Becoming a basketballcoach Chapter 5: Yearly plan and practise plans, what to do?

Most coaches in the world dont have the luxury to be employed and have a lot of time to prepare the season for the team and thats just a fact. For e new coach its even harder if he/she has nobody to turn to for inspiration and guidance on WHAT to do, WHEN and HOW to do it.

Often when you are a new coach you do a lot of drills in your practises and if you just asked yourself the BIG question WHY I´m I doing this drill, many of the drills would never been used by you since there should always be a reason why you use certain drills and their purpose should go hand in hand with you yearly plan and ages of your players. Ask the question!

Myself I think many coaches try to do too much with the yearly/weekly plans, and to much means that most will not be done. Instead I think especially as a new coach, you should follow a general rule in all areas of basketball and that is "as simple as possible" and do it 100% instead of 60-70% with championship papermateral with 34 pages and 56 diagrams, you see where I`m going with this.

Here is something from my early years;
I was told to take over a boys team and I had seen very little of the team, but my brain started to work overtime directly and a mad great plans for the team, almost made a little book with all the things we where gonna use/do and so on with the team.
I spent hours on this and was extremelly satisfied with my work, I think this was like my third year as a coach or something.
Satisfied with my work I went to first practise with the team and had my great "books" with me in my bag. After some minutes of the first practise, my "great" work was just a waste of time, they wasn`t even near the level I had made them up to be on the paper.........after the practise I threw all of the "books" in the garbage I had done to much and I´m very glad that I realized this is not for them, but here I think most coaches go ahead anyway and that shouldn`t be possible since all clubs should have somebody in charge of the quality of coaches and the teams educational plans for the players.

I have since some years ago myself started working from monthly plans that has general skills on what we will work on with the team, within that general skill, the drills can very and be stationary, to halfcourt, to fullcourt drills of course.

It could look like this:

September                              October                                                              

- Phys (MAQ, footwork)          - Phys (MAQ, footwork)                   

- Offense (1-0, 2-0,3-0)          - Offense (1-0,2-0, 3-0)                

- Defense (on ball, off ball)      - Indi skills (Basketball position)                    
- Teambuilding                       - Defense (on ball, off ball)                                

- Games (1vs1, 2-1, 3-2)       - Games  (1vs1, 2-2, 3-3)                  

* Indi skills= All offense skills done from basketball position.  
* MAQ = Muscle Action Quality my teams physical program (3 times a week with boys 98)

Here you can se the complete yearly plan for my boys born 98 season 2010/2011 (Its in swedish, but if you know that fys= physical, and Spel= games, you will understand)

Some coaches like to time everything in practises, how do you do it?

With a yearly plan like this in place its so much easier to plan the practises and so much easier to stop yourself from cheating in the educational plan for the kids. On educations sometimes this kind of yearly plans and other paperstuff becomes to much for many since its on the level of coaches with one job and that is to coach one or two teams as a profesional and that is not a reality for most living basketball addicts.

I have help many new coaches during the years with this kind of stuff and if you have any questions or need som help in any way just write me and if I can I will help you.

There are many books on the market wich say they can help you as a new coach, but most of them is really just there to make somebody rich and no matter how great they are if you dont have the skills to teach, they wont help much anyways.

Next chapter will be :  
Becoming a basketballcoach " Developing basketballplayers instead of teamplayers"

Chapter 1 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Empty book"

Chapter 2 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Doing wrong when doing right"

Chapter 3 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Will to win is to loud, the kids cant hear you"

Chapter 4 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Dealing with parents and players as a new coach"