Basketball warm-ups and the beginning of practice
USE 2 BALLS PER PLAYER IN YOUR WARM-UP
Find a way to get more balls at your practice. Have players bring one, ask your administration, have a fund raiser to buy some balls. The more times they touch the ball the better your player will be!
use lots of movement in your warmup
Youth, Junior High, and even High School basketball warm-ups don’t really need to begin with stretching for fifteen minutes. The best warm-up incorporates skill development within a warm-up that gets the body temperature up. Once the body temperature is elevated muscle injuries are less likely to occur. Over stretching can actually cause muscle injuries. After practice is over is a good time for some players to do a little stretching if they feel like doing that before they head to the locker room.
Basketball coaches should make sure there are at least two balls for every player. Maybe do a fundraiser or just put the word out that you need more balls. They could also require each player to bring a basketball for practice. As soon as my players come up from the locker room, they grab two basketballs. Then they start on the basketball sideline and dribble forward to the volleyball sideline which is about 10 to 14 feet. When they get to the volleyball sideline, they then dribble backwards to the basketball sideline. After ten times forwards and ten times backwards, they dribble sideways from line to line ten times each way.
Then the players dribble five laps around the gym clockwise and another five laps counter-clockwise as fast as they can under control with-out running into anybody. All that takes approximately five minutes. They are breathing hard and their body temperature is up so they go straight to the free throw line and shoot free throws for the next five minutes. Practice is ready to start. I like to start practice with one minute of hard ball slaps then form shooting from three feet from the basket. Use all the baskets and shoot everybody at the same time.
Practice will most likely only be as good as your practice plan. I make out elaborate practice plans which we follow down to the minute. We run the clock on all drills and keep score on most of them. I plan on putting a few practice plans on this page so that readers can get an idea about what a practice plan can look like.
