Coming back from COVID19

We stepped onto the outdoor court last weekend as our first session back since March, with current restrictions in Victoria not allowing us indoors but with the ability of groups of 20 to meet outdoors it seemed like a good chance to get the squad on the floor 3 weeks out from ''official'' practice indoors begins. 

I remember training as a youngster on outdoor courts; but these days are long gone, and we didn't come here to listen to glory days stories.

To begin with a couple of things that needed to be factored with outdoor training before we even start to draw up the training plan:

• Time of day: Its winter, its cold and it gets dark early. So a week session at 10am is our best chance with players who work and study till 4pm each day.
• Playing Surface: This really is an easy one, is it safe! but also does it have space for 20 people to function with spacing.
• Equipment: Do we have enough basketballs to avoid sharing, do we have access to toilets and places to wash our hands safely.

The Session

I coach young men, between 17 - 23 yrs old, who want to be competitive, want to challenge not only each other but themselves when they come to training. With the restrictions on contact and the need to re-condition some players who have now had upwards of 9-12 weeks of no organised basketball; it was important this session was light, short sharp drills that got them back into the ''feel of the game''

What We Did

First off we started with an extended warm-up; we always have a dynamic warm-up run by our leadership group, but this session we extended it out to 15 mins to really give every guy a chance to explore any tightness or unused muscles and prepare them. In future sessions we will extend this further to include some base level strength & conditioning. 

We jumped straight into full court ball handling drills. With this age group and the available practice time we wouldn't normally spend a large part of training on these but was good to get the ball in the hands of all the players and get them finding a rhythm and feel.

Form Shooting was a large part of our session, getting players back into correct position. Working off two feet, 1 foot hops and single hand shooting. With Assistant Coaches checking on players technique and positioning. 

Passing & Moving v 0 Breakdowns: With no ability to scrimmage we still wanted to simulate some game movements and have the players interact with each other. Some simple pass and cut, pass - skip - rotate drills into a jump-shot these got them talking finishing, simple post moves or shot fake drives. 

Competitive: Was important we added an element of competition into our session; so our assistant set up a simple dribble relay with a made basket at the end, got them focused and finished with a bit of fun. 

In our final huddle keeping our spacing we again reminded players of the support network around them mentally, updated them on return to training and our plans, and thanked them for staying positive during a tough moment. As a coach I always have at minimum a 3 minute moment with each player to ask them ''How the day was? or how is Family/Work/University Studies'' this was MORE important this time around. 

Taking time to look them in the eyes and check on the players who are currently studying and seeing how they are handling online classes, checking that families are OK (are parents still working etc) and finally those players who were working do they still have a job and how are they feeling about things at the moment.