Basketball Drills Steve Nash Midrange Shooting

By Alan Stein, Pure Sweat Basketball (re-posted with permission)

5 P.I.E.C.Es to a Killer Workout

I realize the landscape of youth and high school basketball has changed drastically over the past 20 years and that players don’t really have a true ‘off-season’ anymore. While my prescriptions for each have been severely modified over the last decade, I still choose to divide the calendar year into 3 phases based on the typical high school season in the United States:

1. Off-season: April to August
2. Pre-season: September and October
3. In-season: November to March

In order to maximize workouts during any of these seasons, players need these 5 P.I.E.C.E.’s:

1. Purposeful – The workout must address the movement patterns and specific skills that are actually used when playing. Dribbling 3 basketballs with your eyes closed and standing on one leg is great for YouTube views and is very difficult to do… but it serves absolutely no purpose.
2. Intense – The workout must be done with game-like intensity. You must intentionally leave your comfort zone (physically and/or mentally). Casually shooting with no defender for a couple of hours each day will do very little to improve your in-game shooting.
3. Effective – The workout must produce tangible results. It must be progressive and cause an improvement in the desired effect (if you do a vertical jump program all summer but don’t jump any higher when school starts… the program was obviously not effective). Sweating does not mean a workout was effective. Sweating is not an objective; it is a physiological by-product. Slapping on a weighted vest and dribbling a bowling ball up a hill for 2 hours is exhausting… and will certainly make you sweat… but it will do nothing to make you a better basketball player.
4. Challenging – The workout must push you beyond your current limits. It must be difficult. It must force you to make mistakes. If you do a 30-minute ball-handling workout and never lose the ball… you didn’t get any better. All you did was something you were currently capable of doing. If you can currently make X number of elbow jump shots in 60 seconds; then you need to challenge yourself to make 1 or 2 more.
5. Efficient – The workout must eliminate time fillers. More is not better when it comes to working out. Better is better. You are much better off doing a 45-minute workout that is purposeful, intense, effective and challenging… than going through the motions for 3 hours. Get in, put in quality work, and get out!

I encourage you to make sure you use these 5 P.I.E.C.E.’s in the final month of your off-season program to truly improve performance before school starts.

These 5 P.I.E.C.E.’s make up the backbone of what we teach at the D1 Experience Basketball Camp. NBA skills instructor Drew Hanlen and I show players of all ages and levels exactly what it takes to play college basketball.

The foundation of our philosophy is to show players how to work hard, teach players how to work smart, and inspire players to work consistently once camp is over. Players learn the level of effort required to play college basketball as well as how to work out with the 5 P.I.E.C.E.’s so they can get there.

Alan Stein
Hardwood Hustle Blog
http://www.About.me/AlanStein

These thoughts on clutch performance are from Spencer Wood Icebox Sports Performance Resources.

You can visit his site to learn more from him: Icebox Athlete

According to a study based on professional athletes in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, the following eight traits were found to constitute the ultimate athlete:

1. Ability to work hard and sustain intensity.
2. Competitiveness.
3. Athletic ability.
4. Sacrifice for the team.
5. Coping with criticism, failure, and success.
6. Clutch performance, poise, and focus.
7. Ability to execute game strategy.Passion
8. for the sport and commitment to excellence.

Five of the above traits are mainly mental attributes.

There isn’t a coach in America who would say that mental skills and toughness isn’t critical to clutch performance. But how many coaches devote fifty percent of their time developing mental skills?

Misconception that metal skill and toughness only need to be worked on if there’s something wrong.

We must give our athletes an actual skill set to work on. A crisp definition of what is expected.

Mental Toughness = The Four C’s:

1. Composure.
2. Concentration.
3. Confidence.
4. Commitment.

What happens to the brain under stress?

Perceived threat leads to a fight or flight reaction.

1. It’s important for our athletes to realize that this process is common.
2. Not too many athletes are going to acknowledge they’re nervous.
3. Take time to talk with your athletes about what happens to your mind and body in clutch situations.

Four things occur in clutch situations:

How does this effect performance?

Emotion Arousal (EA):

1. Coming out of the locker room before a game, or coming out of a key timeout in a clutch situation, an athlete’s emotional arousal level increases.
2. As emotional arousal increases, performance potential increases. However at a certain level, emotional arousal reaches a level where performance potential is maxed (as identified by the dotted line in figure 1).
3. Once this level of optimum emotional arousal is passed, performance potential tanks.

4. Different players may perform best at different levels of emotional arousal.
5. Some young coaches pride themselves on their ability to jack up their team without knowing that two of their studs may play better at a level two or three of emotional arousal.
6. Ray Allen for example seems to perform best at a very low emotional arousal level. You could have a player with an emotional arousal level of three who looks like they don’t even care.
7. There is nothing on Earth that you should let take you out of your optimal arousal zone.

Determining a player’s optimal EA level:

1. It is critical to ask the athlete what EA level they think they perform best at.
2. Ask your athletes to think back to the three or four best games of their career, and there will be some continuity to the level of arousal they were at during those performances.
3. Also challenge your players in practice. Manipulate their arousal levels and see at what level they perform the best.
4. Don’t confuse arousal level and intensity. Intensity must always remain high for optimal performance.

