Hello to all, my name is Michael Brown and I live and coach in Delaware.

First and foremost I want to thank the coaches of this site for providing such valuable, insightful and clarifying information...I mean this site gets a 5 star rating from me! I've been coaching for a few years now at the YMCA level and assisting at the AAU level. I have just been given the head coaching responsibility for our 6th Grade team and find it rewarding, challenging, frustrating and extremely education. I am learning so much about myself and what is important to me. I am 52 years old and consider myself "old school" in that I firmly believe in striving to perfect the fundamentals of basketball, playing hard defense and sharing the ball. Everything I have read thus far is in line with my overall philosophy yet cutting edge in it's modern-ness if you will. In particular purchasing the Moton Offense eBook has provided me with invaluable insight into not only teaching it but methodology for teaching anything.

Anyway my first of many questions to come has to do with conditioning. In our organization often the 5th and 6th grade teams often do conditioning drills together and it is run by the very capable 5th grade coach (I'm the new kid on the block). Tho it gets them going, I personally would like to incorporate fitness and basketball ( I have them completely by myself one 2 hour practice/week). By that I mean I think it's somewhat a waste of time to just be running up and down the court for the sake of running when they could be running and learning something valuable and "real basketball game-like" at the same time. I have no expertise in what I'm suggesting but I would love to know what the great coaches here think. I also believe 6th graders and other age groups learn more when there's some kind of competition inside of the drills. This is my first time being responsible for 2 to 2-1/2 hour practices (1 hour/week at the Y) and am finding myself a little overwhelmed with how to most effectively fill the time with fitness and learning. Sorry for such a long first post I will be striving for brevity moving forward. Thanks so much for your attention..

We don't do any "conditioning". It's all in the context of the basketball drills. With that said we do some agility and athletic development and coordination with the younger kids.... just because my main concern is long term development and developing athleticism is critical for long term development.

Beyond that, we get kids in shape by running skill drills like full court zig zag, full court lay ups, full court 1on1, full court 1vs2, transition drills, and combo drills. Some of them can be real challenging!! But they have to go hard and at game speed. You can challenge them to make X lay ups in 4 minutes to get them moving. Sometimes dribble tag is a conditioner too. There are so many ways to improve skills and get in shape at the same time.

Just a few examples:
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/cone-touch-dribbling-drill.html
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/pridedrill.html
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/playcreator/view.asp?id=168&type=drill
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/multi-purpose-ball-handling.html
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/passandswitch.html
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/CompetitiveOneonOne.html

I agree with Jeff big time...... when you don't have a lot of practice time, the last thing I would do is waste time on just conditioning. Anything that you can do without a ball you can do with one.

Make your drills competitive which will force them to work hard..... then it will be fun for them. If you search this site, you will find a lot of drills that you can use... just make them go hard all the time.

Maybe finish the practice with something fun... a scrimmage or a couple of "situations."

Good luck, teach them fundamentals, a love for the game and then have FUN!

Thank you both so very much, I greatly appreciate your time, attention and advice. I will get right to designing my practices accordingly. It's also encouraging that you also believe that FUN is as much or more important than anything else and that's precisely what seemed to be missing as I watch them them do all of those conditioning drills, it simply looked like misery to me....one can have it both ways!

Thanks again!

Here are some practice planning tips if you need any help with that:

http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/youth-planning-success.html

https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/articles/basketball-time-management.html

http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/blog/index.php/coaching-youth-basketball-with-limited-time-1-practice-a-week/

http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/samplepractice1.html

http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/samplepractice2.html

Thanks so much Joe I really appreciate it.

I'm in total agreement with Jeff and Ken, incorporate conditioning in with your drills and skills sessions as much as possible. It's pretty easy to keep them rockin' with full court drills. Plan the practices out as much as possible and leave room for some flexibility. I've found putting an estimated time on each activity helped me to keep it moving along. I could look down at the practice plan and see it was 6:30 and I should be working on X,Y,Z drill. I used it as a guideline more than a rigid plan.

One conditioning drill I do like (depending upon the number of players you have) is the free throw drill on the baseline. All the kids are on the baseline except one, he is at the FT line. If he makes his FT, he goes to the baseline and the next player comes up for a FT. If he misses his FT, the baseline runs up and back. They quit running up and back when he makes his FT. You might set a limit on the number of misses to keep it shorter. Not a drill I'd do every practice, but it's a good one to show the importance of FT's.

One last thought, the situations drill that Ken was talking about is a good one towards the end of practice. I also liked to make them shoot free throws when tired at the end of practice. It's a more realistic representation of game-like conditions.

Thank you Coach Rob!