11 Creative Ways to Get MORE Out of Your Limited Practice Time

Practice time can be a very limited resource for basketball teams, especially with young players.

Between school, different sports and other activities, it can be tough for kids to be available for multiple practices a week. Combine that with expensive gym fees and conflicting court time and many teams are limited to one or two practices a week.

Only having just one hour-long practice each week can make it very difficult to work on offensive and defensive concepts. With such little time to practice, coaches know they must squeeze out as much practice time as they can schedule.

While you can't magically make your players' schedules more flexible or your local gym more available, there are certain ways to get more practice time with your team. Here are 11 tips that can help you make the most out of your practice time.

11 Creative Ways to Get More Practice Time

1. Multi-task

Many drills allow you to work on several things at a time. You can work on conditioning, defense, and motion at the same time with "multi-purpose drills". Almost every drill can double as a rebounding drill. Practice skills and offense at the same time. When you practice defense as a team, make sure you practice offense too. View everything by having one coach watch the defense and another watch offense.

2. Prioritize

Focus on the critical few versus the trivial many. Decide what is important for your team to learn this year, while at the same time realizing there are things you won't be good at right now. What things happen most often in a game? Try to make those things that happen often a priority.

3. Assign Homework To Players

Just because you can't work with your players 24/7 doesn't mean that they can't take your instruction home with them. Give players homework and drills they can practice on their own. Even if they do not have access to a full court, they can still work on their game. Show them how to practice footwork in their garage or dribble as they walk to school.

4. Assign Homework To Parents

If your players aren't disciplined enough to work on their game away from practice, employ their parents to help. Assign drills to moms and dads to work with their sons and daughters. This will get the parents involved with the team while at the same time providing them great chances at spending quality time with their children.

5. Plan Ahead

Teams waste precious practice time due to lack of efficiency. The time it takes you to figure out which drill you want to do next is time is not time well spent. Plan your entire practice ahead of time and structure drills as efficiently as you can. This will allow you to spend less time in between drills and more time on improving your players.

6. Pre-practice Practice

Many times you are restricted to the amount of court time you have in a gym. You may have to wait in the hallway for the team ahead of you to finish. Utilize this time. Warm up in the hallway before practice starts so you can start practicing immediately. If you can't warm up in the hall, use ballhandling drills (multi-task) to warm up once you get on the court. Even better, if they let you, do ballhandling/warm up drills in the hallway before practice starts.

7. Be Ready

To get the most out of every minute, your players must be ready from the first minute of practice. Make sure kids arrive early with shoes on so they are ready to go. Provide incentive, such as less conditioning, for being ready on time for practice.

8. Use Pre-Game

Your team can be practicing right up until game time. Utilize the time you have during pre-game warms up to practice skills, defense, shell, etc. This not only gets your players' blood flowing, but it reemphasizes the important topics you are trying to drill into their memories.

9. Take The Game Outside

Your funds may prevent you from renting another hour of gym time each week, but all is not lost. Enjoy the fresh air and get to work out in the sun. If the weather's nice, find a park with courts and hold a practice on a Saturday morning or on an evening during the week.

10. Let's Make A Deal

One way to reduce the cost of a gym is to make a deal. Exchange your time for court time. Find a local church with an indoor court that might be willing to let you use the gym in exchange for offering your time. Your coaches and players could all volunteer to help the church with a project once a month in return for access to the court. The time you spend volunteering also doubles as team building.

11. Scrimmage

Talk with other coaches and see if they'd be willing to split the cost of a court. Use the combined court time to work on things in a scrimmage setting. This is a great way to work on certain aspects of your game while simulating game action. If you want to beat a press, have the other team press you and vice versa. Stop the scrimmage and teach as you go along.

Now Share YOUR Creative Ideas for Efficient Practices..

If you have other creative ideas to get more done during practice, please share your ideas in the comments below.