Skill Development

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Basketball on the Edge – Why Do We Think Physical Punishment is a Good Teaching Tool in Sports? by John O’Sullivan @CTGProjectHQ

Team Sprints

Very interesting article about why using physical punishments like running sprints or doing push-ups may not be the best way to improve the performance of our athletes. Check it out and see if you agree or disagree…

Click here to read the article by John O’Sullivan.

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Basketball on the Edge – Get More From Pick-up Basketball – Vintage Edition

Pickup Basketball

When playing pick-up basketball whether that be at the local rec center, your school’s open gym, or the playground (becoming rarer every year) how can that time out on the court result in maximum improvement? Here are tips that will help you get more out of pick-up games.

1. Don’t call fouls – ever!

Why shouldn’t you call fouls? It makes you tougher. It makes you go to the basket stronger. It teaches you to finish through contact. You don’t want to be the whiny “foul guy (or girl)” on the court. I never called a foul in a pick-up game after junior high. I even refused fouls when opponents would give them to me (That may have got in their head and made them play me less aggressively, who knows).

2. Play a different position.

If you are a guard, take your opponent inside and work on your post-up game. If you are a big man, spend some time on the perimeter setting your teammates up with nifty passes. If you are a pass-first point guard, be a little selfish and work on creating your own shot for a change. Work on skills that expand your game.

3. Run the floor hard on every possession.

No matter what the level of competition, you can always get something out of a pick-up game by running the floor. Push yourself to run hard on every change of possession. This is a great opportunity to work on your conditioning while playing basketball. Don’t waste it by basket hanging or not getting back on defense. Develop the habit of outrunning the opposition now and during your season you’ll score a couple of easy baskets each game while preventing several easy baskets at the other end. That could be the difference in winning or losing a meaningful game.

4. Work on your weaknesses.

Not a great ballhandler? Bring the ball up court in pick-up games. Need to become a better rebounder? Crash the boards every time a shot goes up. You’re strictly a jump shooter? Look to drive to the basket. You get the idea. Use pick-up games to get better and expand your skill set.

5. Do the opposite.

Use your weak hand as much as possible. Try to dribble with your weak hand while bringing the ball up court. Finish at the rim using only your weak hand. Make passes with your weak hand. Look for chances to use your weak hand whenever possible.

Try these 5 tips the next time you get into a pick-up game and try to improve your skills. These tips are especially important if you are playing in a game where you are one of the best players and the competition is not quite as good as you. If you’re playing against great competition and there’s a long wait to get back on the court, you may have to play to your strengths a little more. Just don’t waste the chance to get better by going through the motions. Be purposeful in your play!

Basketball on the Edge – Elite: The Most Overused Word In Basketball by Ganon Baker

The Elite

Stop selling “Elite” and start selling “Development”. That’s a quote from Matt King of USA Basketball and CCC Stars. In this article Ganon Baker shares his advice on what it takes if you truly want to be ELITE in basketball or any of your endeavors.

Click here to read the article by Ganon Baker

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Basketball on the Edge – Can You Get 1% Better Every Day? – Vintage Edition

1% Better

How can my son or daughter get better and make the team next year? How can they go from being a bench player to a starter? How can they go from being a starter to being the best player on their team? These are questions I hear from parents all the time. There is no one magic bullet that will suddenly transform your young child into a superstar with multiple college scholarship offers in hand, but I have recently come across a concept that is so simple in its approach that any player can do it and get better.

What is this concept? It is called Kaizen. (If you want to read the history of where the term came from you can read about it here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen) In very simple terms Kaizen means “continuous improvement”, but what does that mean from a basketball perspective and how can your child apply it to become a better basketball player?

Sustaining an effort is the most important thing for any enterprise. The way to be successful is to learn how to do things right, and then do them the same way every time. Over the length of a season, a correlation always appears between great effort and great overall numbers. It may not show from one game to the next, but in the long run superior effort is reflected in the win column. – Pat Riley

Get 1% better every day! Sometimes the road ahead of a young player can look very daunting. Other players are much more skilled, or stronger, or faster. How can a young player “jump” a level and really improve? Help your child make continuous 1% daily improvement their goal.

