Should You Teach Youth Players To Shoot A Basketball With Both Hands Equally?

By Joe Haefner

While listening to audio interview from Complete Athlete Development between Erin Perry (Physical Therapist) and Brian Grasso (Athletic Development Trainer), they discuss young athletes using both hands equally to perform athletic tasks and why it’s a good thing.

• Shooting a basketball equally with the left hand and right hand.
• Swinging the bat from each side of the plate.
• Kicking the soccer ball with both legs.
• Hitting a hockey puck from both sides.
• Throwing a football with both hands.

They mention that this is good for injury prevention. They go on to explain that if you continually throw or shoot with one hand, it can lead to muscle imbalances. If you constantly throw with one arm, you may get a shoulder that is stronger than the other. This can lead to injuries if the child is still growing and maturing.

Watch Eli Manning warm up before a game. There is a reason he throws the football left-handed and right-handed.

Along with preventing injuries, it should create a better athlete.

Can you imagine a basketball player that can:

• Shoot with both hands equally within 15 feet.
• Dribble up and down the court flawlessly with either hand.
• Pass with either hand.
• Finish around the hoop with either hand.

I recently read an article on ESPN about a pitcher named Pat Venditte in the Yankees organization that throws with both hands. Last year he had an ERA at 0.83 which is amazing for those of you who do not know very much about baseball. He can pick whatever arm he wants to throw with based on which side the opposing hitter chooses and he can throw twice as many pitches.

Would a player have similar benefits in basketball if he could shoot with both hands?

Most coaches try to teach passing, dribbling, and finishing with both hands. If we try to teach shooting with each hand equally in addition to the other skills at young age, would it make a player that much better?

You might be thinking, “That’s crazy. I can barely get my players to shoot well with one hand.” However, it’s still worth thinking about.

What are your thoughts?

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Four Great Ways To Keep Your Team’s Attention

By Joe Haefner

Want to get your player’s attention or find a useful way to handle large groups of kids at practice or camps? Having problems with kids messing around during practice? Check out the tips below.

Many coaches struggle keeping their player’s attention throughout practice, especially at the youth level because they have really short attention spans and brains of younger players are actually designed to get excited and hyper even if they don’t want to. They really can not help it, so it’s a bad idea to punish them.

Here are some ways to keep their attention and keep practice flowing smoothly:

1. Keep lectures short (2 minutes or less). If you lecture any longer than this, most kids will be in “lala” land by then. And kids don’t come to practice to hear you talk the whole practice, they come to have fun.

2. Keep drills short and fun (half court – 5 minutes or less, full court – 10 minutes or less). If you stay on a drill for too long, it becomes monotonous and the kids lose interest.

3. Clap Method – You tell the kids at the very beginning of your first practice that whenever you clap, they have clap the same number of times you clap. You clap twice, they clap twice. Make sure to also tell them that this is time for them to listen.

You can usually get everybody’s attention after 2 to 3 sequences of claps and that only takes normally 3 to 5 seconds. Much better than yelling so much you can’t talk the next day.

4. Line Method – Whenever you blow whistle or yell “lines”, the kids race to an assigned line and sit down. You might have 5 lines of 6 or 3 lines of 3 depending on the size of your group. The team that lines up and sits down first wins. Congratulate them with some enthusiasm by giving them fist-pounds, high fives, and/or verbal praise.

I’ve seen both of these methods work in small practices and huge groups.

If you need some ideas for fun drills, check out our 60 Fun Youth Basketball Drills & Games.

Could 3 on 3 Basketball Be the Best for Youth Players?

By Joe Haefner

Back in college, I came back to my hometown for a Christmas break. I ran into one of my old high school coaches by the name of Casey Ditch and we were talking about youth basketball stuff. Then he said, “Man, I wish all they did with youth players was play 3-on-3. That’s all I did when I was younger.” This really caught my attention, because Casey had developed into quite a player back in his day. He led the state in scoring, beating out former Chicago Bull Bobby Hansen (for those of you who remember him). He did unbelievable stuff with the ball and still could. If it wasn’t for two bad ankles, who knows what Casey would’ve done. We had a particular coach in the area who bragged about holding him to 15 points.

If Casey became such a good player by mostly playing 3 on 3 as a youth, don’t you think your players could benefit from this as well?

When I thought a little more about the conversation I had with Casey, I realized that I played a lot of 3 on 3 when I was younger, too. I started playing in 3 on 3 tournaments when I was in 4th grade. I didn’t start playing organized 5 on 5 until 6th grade, and I handled myself quite well against players who had been playing since they were 8 years old.

If you think about it, 3 on 3 basketball makes a lot of sense. It will improve a youth player’s long-term development for a number of reasons.

