Coaching Toolblog

A little information about what is new at The Coaching Toolbox

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. Our Teleseminar Guest for Friday June 13 is University of Illinois Men's Coach Bruce Weber--his topic is making basketball practices competitive and he has some great ideas to offer. It is not wonder that his teams have always competed hard. From his days as an assistant to Gene Keady at Purdue, then has head coach at Southern Illinois, and now with all of the success he has enjoyed at Illinois, one thing has remained constant--his teams compete! Current Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter was Coach Weber's assistant at Southern Illinois and I thought that the 07-08 Purdue team was one of the hardest playing teams that I have seen. His 04-05 Illinois team did have talent, but you don't make it to the last game of the regular season without losing unless you can compete. You will definitely want to be prepared to take notes and listen to this interview a couple of times. Thanks Coach Weber for taking some time for our visitors! In order to listen, all you need to do is to register for the Tool of the Day and you can do that with this link: Teleseminar Access. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

This is the final post in the week long series from The Coaching Toolbox on The Basketball Practice Mindset.

10. Basketball Coaches must not accept excuses from themselves, their staff, or team members. By making excuses for player or team failures, one relinquishes control of their influence over the outcome.

11. Coaches should take pride in the design of their practices and players need to develop pride in the way they practice. Pride is an attitude that separates excellence from mediocrity. Mediocre practices produce mediocre results.

12. Plan your practice as if your career depends on it, because it does.

The remaining practice principles that we have identified as critical to success are: efficiency in executing practice, establishing habits, making practices competitive, team building, incorporating game planning, and covering everything with thoroughness. However, without the proper mindset, none of those principles alone will bring out the best in your team.

More information on the complete basketball practice e-book, “130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice,” is available at The Coaching Toolbox.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. Finally, the NBA Finals will start tonight. Probably will hurt our traffic, but I guess I can't complain, I will be watching too instead of working on The Coaching Toolbox. Here are three more of our twelve thoughts on the mindset it takes to have basketball practices at the championship level. 7. The practice court is a classroom. Practice is one of several classes that students attend each day. Like all classes, the students should expect to be taught something each day. Basketball Coaches should have clear objectives for the day and a well planned lesson designed to help the players achieve those objectives. 8. Coaches should enter practice with the mindset that if players are making mistakes, the reason they are making mistakes is that the coach has not taught them properly. Coaches need to make adjustments in how they are communicating their ideas. Yelling the same instruction louder does not facilitate the teaching process. Coaches must believe that everything that happens on the court happens as a result of their actions. A good coach is like a good teacher. If the student is not learning, the teacher must change the teaching methods. 9. Coaches must believe that they can win with their team, regardless of the team’s shortcomings or perceived shortcomings. It does not matter whether the team is too short, too slow, too inexperienced or lacking in basic skills. Coaches must believe that they can overcome all obstacles placed in front of them. There are ways to play when your team is too slow and too short. Young players can be taught and skills can be practiced. If you do not believe that you can win, you will not. Tomorrow's post will finish off the first principle of our 130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox 12 ideas to develop the mindset of a champion to take into basketball practice is moving along. After today's post, we will have half of the list on the Toolblog.

4. Basketball Players will do in the games by habit what they learn, rehearse, and are held accountable for in practice. If a coach allows cutting corners in practice, that is what s/he will get in games. Don Meyer says that coaches can be demanding without being demeaning. We believe that type of interaction with players is imperative to success. For example, we believe that placing the ball under your chin after a rebound is an important fundamental. Therefore, in practice situations we blow the whistle and call a turnover if a player falls to chin a rebound. By consistently demanding that basketball fundamentals be executed, you will begin to see it occur more frequently. We want to create the mindset that doing things properly leads to increased success.

5. The players’ goal for each basketball practice should be to improve themselves for the good of the team. A coach’s goal should be to instill that goal in the players and plan practice to make it happen. Spend time making sure that your players see that as their goal.

6. Everyone involved in your basketball practice must know the expectations that you have as a coach for the level of performance and effort. Frustration and conflict which lead to team turmoil are always present when players individually and the team collectively are being coached to a higher standard than they are currently able to reach. The tension can be reduced greatly when everyone knows what the expectations are and why those expectations are so high.

We hope that these ideas are contributing to your basketball coaching thoughts and ideas. To read or downolad all 12, just click either one that you would rather do. For an overview of our book that contains 130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice, just click the link.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. This post is a continuation from yesterday's Coaching Toolbox blog dealing with our basketball practice mindset. In our view, structuring what happens in practice is a huge part of basketball coaching. 2. Hard work is merely the price of admission into the competitive arena; it is no guarantee of success. If it is not present, then you can’t even think about competing. But, consistently doing the right things, in the right way, and in the right frame of mind—all while working very hard—over an extended period of time, can lead to success. Hard work is not a victory in and of itself; it must be accompanied by technique and toughness. It is possible to be a hard worker with poor technique and no toughness.