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens — and when it happens, it lasts.” —John Wooden

How do you help your young player implement the concept of Kaizen into their basketball training? Have your child ask them self this question every single day: What’s one small thing I can do today that would make me a better basketball player?

What does that look like on a daily basis? Pick a reasonable amount of time for your young player’s age. (Start small, 10 minutes a day. After a while they can add time depending on their age, motivation, and desire to improve.) Then, simply practice a particular skill for that set amount of time each day. Let’s say your child wants to be a better ball handler this coming season. If they spend 10 minutes handling the ball EVERY day for the next 10 weeks until their official practices start they will be better. They key to Kaizen is the daily continuous effort that yields small 1% gains.

The Kaizen approach to improving your game completely breaks down the big, overwhelming goals into small daily increments. Getting 1 % better encourages action. The small successes a young player experiences compound on each other and start building momentum, which leads to taking bigger and bigger actions, (like adding minutes to their daily practice time).

In addition, one of the key components of Kaizen is that there is no magic bullet that will suddenly make them a great player. Change comes through small, continuous improvement. Instead of wasting time searching for the miracle that will change everything, Kaizen helps a young player direct their attention to their daily workout and reminds them: “You already know what you need to do. Get to work and find small ways to improve along the way.” This is a great message for your young player to hear and internalize, especially when it doesn’t always come from you, the parent nagging them to practice every day. Once their daily workout is in place intrinsic motivation should take over.

Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. —Jim Rohn

Finally, Kaizen isn’t a “one and done” approach to basketball training. It’s a process of continual improvement. Your child will never “arrive” as a basketball player with Kaizen, so the temptation to sit back and relax once they’ve seen a bit of improvement is reduced.

Success isn’t owned, it’s rented. And the rent is due every day. – JJ Watt

Start getting 1% better today!

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Basketball on the Edge – Do Our Kids Play Too Many Games? – Vintage Edition

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Youth basketball today has shifted its focus from player development and skill building towards a model that emphasizes 5 on 5 full court games from a very early age. Young players spend relatively little time training or getting involved in unstructured short squad “pick-up” play compared to players of past generations. Today, kids as young as second grade start playing on travel and AAU teams. Typically these teams may practice once a week and then play 4 or 5 games in a weekend. The overemphasis on playing and winning 5 on 5 full court games leads to many problems regarding the development of young players.

This is the complete opposite of the ideal player development balance. Young players should be training and practicing far more often than they play in a 5 on 5 game. Instead, they spend about one hour at practice a week and then play several hours of 5 on 5 games. That ratio should be reversed. Young players should be practicing more both with their team and on their own including playing more short squad pick-up games that give them the opportunity to get more touches of the ball and play against players of different ages. Not only should they be practicing basketball more than playing it, they should also be involved in other sports. Until they hit puberty, specialization in basketball shouldn’t even be considered.

Here are some problems that result from the overemphasis on full court 5 on 5 games for young players.

1. Fundamental skill development is sacrificed.

Young players first need to develop the skills necessary to be successful in a 5 on 5 game before they are thrown out on the court to compete. Youth coaches are so often focused on winning that players are typecast into positions and never train to become complete players. The “tall” kid who never grows after 6th grade and has only stood on the block for his entire basketball career needs an opportunity to become an all around player. The ratio of games to practices is about 6 to 1 right now. That should be reversed to properly develop our young players.

Here is a quote from Kobe Bryant talking about how growing up in Europe helped him develop his basketball skill set. “I was lucky to grow up in Italy at a time when basketball in America was getting messed up with AAU shuffling players through on strength and athleticism. I missed all that, and instead I was taught extreme fundamentals: footwork, footwork, footwork, how to create space, how to handle the ball, how to protect the ball, how to shoot the ball.” Obviously Kobe is strong and athletic too, but he developed great fundamentals at a young age. That is hard to do if all a young player does is play 5 on 5.

Kids simply don’t get enough touches in a 5 on 5 game to improve dramatically. During the course of the game a player who is not the primary ballhandler may have the ball for less than a minute. How much better can you get in that short period of time? Not much. More short squad 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 games give players more touches under game conditions. Kids don’t play enough pick-up basketball anymore so sometimes we as parents and coaches need to provide time for that type of unstructured play in our practices.