1. Players touch the ball more often. In the 5 on 5 game, players can go almost the whole game without touching the ball. In 3 on 3, you could touch the ball EVERY possession. When the player gets more experience handling the ball during game situations, the player is going to improve much more than the players who hardly touch the ball in 5 on 5. It doesn’t matter if you are the point guard or the star post player, you’re still going to get more touches in 3 on 3.

2. More room to operate. A lot of younger players, especially under the age of 12 don’t have the skill, strength, or experience to utilize their basketball skills with 10 players on the court. 3 on 3 gives them more room to operate and practice their skills.

3. Players learn the game! When there are only six (3 on 3) players on the court, players are more inclined to run the pick-and-roll, screen away, and screen the ball without a coach even telling them to do so, because there are fewer options out there. After awhile, they will start to figure things out for themselves which is FANTASTIC and exactly what you want the players to do. With ten (5 on 5) players on the court, a lot of those options aren’t there, because they lack the skill, strength, and experience. Now, with fewer players on the court, it gives them a split second longer to recognize a situation.

4. No pressing & zones. Now, instead of spending time on breaking full court pressure, breaking half-court pressure, playing against a 1-3-1, playing against 3-2, playing against a 2-3, playing against a triangle-and-two, playing against a box-and-one, you can focus on the FUNDAMENTALS. Youth coaches waste so much of their precious time working on things that they shouldn’t worry about at an early age.

99% of the presses that are ran by youth coaches wouldn’t work in high school or college, anyways. Most of the presses I’ve seen, just run 2 to 3 players at the ball and hope he throws the ball high enough, so somebody else can pick it off. It’s just a tactic that takes advantage of a flaw in our basketball development system, because players lack the skill, strength, and experience to react correctly to these situations. Spending that extra time on basketball skills and concepts, will benefit them much more for the future. Not to mention, if taught incorrectly (which most of the time they are), the zones and presses can ingrain some terrible habits in your players that don’t work at the higher levels.

Personally, I feel that youth players should not play in 5 on 5 leagues before age 10 or 11. Part of me feels that may even be too young.

What are your thoughts?

Important Lesson for Youth Basketball Coaches

By Jeff Haefner

Here’s a guest post and very good lesson from Coach Ken Sartini.  We really think he was on the money with this, so we decided to post it on our blog.  Enjoy…

I went to church this morning and as I was looking through the weekly bulletin I came upon this:

Jesus said:  ” A foolish person builds a house on sand…. A wise person builds a house on solid ground. ”

The Deacon spoke on this at length during his homily and it got me thinking.  Since I always told my students about building a house and that it takes a good foundation for it to last, but with a poor foundation the building will crumble.  I told them that their education was the foundation for their lives. Get a good education and build a good foundation for your future.

This holds true in basketball also.  If we are to have a good program we need to build from the bottom up… ( the foundation ) and that begins at the lowest level possible, teaching the fundamentals of the game and how to play, NOT just sets and winning as the end all.  Good solid fundamentals are the foundation of your programs.  As a varsity coach I loved it when kids came in knowing how to play m2m defense, be able to read and set screens and how to shoot.  I didn’t care what offense they ran, as long as they had these basics, we could teach the rest.

Now comes the planning part. 

I was talking to John Jenkins and we were discussing fundamentals vs winning and we came to the conclusion that while the basketball fundamentals are extremely important there are other things that the players need to know in order to implement these.  He related to me of a college coach that came in to coach some of his younger kids and taught nothing but fundamentals. Since they didn’t run a press offense in practice, they got destroyed and never got the chance to do much in games.

John and I talked about some kids that were shooting the ball off their left eye and pushing the ball instead of good solid fundamental shooting.  We had some kids that came in and they were dribbling with their right hands, taking the ball to their left side before bringing the ball up to the proper side to shoot.  It takes a lot of time to break bad habits like this.

So, to all you lower level youth coaches, plan your practices wisely! 

Make a good practice plan, just like you would have a lesson plan in the classroom.  I realize that at some levels time is a big factor - so planning is even more important.  If you don’t know how to make a good practice plan, search the Internet and find the answer….. or find a mentor to help you learn that skill.  Use your time wisely, make sure that you cover the things that they are going to need to  play the game while teaching good fundamentals.  Help them build a good foundation so they can continue to play as they progress through each level….. and they will have some success.

While everyone wants to win…. in the end.. who really cares if kids go 30-0 and cant play when they reach high school because they are so far behind fundamentally.  That is the measure of your success as a youth basketball coach.

OK, that’s my sermon for the day.  Sorry if I bored you… but like I always say…JMO….

If you’d like to contact me or ask me a question, just leave your comments below.

Coach Ken Sartini

In the long run, it’s not what we have done, but what we have become through all of our experiences.