3. Players must see and believe that the coaching staff is eager and excited for practice every day. A coach’s enthusiasm for practice should be obvious to the players and assistant coaches. The coach’s enthusiasm should be contagious. For practice to be great everyone needs to be enthusiastically involved. As classroom teachers, it always amazes us when we see and hear athletes cheering in response to an announcement that their practice has been cancelled. That is not the type of response that demonstrates an understanding of the importance of high quality practices. We have nine more ideas that we have defined as the Winning Way Mindset for basketball practice and will be posting them on this blog. You can see all twelve on our list by clicking here. You can see information about our entire list of 130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice here, along with hundreds of other resources and ideas for coaching basketball. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. We have posted twelve ideas that we at the Coaching Toolbox believe constitute a basketball practice mindset that is necessary for a basketball team to consistently attain great quality in basketball practice. We believe that the quality of the practices a team has is determined by more than just the drills that the coach runs. The types of drills certainly makes a huge difference, but the mindset that both players and coaches approach practice with day in and day out. Here is the first of our twelve principles for having the practice mindset and manner of a champion: Practice with the mindset and manner of a champion

aving the right frame of mind is what separates the programs with great practices from all of the others. By whatever means you can, indelibly etch the following saying into the minds of your players:

EVERY TIME WE TAKE THE FLOOR, WE PRACTICE AND PLAY WITH THE TECHNIQUE, INTENSITY, TOUGHNESS, AND TOGETHERNESS OF A STATE (OR NATIONAL) CHAMPION.

Everyone in the program must believe that championship level practices every single day of the season are the key to success on game day. If they do not demonstrate that belief, then you must continue working to convince them that is true. Then collectively, the team members must roll up their sleeves daily and make that vision a reality. For practice to impact your win-loss record, the players must agree to be and want to be held accountable to and be coached to the highest standards in your class. Certainly, there is no way to measure what your competition is doing in practice. However, if the coach and the players have the mindset that your program’s standards for intensity, execution, toughness, and togetherness are those of a state champion, and you go to work every day to earn the right to feel that you are succeeding, your practices will be exceptionally productive. Your players must believe that the coaches are not helping them if they allow anything less than the championship level.

To see the remaining 11 principles, click here-->Practice Mindset.

For more information about all 130 Ideas to make practice better, click here-->130 Great Ideas

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. Teleseminar interview #5 at the Coaching Toolbox is now live and you can access it here. Our guest is sports psychologist Dr. Brian Goonan and his topic is "Fierce vs. Furious." In the interview Dr. Goonan explains that a "fierce" mindset is an asset to an athlete involved in competition, but that the athlete needs to have mental breaks to maintain that mindset during the active segments of the competition. The extreme mindset he describes as "furious" is counterproductive in that it keeps the athlete at a peak of competitive mental arousal which is impossible to maintain throughout an entire competition. The interview is a 15 minute segment of Dr. Gs ideas on the subject. He will be back to discuss the subject further later in the summer. He has a lot of information that basketball coaches and basketball players will find useful. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. With schools letting out for the summer, we wanted to post our thoughts from The Coaching Toolbox as to the best use of the summer for basketball coaches and players. We realize that both coaches and players have a lot going on in the summer besides basketball, whether or not the coach is a teacher. Coaches have job and personal obligations and most importantly, more time for family time. Players may have other sports, jobs, and need a lot of time just to enjoy themselves with family and friends while having a break from school. In order to maximize the fleeting amount of time available, it is important for both groups to have a plan and some goals in all areas of life heading into the summer with specific time blocked off for the best way to improve as a player--doing individual skill development workouts. Twenty-five days during the summer with a forty minute basketball workout spent intensely working on improving individual skills is a reasonable goal and will make a huge difference in a player's performance next season. Forty minutes of hard and smart work is much more productive than hours of time spent hanging out in the gym. Depending on what your offseason rules allow, we would make skills work the number one priority for use of gym time over camps, leagues, and scrimmages. If you are a select team coach, spend the first 40 minutes of your practice working on drills that improve individual skills. It will help the performance of your team and will help the participants to improve more than anything else you can do. Five on five games are more fun, but the opportunity to improve comes from the hundreds of shots and dribbling repetitions that a player can get in an individual development workout. A player may touch the ball for a few minutes in a game or scrimmage and, if they are fortunate, get off between five and ten shot attempts. After the player spends ten to fifteen minutes on technique, the rest of the workout should be done at a game pace so that those extra shots are as valuable as shots taken in games. Players and coaches, make it a goal do 25 Individual development workouts (for everyone on your team if you are a coach) between the day school lets out and the day it starts next fall--at least it used to start in the fall! As the saying goes, plan your work, then work your plan, and you will see the benefits next basketball season! The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. The Coaching Toolbox is very fortunate that Ed Schilling, former head mens' basketball coach at Wright State University, and an assistant at UMass, Memphis, and with the New Jersey Nets of the NBA did a 14 minute interview with us for our teleseminar series. The interview is live and you can access it here. Coach Schilling currently is the Executive Director for Champions Academy, which is dedicated to improving the individual skills of basketball players through individual development workouts. He trained four 2007 NBA first round draft choices and is currently working with several players who project to be first rounders in 2008! Coach Schillings topic is individual development for point guards. As a player, Ed set single game, season, and career assist records at Miami of Ohio. As a coach, he developed many outstanding point guards. One of his recent grads of Champions Academy is lottery pick and point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies, Mike Conley. Coach also worked with Greg Oden and Carl Landry, so his expertise is not limited to perimeter players. Our interview is 14 minutes long. (By the way, we have decided that is not long enough, so we are expanding their length to be able to provide our visitors with more of the great information that our guests are providing us with.) During the short time that he has, Coach Schilling covers the topics of developing confidence and skills, creating space with the basketball, and how to utilize the moves that the point guard develops to help him or her "run the show." We also have some links to Instructional tapes and DVDs that Coach has produced. Click here to listen to the interview. Our next interview is scheduled to launch on May 19 and is with Jay Wolf who designed the Star Shooter and is a nationally recognized expert on shooting instruction. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.