Practice Does Not Make You Better. Practicing The Right Thing Does.

By Don Kelbick

I have been coaching, effectively, for my entire life. Even as a child, I played while preparing myself to be a coach. While it is what I have the most passion for, I do other things. However, no matter what I am doing, I see basketball in it. I often draw analogies from other things that I do to basketball. I want to share my latest experience.

After a 2 year injury hiatus, I returned to playing golf, for recreation. At one time I had gotten down to a 6 handicap but now I felt I had to start all over again. That meant buckets of balls on the driving range before I hit the course.

Three or four times a week, I would go to the practice range and hit balls and re-acclimate myself to my clubs. Every day, I would see others on the range banging and banging balls and complaining about how their games where not getting any better. Every day, they would be back trying to hit the ball as far as possible and being discouraged with their last round.

“Basketball!” I thought. How so? To understand, I have to ask you to indulge me for a few minutes while, if you are unfamiliar with golf, I explain how the game is constructed.

The object of golf, for those who keep score and don’t play competitively (where the objective is to get a lower score than your opponent), is to beat “Par.” Par is the number of shots that the golf course designer and operator program into each hole. When you add the Par of all the holes together you get the course objective (hence the phrase, “Par for the course”). With a very rare exception for a Par 6, most courses are made up of par 3s, par 4s, and par 5s.

While playing, there are 3 types of shots: tee shots, approach shots, and putts. When the holes are designed, they use the number of each shot you should make (based on layout and distance) to get the ball in the hole. In the design, every hole has a tee shot and every hole has 2 putts. What determines par is the number of approach shots you should make. A “Par 3” has a tee shot, no approach shots and 2 putts. A “Par 4” has a tee shot, 1 approach shots and 2 putts. A “Par 5” has 1 tee shot, 2 approach shots and 2 putts.

Just bear with me a little longer.

Putts are always made with a putter. Approach shots and tee shots can be made with any club. If you want to get better at golf, why is this important to know? Because in an ideal round, 50% of your shots are made with the putter. The other 50% can be made with any of the other 13 clubs you are legally allowed to carry in your bag. There are 18 tee shots on an 18 hole course. On a Par 72 golf course (which a majority of golf courses are), probably 8 – 10 tee shots are made with the “Driver” club. That’s about 14% of your shots are made with a Driver.

Here is the payoff. I go to the range, watch people spend 90% of their time practicing with their driver. They keep banging and banging and banging a club they will use 14% of the time and complaining about how they are not getting any better. It seems to me that if you want your score to come down, you should spend the majority of your time practicing your putts, the shot you will use at least 50% of the time. Since the designers built in 2 putts per hole, any hole where you take less than 2 putts, your score will come down. If you get better at putting, your golf score will improve. That is what the pros do.

Thanks for bearing with me. Here is the analogy.

Whenever I walk in to the gym, all I see are kids throwing up 3-point shots. I watch practices and teams are practicing getting 3-point shots. Over and over again I see this. When I work out with players (especially young ones), all they want to do is throw up 3s. They will change their form, their rhythm, their footwork, so they won’t go over the line. In a workout, a make, a miss, a 3, a 2, a lay-up, all count for the same amount of points – 0. We don’t keep score in a workout; we just want to get better.

I go watch young players work out on their own. Like the bangers on the golf driving range, they keep throwing 3 after 3 after 3 (especially younger kids, which is especially damaging to their development). Then, they come to me (or their coach does) and they want me to help. They don’t understand why their shooting is so poor.

Looking at their numbers, I have seen kids practice 3s for hour after hour, only to have them take one or two 3s per game (or less). But, they say, they are even missing short and mid-range shots.

It seems to me, like in golf, if you want to get better, you should practice most the shots you take the most.

I have worked with some of the best 3-point shooters in the game, some of the highest percentage 3-point shooters in the history of the NBA. A huge percentage of our workout time is spent on shots inside the 3-point line. In a 500 shot workout, we may shoot 50 3s. Most of those are reps at the end of the workout, after we have gotten other things done.

Even the best 3-point shooters in history, Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Dale Ellis, who were not only great shooter but high volume 3-point shooters as well, only take about 30% of their shots from beyond the arc for their careers. The 3-point shot might be the loudest part of their games, but they became great players by doing the other things well.

The sayings go, “Practice makes Perfect.” Then came along “Perfect practice makes perfect.” I don’t believe anything makes perfect. Thomas Edison once said, “If you try to make everything perfect, you’ll never get anything done.”

I think if you want to get better, practice the things that you actually do. Set aside some time to work on things that expand your game, but spend most of your time getting better at the things that you do most.

To view coaching products from Don Kelbick, go to Don Kelbick Products.

Don also conducts Attack and Counter Skill Development Camps throughout the country.

Should Youth Coaches Eliminate Shooting Drills From Practice?

By Joe Haefner

I know what you’re thinking, “Eliminate shooting drills from practice? Joe must have fell off his rocker again.” But please hear me out, because this could help the development of your youth team tremendously.

Do I think you should eliminate ALL shooting drills? Absolutely not.