Maintaining optimal emotional arousal

1. There is a big difference between finding a players emotional arousal level and maintaining that level.
2. Once an athlete has identified their level, teammates and coaches can help the player reach that level before a game
3. It is up to the athlete to not let anything take them out of their optimal emotional arousal zone.

Mistake Management:

Take out the trash:

130 Great Ideas to Make Your
Basketball Team More Mentally Tough”

Click here for 12 ideas from the e-book

“This is great information that will help any coach to make their team more mentally tough and focused. I found sections 6 and 7 to be helpful to me as well as to our team. “

Brandon Sorrell
Assistant Girls Basketball Coach
Lawrence North (Indianapolis) High School

This article was written by Brian Anglim. Brian has coached basketball at both the high school and college levels. He has some really good articles on his blog and I encourage you to take a look at it.

Coach Anglim has a newsletter that he does not publicize much because it is not on a regular schedule. But, if you are interested in subscribing to it, email me and I will forward your request to him.

Basketball Coaching–Building a Bench

by Coach Brian Anglim

A key factor in the Miami Heat victory over the Indiana Pacers was the weakness of the Pacer’s bench.   Although a bench is generally a product of talent, there are a number of things we can do as coaches that can help develop our team’s depth. I am a big fan of Coach Vogel of Indiana (he got more out of Lance Stephenson that I ever thought possible) but his ability to develop his bench seems to be a chink in his armor. Here are some ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of your bench.

Skill development

Player development is a key emphasis to any basketball program and its influence is even greater in developing depth.  We all work on shooting, passing, and a variety of skills in our practices but to maximize your player development I would encourage coaches to look into more individualized skill work.

For example, your starters played a tough game on the road the night before, have them come to practice 20 minutes late so that you can use this time with your bench players. Another idea I have stolen from NBA coaches, they will take their bench/developmental players and spend 20 minutes prior to game warm ups to do basic skill development workouts.  These players can get in lots of form shots, finishing work, and simple ball handling drills prior to the game with limited space. In an 18 game season that is 6 extra hours of practice time, that can make a real difference to an engaged athlete.

Skill development sessions should be very individualized.  I like working with groups of 1 to 3 athletes per rim. I think for at least 10 minutes per day a player should be getting individual attention from the head coach or one of the assistant coaches. This personal interaction on a daily basis is how we build great players and become positively involved in their lives.

You need to sell players on that investing in themselves can lead to an expanded role within the team and push the team toward on-the-court success. It is this culture that you create.

Strength and Conditioning

A big philosophical change in the last couple of years for me has been my belief in a structured strength and conditioning program. Many coaches see athletic ability at a fixed level that can only improves with age.  Athletic ability can not only be improved, but with a well defined strength and condition program can lead to dramatic changes.

Good coaches take an active interest in performance enhancement in their off-season program but great coaches think of it in a year round manner.  As with skill development, I look to individualize these strength and conditioning program by the needs  and demands put on the player.  For a player who is playing major minutes, it is important that we save their legs and we are looking to maintain their strength levels. A bench player however does not have nearly the same game day demands and we can be aggressive in this program.

If we have a freshman who can only clean 45 pounds, if I were to maintain his strength level within the season what would that really get me? Don’t waste the season to maintain subpar strength/power levels.  We can be aggressive in our approach with that younger player.  Some coaches don’t believe in lifting on game days, but we see it all the time in the NBA and it is appropriate for players that only limited amount of minutes.

In fact it is not uncommon for players playing under a certain number of minutes for a game going through a post game conditioning session.

Selling a program like this might be difficult, but it falls within my philosophy continual growth as individuals and as a team.

Develop Roles for Bench Players

All players have strengths and weaknesses. Create roles for your less talented players that they can excel. This gives them confidence that they can contribute and building that confidence means everything.

We still need to be aware of that player’s weaknesses as well. We need to coach the heck of these players to ensure that they make good decisions with their playing time (ie shot selection and decision making) and focus our skill development sessions to remedy the holes in their game.   We can also make tactical changes within our offenses and defenses to protect them, for example having a player who is a non-shooter always curl cut a down screen.

Use the appropriate offensive and defensive systems for your team

To me this is an extreme option but something I want to mention.  Be aware of the talent, athletic ability, and experience of the players on your floor when you decide what offenses and defenses you might play. If you care constantly changing from zone to man to full court pressure, these changes can be difficult on the fly for a younger player. You might have to play a more passive defense for your less athletic players or you might be able to go the other direction when you have a bench that are more athletes than basketball players.

You can also put your bench players in a “hidden delay game” to minimize their possessions while they are on the floor. For example, you could put them into a zone on defense and have them play motion offense but not allow a shot other than a layup until there have been 10 passes. This lengthens both the offensive and defensive possessions while your other players get a break. I also love the idea of teaching the flex as a secondary offense, it kills clock and often leads to free throws with its inside oriented design.

One final point to leave you with, you need to have confidence in those players and give them a chance to make mistakes and learn from them.  Be sure to give them at least a little bit of time every game and let them know that with continued improvement there role might expand. If you want to build a great bench then you need to believe it first.

As I mentioned in the most recent newsletter, I have been sending out coaching notes and handouts on a weekly basis, if you are interested in being notiefied when i send these out please follow me on twitter @CoachAnglim or on Facebook.