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Optimum Practice Schedule
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Author:  Coach K [ 24 Sep 2009, 09:10 ]
Post subject:  Optimum Practice Schedule

First let me say I just ordered the motion offense ebook and haven't been able to put it down. A great read. I will be coaching a talented group of 8-9 8th grade girls and am starting to put a practice schedule together. Practices will be an hour an a half so I want to use lots of multipurpose drills for conditioning but I love good m2m defense so I want to have defense at the beginning of practice. I plan on incorporating the 4 out 1 in motion offense. My question is how much time should I devote to?
1. Warm up
2. Skill Development
3. Offense
4. Defense
5. Scrimmage

I also love your philosophy on no stretching once the practice starts but what about five minutes of jump rope? Love to hear your thoughts.

Thank you
Kenneth Brown

Author:  JoeHaefner [ 24 Sep 2009, 15:11 ]
Post subject:  Re: What to do in practices

Thank you for the kind words about the Motion Offense ebooks, Don Kelbick did a great job writing them.

To your reference to warm ups, I believe that it is critical to have some sort of progressive warm up for every practice and game to prepare players for the movements that relate to basketball. This will prevent injuries, improve athletic ability, and improve practice/game performance.

You could certainly incorporate jump-roping into your warm up. I think it is a great exercise to improve coordination, rhythm, posture, and quickness. You could mix in movements that go forwards and backwards, side to side, diagonal, and rotational.

For the amount of time that you devote to skill development, offense, defense, and scrimmaging, that's situational. Either way, you should spend a lot of time working on skills. I would suggest a 1/3 to 1/2 of the practice working on skills. These numbers could easily fluctuate on the situation:

Some kids may need to spend a lot of time working on technical skills such as passing, dribbling, and shooting without a defense, while others are ready for tactical drills that incorporate more game-like situations which require decision-making. A kid may have the best dribbling skills in the world, but if he lacks decision-making, it's useless. On the other hand, if a player can't do a crossover, he or she probably needs to work on that before you can put them into a 1 on 1 full court drill to work on their decision-making and when to use the dribble.

You could also combine your team defense and team offense into the same part of practice. You could use drills that focus on defense or offense more than the other. For example, you could use 4 on 3. Initially, this meant to make the defense work hard on communication and rotation, but it also makes the offense work on spacing, and going where the defense is not, in order to create a scoring opportunity.

Here are some other game-like drills that require decision-making:
- 3 on 3 No Dribble
- 4 on 3
- Transition 4 on 3 (or 5 on 5, 3 on 2, 2 on 1) with defender trailing
- 1 on 1 full court.

A lot of these tactical drills can also be included in your team offense and team defense.

You could also do defense and offense drills in your skill work as well. Tweak them to make it harder for the defense or the offense depending on your drill purpose.

For example, take the 1 on 1 full court drill. To make it more difficult for the defense, allow the offensive player to use the whole court. To make it more difficult for the offense, make an offensive player operate in a tighter proximity by using 1/4 of the court or a 1/3 of the court.

Here is a sample practice plan that may be helpful: http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/c ... tice2.html.

This may fluctuate, but you could organize your practice like this:

Warmup & Athletic Development – 10 minutes
Skill Work – 40 minutes
Offense & Defense – 25 minutes
Scrimmage – 15 minutes

I’m sure other coaches will have other great suggestions and tips.

Joe Haefner

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