Tips for Organizing Your Practice Plans

 

In the game of basketball, coaching practices requires structure and organization. You must plan ahead in order for your practices to run smoothly and for your players to learn as much as possible in the time that you have. The following are a few coaching tips that may be helpful for you in organizing your practices.

 

Tip 1) Introduce new skills or drills towards the beginning of your practices. Younger kids are more alert at the beginning of practice and more likely to retain the knowledge that you are trying to teach them.

Tip 2) Organize your drills so that they do not go over 4 or 5 minutes each. Any one in coaching knows that young kids have extremely short attention spans, so make your drills short enough to keep them interested, but long enough to get your point across.

Tip 3) Make your drills competitive. The spirit of competition helps your players to do their best when practicing. If you don’t practice at your best, you won’t play at your best either.

Tip 4) Keep your practices going at a fast pace. This will not only help with getting your players in shape, but will keep them interested and focused.
Set up drill “stations” and rotate players from station to station. This will help insure that all of your players are active throughout the practice. No one should ever be just standing around.

Tip 5) Give your players “home work”. Make a list of drills for your players to practice at home. Check out Pistol Pete’s Homework Basketball series for a wide variety of drills that you can teach during practice, but can also be done at home by your players.

Tip 6) Remember to keep your practices organized, but to also keep them fun for your players.