2. Too many games lead to overuse injuries and burnout.

There is mounting evidence that specializing in one sport at a young age can lead to injury and burnout. Learning proper fundamentals and how to train can reduce the frequency and severity of injuries. The opportunity to learn is reduced when players are only playing 5 on 5 games.

“There are lots of forces here, and not a lot of hard statistics on it,’’ said Dr. Mininder Kocher, associate director of the division of sports medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Kids 12 and under, both boys and girls, are still in their growth stages. Their growth plates are still open. Their bone and soft tissue biomechanics are different than a 14- or 16-year-old. They’re also still developing neuromuscularly — balance, coordination.’’
Beyond the potential physical fallout of early specialization is the psychological and emotional toll on young athletes who feel pressured to perform at high levels, says Brooke de Lench, an advocate for youth sports reform.
“Parents are more intense, pushing kids more at an early age, than they were 15 years ago,” says de Lench. That’s when the Concord mother established the MomsTeam Institute, a watchdog resource for parents of “sports-active” children.

Source http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2014/10/24/burnout-and-injury-concerns-bubble-more-young-athletes-specialize-earlier-and-earlier/RxdKauKu9KHy3iNFB3waMJ/story.html

Allow, and in fact encourage, your young player to play multiple sports to develop their overall athleticism. Your child will be healthier and happier with their sport(s) in the long run.

3. Players don’t develop leadership and people skills.

Parents and coaches organize everything for kids in today’s world. Kids need more opportunities to pick teams, make their own rules, and then enforce those rules with each other. Some young players become leaders in these situations and get everyone on the same page. Kids learn to navigate and negotiate with other players. Was that a foul or not? You have to stand up for yourself or one of your opponents may try to take advantage of you. These skills don’t develop when adults set and enforce the rules. In sports and life you have to be able to make decisions, have confidence, and deal with lots of different people. Pick-up basketball helps young players incorporate those skills into their game and more importantly their life.

4. Playing with older players makes you better.

This is huge for me personally. I spent a ton of time growing up playing against older kids in my neighborhood. As I got to be 13 or 14 I went to the park and played against high school players, college kids, and adults. Those older kids and adults might not have been the best basketball players, but they were bigger, faster, and stronger than me. They didn’t want some kid scoring on them or stopping them on defense. I learned a lot of little subtleties of the game in those environments: how to protect the ball, how to use my entire body to defend, how to get my shot off quicker, how to play through contact and many more. As I got older, I never called fouls in pick-up games. I wanted to push myself to score despite the contact that would have other players calling “ball”.

Young players today mostly play against kids their own age. They never have to make the adjustments to playing with older kids and adults that I had to make. Find ways to help your young player get into pick-up games of any kind with older players. The experience they gain will be invaluable in their development as a complete player.

5. Nobody plays for hours at a time anymore.

Young players today play in a regulation 5 on 5 game and maybe play half to two thirds of the game. The game lasts about an hour or so and then they wait for their next game. I loved to play for hours at a time. My friends and I would play 1 on 1 to a hundred. I’d be the first guy at the park and the last to leave. I played when I was fresh and I played when I was exhausted. In an organized 5 on 5 game coaches control how many minutes kids play and as I said earlier nobody gets enough touches. The best way to improve is to have a ball in your hand. A one hour 5 on 5 game simply doesn’t provide enough opportunities to touch the ball and get better.

5 on 5 games can play a role in the growth of a young basketball player, especially if they have a good coach that is focused skill development rather than winning. However, practice/training time and short sided pick-up games should be emphasized over 5 on 5 play for those young players that have yet to reach puberty. How do we know who is going to be tall, fast, or strong at age 8 or 9? The answer is, we don’t. Therefore, as youth basketball parents and coaches it is our responsibility to flip the script and deemphasize playing and winning 5 on 5 games in favor of more skill development training and short squad pick-up games.

Click here to register for one of our upcoming programs!

Sign up now to get a “Head Start” on your competition with our free basketball tip of the day delivered straight to your inbox. Click below, enter your email and we’ll also send you our E-Book, “Mental Toughness, Improve Your Brain – Improve Your Game”.

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Addicted to Getting Better - On and Off the Court