By Coach Atwood
There is no special time in practice when effort counts more than another time. We –players and coaches- should be giving the best effort we are capable of giving at all times, because that effort and ethic represents who we are to the world. The daily grind of practice is a recurring opportunity for coaches to help develop in student-athletes the consistency of effort generally required of both a successful team, and a successful life. As these principles and ethics are the same for both. At practice, each player is faced with their own daily recurring choice- are you working hard, or are you holding back? As the Coach, if practice is 90 minutes long, I’m watching and evaluating players for all 90 minutes, not just when players are sprinting together.
I see the players I coach around town after each season because the town is very small. Inevitably one or two kids a year will see me somewhere and ask me, “Hey Coach, we going to run a lot this season?” The thing is, there’s a noticeable pattern to who asks me that question. And that pattern has caused me to realize that I have neglected to communicate to these young student athletes my fundamental vision of what a practice session should and should not be, and why. And I’ve failed to instill the idea and goal to make it a personal responsibility to live like an athlete twelve months a year; to stay in good condition, and to show up in good condition on day one of the season.
The short answer to the question, “are we going to run more” is no. I’m not the track coach, and I’m not setting aside valuable and precious practice time to just run back and fourth. The game is too difficult and demanding to waste time just running for the sake of running, and it’s not necessary. There are better alternatives, but it’s up to you as an individual to push yourself from the first minute of practice through the last minute. So if you are a player who is waiting for the sprints portion of practice to push hard, it may not come, and your conditioning will suffer if you’re rarely or never going full speed in practice. If you are a player who is pacing yourself during practice, saving your energy for that brief time in practice dedicated to just running so you can finish the sprints strong, then you don’t get it. You don’t understand. But I take responsibility for that because you are young, and clearly I’ve either failed to teach the basic principle of results being equal to effort, or I’ve failed to motivate you to have the desire to push yourself all the time at practice.
If I was the track coach, then I would be motivated to teach running as a skill. And while I do observe and correct individual movement skills such as jumping and landing, starting and stopping, and change of direction; for the purposes of playing basketball, running is essentially just a necessary ability, not a skill like shooting the ball. As a player, you are either in good physical condition and have the ability to run and run, or you are not. I will structure practice to enhance the conditioning you show up in, but not to take you from way out of shape, to ready to compete for a whole game.
Shame on you if you call yourself a player, but you choose to have a sedentary life style until the season begins. If you start the season with the idea that practicing and playing will get you into shape, you’re taking the easy way, and that always leads to mediocre results. If you choose to do little or nothing about the shape you are in before the season starts, how does that become the coach’s problem to deal with? I think it’s your problem for not being motivated, and it’s not my job to fix it. My job is to deal with the entire team, and I’m not going to focus on the players who are most out of shape.
On any team the student-athletes will show up with a range of conditioning at the beginning of the season. Some stay in good shape all year long, and these players will easily be in excellent game condition for sprinting up and down the court within about two weeks. From day one, these players are able to run hard in all drills, and they can easily finish the limited number of sprints we do run in practice. For them, the daily practice routine easily accomplishes getting them into game playing condition.
Others show up having done nothing or next to nothing to get into shape before the season starts. These players will take something like two months to get into good shape. About the same time the season is close to being over, these kids are finally getting into game shape. I see this happen almost every season with two or three players. And here in lies the pattern I’ve noticed- these are consistently the same players who ask me if I plan to make them run a lot the following season. I admit, at first I thought they were asking me that question because they didn’t want to run. After all, it’s clear from their lack of conditioning that they’ve been avoiding running. But enough of these kids have asked me this question while also suggesting we need to run more in practice that I’ve concluded they expect basketball practice to be where they get into shape. They believe it’s acceptable to show up out of shape and use practice to “fix” that.
There are many conflicting goals that a coach must choose from and plan around during a season. While getting the team into good condition is critical, in the early season getting the team ready to play games is the top priority. The players have to feel confident about what they will be doing on offense and defense. If a handful of players just pushed themselves off the couch, where they’ve been since the School year started, I am not going to modify my practice plans so they can run more. Perhaps I should pull them aside and just have them run off to the side, apart from the rest of the team for 20-30 minutes if they can’t keep up. But I’d rather not.
As a Coach, I expect you to show up in good physical condition on day 1.
The objective of practice is to enhance the conditioning you come into the gym with, not to run and run, and get way out of shape players into game playing condition.
It’s not the objective of practice to help players manage their body weight
Practice is not designed to get you from couch potato, to well conditioned athlete. It’s designed to teach the skills of the game and to prepare the team to compete.
Basketball is an anaerobic sport, requiring the ability to go all out for brief bursts, then to recuperate fast during breaks in the action so you can do it over and over again.
Jogging, or treadmill running, or running 2 miles, or 5 miles, or marathons are examples of aerobic fitness, and are less effective to building anaerobic fitness than sprinting.
Slow running trains you to run slow. Full speed sprinting trains you to run fast.
Every drill the team does requires you to perform at full speed, even if it’s just a few steps, or a quick lateral slide. If you’re not going full speed, you’re cheating yourself by cheating your own conditioning.
This is how players get into game shape without the coach dedicating big chunks of practice time to just running- You show up on day 1 already in good condition. Then you practice hard all the time, every time, and you always hustle. You have pride, self discipline, and you represent yourself like an Athlete.
I posted this a little more than a month before the season starts. You still have time to do something about your level of conditioning. It’s up to you.
Tags: basketball conditioning