Should you eliminate most? Yes! As a youth coach working with 5th graders and below (10 & 11 year olds and younger), you should NOT be spending 10 to 30 minutes on shooting every day.

Well, you’re probably thinking now… well why?!?

1. You need to develop ball skills first in order to be successful.

   If you can’t dribble, beat the press, or take care of the ball long enough to even take a shot, what good does shooting and everything else do you? Nothing is worse than trying to run offense and all you do is turn it over. You are better off shooting a 20 foot runner, that way at least you have a small chance of making a basket or even more likely one of your players getting an offensive rebound near the basket and put it back up for an easy make. If you turn it over, you have zero chance to make a basket and the other team probably gets an easy one in transition.

2. They pick up ball skills faster than they would pick up shooting at this age.

   If you watch players at games, practices, and camps, very few 3rd graders could shoot the ball as well as a 10th grader. However, if you watch them dribble the basketball, you will see a much higher percentage that can dribble the ball as proficiently as the older kids compared to shooting.

   That’s because younger players can improve their ball handling at a much faster pace than they can improve their shooting.

   As Bob Bigelow says, you should introduce the skills by gravity. Which means the skills that work with gravity would be the easiest and the ones that work against gravity would be the hardest. Since dribbling is completely with gravity and shooting is completely against gravity, it only makes sense that dribbling would be easier for younger kids to learn and progress.

   Now, let’s say you worked on ball skills when the kids were in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. By the time the players reach 6th grade, they’ll be very good ball handlers. Now, you can adjust your practice priorities. You won’t have to spend as much time on ball handling and you could now allocate more time to shooting, because the players are strong enough and coordinated enough to take the instruction needed to be a good shooter. They will also improve their shooting at a much faster pace.

Well, why is shooting harder to teach to younger players and what can you do?

When it comes to younger players 5th grade and below, they usually lack the coordination and strength to consistently shoot the ball properly at a goal.

My advice would be to include some strength and coordination exercises at the beginning of every practice. Great drills for total body strength and upper-to-lower body coordination include:

Crawling is great for strength and creating coordination between your upper and lower body. You can do bear crawls, crab crawls, and inchworms. You can do them forwards, backwards, side to side, and in a circle.

Lunges and squats are great for lower body strength, mobility, and coordination. No barbell is needed.

After you get the basics of lunging and squatting, you can add pushes to improve lower-to-upper body coordination which is required to become a good shooter.

For the pushing aspect, you can simply use a basketball.

Squat with Push – You squat down, have the ball at your chest, stand up and push the ball over your head.

Squat with Out of Sync Push – You squat down and push the ball above your head, stand up and bring the ball to your chest.

Coach, if I cut out most of my shooting drills then how am I going to score points!?

Well, right now your team is probably shooting around 10% to 20%. If you work on shooting with the younger kids every practice for 20 minutes, you might improve their shooting percentage by 2%. To score more points, you’d be much better off spending 2 minutes every practice emphasizing to your players to crash the offensive boards.

So what should youth coaches do for ball handling, passing, and shooting during practice?

• Depending on the length of your practice, spend 10 to 20 minutes on dribbling and ball handling drills and games.
• Incorporate athletic development, footwork, and passing into your practices.
• Spend 5 minutes every day shooting form away from the basket. Do wall shooting or line shooting. That way, they’re only concerned with their form and not whether the ball is going in the hole.

  Don’t get me wrong, you might spend 15 minutes the first couple of practices to teach some of the shooting basics, but after that your time would be much better spent on ball handling, footwork, and passing.

  Then each week, you can slowly progress them through shooting form where they eventually get to the point that they’re shooting at the basket within close range WITH PROPER FORM. Maybe you can even do some catch and shoot drills.

  Also, I recommend smaller balls and lower hoops so they can shoot consistently with good form and just aren’t chucking the ball at the hoops. In baseball, we progress kids from shorter pitching mounds, shorter base paths, and shorter fences for strength and coordination reasons. But for some reason in basketball, we don’t use that same logic.

Also, here is an article that could help you decide what you should work on: http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/teach-youth.html

Long-term planning for youth basketball

As a coach, it would help you tremendously to sit down and plan what skills you are going to focus on each year to help develop well-rounded players. By focusing on just a few things, this helps simplify your practices and helps you make big improvements in a few key areas. If you do this every year, then by the time they reach high school, they will be light years ahead of other players their age.

And of course, remember to include small-sided games and make things fun. That way, they’ll actually want to play when they’re older and won’t become one of the 80% that quit sports before the age of 13.

Basketball In Anguilla

By Don Kelbick

BASKETBALL IN ANGUILLA

I have a great interest in helping basketball grow, wherever the seeds are sewn. I made a trip to Anguilla to help some very dedicated people try to realize their goal of making basketball matter here.

Anguilla is a very small island, located about 200 miles east of Puerto Rico, in the Leeward Islands. It has really friendly people, great food and beautiful beaches. Travel was a flight from Miami to St. Martin and then a 20 minute ferry to Anguilla.

