One of the most common questions that is asked at Basketball Australia Coaching Seminars to presenters is
“What does your practice look like?” or “What do you do at practice?”
Lets break that down a little bit. To start with, they are asking the wrong question. What they should be asking is
“What are you trying to achieve at practice ?”
As always 1 question can lead to many more before you get to the real answer. Like, “Whats your game strategy ?” “What does your philosophy/team philosophy value most ?” “What kind of players do you want to develop ? and “What are your training constraints ?”
Its also important to remember there is no one way to do things. If you give a dozen coaches the answers to those questions, more than likely you will get at least 10 different ideas for what you should try to achieve!
As with almost all things coaching, the ultimate barometer of success will be the involvement of the players. A good practice session should put them first and ideally have them be able to learn in multiple ways. Once you know what you are trying to achieve, you want to be able to approach in a whole – part – whole manner. In once of these sessions the ‘whole’ aspects will typically be more opposed and be in a game scenario. When you go into the ‘part’ section, you can go to unopposed before taking the players back into a more match scenario to see how the behaviour/technique has been embedded/adopted or understood.
Practices can be outcome-based but they have to be what your players need and what you want from them. If you can achieve that whilst making it enjoyable then you will have an environment where players willw ant to come back and give 100%.
Realism, Repetition and Relevance
If you take these three ideas and use them to reinforce the behaviours you are trying to promote you will have a session that has players honing skills and concepts in a realistic manner with multiple opportunities and in an scenario that the coach has created to ensure a smooth transition to competitive matchplay and competition.
These ideas can also be used to shape individual plans within training to ensure that whilst your overall plan might suit the team direction, an individual might require something just for them. Once you acknowledge that, and with the athlete consider how and what you can do to achieve that realistically, regularly and transferably!
The Court environment
In a whole – part – whole drill or even a standard run of the mill basketball training session a coach will have a mix of opposed and unopposed practices. How often though do you take the opportunity to manufacture your most rigid constraint ( the court) to make it more game like. But wait, isn’t what you just said an oxymoron ? How can you make the court you play the game on MORE game like ?
Well, separating the court into small areas not only allows you to create areas tailored to desired outcomes in that area but also increases realism for where a player or team would actually execute or attempt a skill. As a coach you should feel brave enough to see what the cause and effect of changing the constraints. These effects could be on a player who thrives in the smaller space or in fact struggles when they are given less time. Or they could be on a team who when they have to change their strategy actually have unexpected success or failure. These can be learnings for players and coaches to allow ideas and strategies to be tweaked and refined.
Remember what a Coach is
Sometimes as a coach you can get stuck in what other people think you should be, the players, the parents, the club and sometime even yourself. If you feel you are a bit lost, remember this acronym.
Constantly
Observing
And
Actively
Challenging
Habits
In a practice session you will be constantly observing the players, understanding what they are capable of and then ensuring that the content is forcing them to at a minimum meet that standard both as an individual and as a team.
Then ask yourself how can you improve those habits. Either by changing bad to good in an environment free of judgement or fear of failure or through trial and error and self learning in a game based environment.
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