Basketball Recap January
After the Winter Break I thought that progress that we had was quite minimal but after having a short talk with Coach Praneeth both Ben and I realised that we had improved a lot more than we had thought both individually and together. Personally I was able to improve my shooting form as mentioned before and succeeded fully in progressing my shot to one hand whilst keeping it as consistent as possible. This new shooting form will eventually become more and more natural as time passes and I play more. Shooting was not the only aspect that I focused on but I still practiced my ball handling by myself as I was told to by my Coach. If I only practiced my ball handling once a week when we have training together my progress would be very minimal, compared to working on my ball handling for 25 minutes every day with drills that I would say have a medium difficulty and then working on a 15 minute ball handling drill with both Ben and my Coach which I would consider harder as we are pushed more and pushed more into situations that are a lot more game like.
An example of a medium level difficulty drill that I would do by myself would be:
100 x Normal Crossovers
75 x Through Crossovers (between the legs)
50 x Behind the Back Crossovers
50 x Cross, Through, Behind the Back Crossovers
1 minute of Double Pounds (one ball in both hands and pound as to bounce the ball up to shoulder level whilst remaining control) – 20 seconds , Alternate Pounds (like the double pounds but alternate the bounce of the two different basketballs, meaning when one ball is up one is down) -20 seconds , Low Dribbles (Dribble the ball as low as possible whilst maintaining control) – 20 seconds
Practicing combination dribbles
An example of a harder difficulty drill that I would do with Coach Praneeth and Ben:
3 sets x 1 minute of Double Pounds (one ball in both hands and pound as to bounce the ball up to shoulder level whilst remaining control) – 20 seconds , Alternate Pounds (like the double pounds but alternate the bounce of the two different basketballs, meaning when one ball is up one is down) -20 seconds , Low Dribbles (Dribble the ball as low as possible whilst maintaining control) – 20 seconds. (As a warm up)
Tennis ball drills- (Dribbling one ball with a tennis ball in the other hand- An example would be for crossovers, you keep a basketball in one hand a tennis ball in the other and start dribbling the ball in one hand, then bounce the tennis ball, crossover the basketball and snatch the tennis ball with the hand u crossed over the ball with. You have to maintain control of the basketball as this is the most important part. This drill is used to practice how the off hand should work during a game, as the off hand should fend off the defenders whilst you dribble, The rhythm for the drill is Bounce, Cross, Snatch repeat.)
- 3 x 20 reps – Bounce, Crossover, Snatch
- 3 x 20 reps – Bounce, Through, Snatch
- 3 x 12 reps- Bounce, Behind, Snatch
After we do these drills we normally do one more drill that can vary from bouncing the ball over a cone to practice the float dribble to practicing dribbling and maintaining control whilst taking contact from a foam roller.
After the dribbling drills, Ben and I practice drills for footwork, dribbling combinations, finishes for layups, shooting and we normally finish with a 1v1 where Ben and I get to have some competitive play and use the new things we have learnt in an actual situation. Occasionally Coach Praneeth joins us and we play king of the court.
Coach has made it apparent to Ben and I that we need to practice more on our Behind the Back crossovers and more versatile dribbles so that we can become more unpredictable and diversify our handling abilities.
Ben and I will continue training every week with Coach Praneeth, we also plan to start doing personal fitness at Ben’s Home Gym as we now know that we also have to get physically stronger outside of the game of basketball.
Within this CAS post I demonstrate these Learning Outcomes:
LO1
LO2
LO4
LO5
Photos to be added.