The first thing I noticed was, as a British territory, that people drive on the wrong side of the road. I always thought that would be no big deal, but I was wrong. I have no doubt that if I drove here many people would wind up dead. Just crossing the street is a problem.

On this island of 13,000 people, there is really no basketball culture to speak of, except for a small group of dedicated residents who believe they can enrich the lives of the people of Anguilla, especially the kids, by exposing them to the game. The trip was postponed once to allow  Hurricane Irene to pass over the Island. In fact, the coaches almost got caught in the weather as they were painting the court. That’s right, the coaches were painting the court!

We are running the camp in 2 sections, 8-12 in the morning and 13 and up in the afternoon. It is a long day in the sun. Never did I ever think you could burn through SPF 50. The kids are great. Very positive, very respectful and very friendly. As players, they are all novices, even the older ones. They have never been through anything like this camp before. They are learning how to work hard, how to respect others on their team and how to play basketball.

The players are very willing learners. They are eager to soak up knowledge, no matter where it comes from. The coaches, all Island residents, are eager to learn as well. I have worked a lot of camps for a lot of years and rarely have I found a group that I enjoy being with as much as this group of coaches. Their connection through the kids to the game is something to be admired.

This has not been an easy week. Temperatures in the mid 90′s, no cover, blazing sun, and other obstacles (I lathered on the SPF 50 but it had no effect). In the U. S. we get spoiled with facilities, equipment, etc. This camp, however, is the reason why we all should coach. An unique opportunity to reach people of all ages who are not jaded by false hopes of NBA paydays, no helicopter parents and no desires other than looking for a positive influence in their lives. The opportunity to touch so many people and have an effect on their lives is what coaching is all about.

Maribelle West and Paul Bell, the driving forces behind the effort, have created a true grass roots program. Hopefully they will get the support they so richly deserve.

You can see their goals and aspirations at www.IslandHoopsABA.com

For more information visit www.DonKelbickBasketball.com

Drillz and Skillz/Breakthrough Basketball “Attack and Counter” Skills Clinic in the Chicago Area

By Don Kelbick

Drillz and Skillz/Breakthrough Basketball “Attack and Counter” Skillz Clinic in Chicago Area

The Drillz and Skillz/Breakthrough Basketball “Attack and Counter” Skills Clinic held in Libertyville, Il (40 minutes outside of Chicago) is history and was a great success.

Held in the Libertyville Athletic Complex, the clinic welcomed 60 players and at least 2 dozen coaches for the weekend clinic. The Libertyville Athletic Complex is an unbelievable facility. Indoors it houses a fitness center, boxing center, 2 soccer fields, multiple volleyball courts and too many basketball courts to count. We used 12 baskets to work out 60 players.

Friday we started with footwork and looked at it from several different angles. A good 3 hour evening workout that introduced the footwork and the mentality that have worked so well in improving players. The rest of the weekend was spent applying that footwork and mentality to basketball situations.

On Saturday, we worked on shooting, coming off screens and ball screens. Sunday was the day for post drills, fast break drills, ball handling and a few games of 1 on 1. All in all players took between 800-1000 shots for the weekend.

The players were extremely hard workers and were great to work with. Players continue to amaze me. When they give themselves to you, it is incredible how quickly they improve.

Not lost in the shuffle were the coaches. Many of them came to watch  but when I invited them to come on the court and help out, many of them did so. The weekend could not have been a success without them.

I am looking forward to the next clinic.

For more information on Don Kelbick, go to www.DonKelbickBasketball.com

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BASKETBALL IS ALIVE AND WELL IN COLOMBIA

By Don Kelbick

I have just returned from my 5th trip to Colombia in the last 4 years. This trip was to Manizales, where along with former National Team Coach, Guillermo Moreno, we conducted a 3 day clinic for 25 players and over 40 coaches.

I always enjoy my trips to Colombia and the trip to Manizales was no different. It is a large city, nestled in the mountains, about a 30-minute flight northwest of Bogota. It is in the heart of coffee country and is the legendary home of coffee producer, Juan Valdez.

Colombia has a small but very passionate basketball culture. Feeling they are always fighting against the soccer (football) culture, they are willing to buck the tide and gobble up all the basketball they are able to.

The clinic schedule was an intense one, running from 8 am to 6 pm Saturday and Sunday and thru to 1 pm on Monday. I worked with offensive fundamentals while Guillermo handled the defensive side.

The players were very eager and worked very hard for the weekend. I speak very little Spanish and the Spanish that I do speak is spoken badly and I am sure some things come out that are inappropriate, but once again, basketball proved to be a universal language. On the court, we had no trouble communicating. I am quite sure that was not the case once we left the court.

I am especially impressed by the stamina of the players. I travel quite a bit and I encounter all types of facilities. Usually I am happy when the gym has a roof. If it has walls, that is a plus. In Manizales, we had a very nice facility but, as standard, the floor was concrete. Regardless of what you are used to, 10 hours of running up and down a cement floor has to take its toll on the legs. The players did not let that get in the way. They worked hard, worked well and I think we all thoroughly enjoyed the weekend.

For more information on Don Kelbick, visit www.DonKelbickBasketball.com