From UCLA’s John Wooden to Butler’s Brad Stevens, great basketball coaches are noted for their preparation. Wooden commented on how much more time he and his staff spent on practice preparation as compared to the actual practice time. Stevens attributes much of Butler’s recent success to the team’s preparation.
Yet, when you watch youth basketball teams practice, it’s not uncommon to see teams spending way too much time just scrimmaging 5-on-5 during practices. While scrimmaging has its place in practices, 80% of every practice, or more, shouldn’t be devoted to it.
Why don’t more youth basketball coaches spend more time on practice preparation?
As most coaches are volunteers, finding the time to plan practices is a big issue. Hurrying from a hectic day at work to an early evening practice isn’t the easiest situation unless some pre-planning has taken place. For some coaches with less experience, practice know-how also comes into play. Many coaches fall back on old drills they executed for their high school teams. The 30-second, killer drill running lines provides some conditioning, but is it the best use of time to prepare your team to play basketball? Also, does it keep your team engaged and excited about basketball?
Learning new individual skills and advancing key team concepts requires deliberate practice and repetition. When basketball coaches plan out the season of activities and plan each practice, teams can improve in big ways.
To take the guess work out of planning a season and each practice, we offer a complete season of practices for 4th – 8th graders basketball players. In addition to practice agendas for thirty, 90-minute practices, we’ve also included agendas and talking points for your pre-practice meetings. We recommend getting together with your team prior to each practice for usually about 10 minutes.
Please check out 30 Youth Basketball Practice Plans and get your season started on the right now. You and your team will be polished and well-prepared.
