One Practice Weekly--What To Teach?

By coachronn - Posted on August 29th, 2008
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I get letters frequently from coaches who will be working with 9-11 year olds and who, on the average, have 3 or less years of coaching experience.  They mostly want to know what to teach when they only have one practice  session per week. So, let me ask you, what would logic tell you to do?
 


First of all, if you are trying to coach in a highly competitive situation, with only one practice session per week, no matter what the players’ ages or experience, one practice won’t cut it.  Anyone who thinks they could be competitive in this situation is kidding themselves. 

 

Now, if you’ve got young kids (9-11), without much playing experience—think FUNDAMENTALS.  Really, what else can you do?  Bring them along slowly, progressing each week throughout the season, building their playing skills and game smarts.  Make each practice fun, mixing skill teaching with game-like activity and give them about 10 minutes of game-play.  FUN should be the imperative in this kind of situation.  If the kids are having fun and they are learning how to play the game, they’ll most likely stick with the game and be back next year/season.

 

If kids can’t dribble, pass, rebound, shoot and play defense, how much fun will they really have?  The coach must teach these things through explanation, demonstration and repetitive practice of each skill.  Using a variety of drills can help to make this more fun—but, keep drills simple and focused on that skill you are trying to get across.  There are many books and videos available to coaches, online and offline, which they can use to build their teaching skills.

 

The coach who tries to install team offense, team defense and specialty plays with novice players, and having only a limited amount of practice time, will undermine whatever good could have been brought out in the players.  The same goes for the coach who spends his or her time with the better players, trying to do more sophisticated things with them and ignoring the other players.  Remember, that at any time you will most likely have a mix of player talent on the floor and while better players may grasp some of what you are trying to teach on a team level, the others may be lost.  Trying for sophistication—doing things that are not simple and easily grasped by all players—will most likely undermine your program.

 

Youth basketball is for youth—not the adults.  Remember this and construct your practices and approach to game play to be fun and instructive and you will have a successful program.  Sell these concepts to the parents of your players and to your assistants to assure your success.  A child would rather play, regardless of his or her skills, than be on a winning team where they don’t get to play.

 

The niche I have chosen to work with is that area above where players are young and inexperienced, and coaches may have little or no coaching experience.  For that reason, I have personally developed over 30 products and programs that are directed at teaching the coach how to teach.

All of these products/programs are listed at http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/CoachRonnsproducts.  As you go through them, select those of interest to you and click on the page links.  These pages will talk about each product and show you where to go to order.

My 330 page book, which details my background, how to teach the game and all the fundamental skills, is loaded with skills and drills, all highly detailed for your better understanding.  My 4-hour teaching DVD takes all the skills covered in the book and shows you how I teach them.  The filming was done live during a 3-day coaching workshop using local players to demonstrate the skills I was teaching.

The book and DVD can be purchased separately, however they were created to go together and form the most comprehensive teaching tool available for new and lesser experienced coaches.  For anyone on my list, receiving this newsletter, there are discounts available to you that are not available to someone just landing on my site from the web.  Go here to read more about the discounted combo offer:

http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/book-dvd-combo-order.

As you read through the above page, there will be links that will take you to the purchase sites for the book and DVD.  These contain the discount codes you will need in order to receive the discount. 

You will also notice that my book and DVD (ripped and put in a streaming video to be viewed online) are available through FreeIQ to download.  These do not have the discounts.