Elevate, Compete, and Condition All at Once

"The only time at our practices that we make them line up and run is lack of effort. Every other drill, we go hard,"

Associate Head Coach, Chris Dailey, Connecticut Women's Basketball -- Click Here for full Article

We understand how important conditioning is to a team. We also know how important skill development can be for teams. Whether it is the off-season or the in-season, there will likely come a day when you sense a little frustration at the conditioning and skill level of the players. And we know how it feels to be frustrated as a coach because fatigue is setting in on our players or certain skills need to be enhanced.

Lots of conditioning at the high school level and below happens at the end of practice with players shooting free throws and running for misses. We think this will help the teams game-time conditioning. Actually, most of the time it doesn't. And when it doesn't, that can cost teams strategy time, not to mention  lost practice time, and concerns about preparing the team properly to compete. But don't worry! We have created this blog series to identify some necessary elements to combining effective conditioning drills with a ball.

We know you have good conditioning drills and good skills drills, but lets combine the two for maximum benefit for the team. Well, before we move to fast, here are three elements that can transform conditioning drills into some of the most beneficial time in the gym.

1. Time - each drill needs to have an element of time for the action to simulate the game. Eventually the clock stops in the game so we have to evaluate a drill for time too.

2. Score - in a game situation the team is competing. Trying to do their best, improve from their mistakes, and ultimately win

3. Purposeful - running is important, but in basketball that running needs to be purposeful and then the benefits multiply from conditioning to skill development to team building and more.

Add these three elements to you conditioning drills and the frustration will ease just a bit as you know you are developing your players and conditioning them too.

Here is sample drill from the drill book we offer in our store.