their skill sets. 

Change your drill sets up, moving from maybe a block of two defensive drills to two offensive drills.  This also works to distribute physical loading on specific muscle groups like required to maintain a defensive stance, versus upper body drills like passing that might require greater physical exertion from the upper body. 

I like my players to be challenged as well in a physical manner while doing drills.  This means there must be some relatively intense workload to stress the cardiovascular system, muscular system and concentration levels.  Use short 30 sec to 1 minute breaks inbetween high intensity drills and have them get water and shoot free throws. 

Finally observe the game and create drills which reflect game situations.  I see a lot of drills that focus on a specific fundamental but it seldom practiced like it will be used in game situations.  Make sure if you require certain footwork coming off screens to get a shot it's imbedded in most of your shooting drills.  If your team is sloppy on help and recover footwork, you must include it in your daily practice regiment.  Finally I like combo drills that require some ball handling, some passing, footwork, change of speeds, catching, and shooting, or even defensive transition, because these are more realistic to game situations.  They also allow you as a coach to get more reps into the same amount of limited time in practice.  The combo drills should reflect real game situations, but these are the best way to keep players motivated because you can vary them and interchange pieces from day to day to give them something new each day. 

These are the things I would consider when constructing practice drills to grow fundamental skills and keep motivation on the court high.  Finally challenge them.  Don't accept medocrity in practice.  If necessary put players out of practice who don't train hard.  It should be a privilege to practice, which in turn is a stepping stone to playing time in games.  If players don't come to give it there all, take away the privilege to practice.

Good luck and be creative.

I coach a non profit organization team 501(c)3 we play all levels of competition and we use a lot of the fundamental plays and a few five stars drills i wanted to know how to keep players motivated and wanting to get test to the limit in practice what will get them looking forward to a hard practice instead of just wanting top scrimmage all the the time

Coach we are getting closer to relaunching our Coaches Drill section with more than 800 drills.  We hope many coaches will participate in growing our purposeful library of drills when we have it again active.