Solving Problems with Drill Design
A good drill aligns the activity with the purpose.
Drills solve a problem. The problem does not have to center on skill development. There are many potential goals in a specific practice or within a practice. Every drill does not have to be the optimal drill for skill development or transfer to the game.
A coach sent a video of a college coach’s drill from social media, asking my opinion. The drill in question was a simple pregame layup drill in which the team had to make a certain number of layups in a row. We did the same drill when I was in fifth and sixth grades. We started every practice by making 20 right-handed and 20 left-handed layups in a row as a team.
The college coach’s explanation was something about concentration. A pregame layup drill is not going to improve the skills of a college player, nor transfer directly to improved finishing in games. Concentration, however, is a different problem to solve. Coaches often search for the best drills to use to start practices to create the right environments. I believe Geno Auriemma and UConn do something similar with a simple layup drill and a certain number of made layups in a row to start practices.
Last season, after a few bad practices, I asked players for input. How could we start practices better? I generally started with our dynamic warmup, which often ended with tag or another fun game, and then I like to use Rabbit as the first drill because it generally starts a practice with energy and competitiveness. I felt this usual start was not working.
The players suggested a more traditional warmup drill, something akin to a three-player weave. Previous coaches, and the other teams for which they played, started practices with almost 30 minutes of these warmup-type drills and five-vs-zero offense.
I chose to incorporate the ideas from my elementary school team, but in full-court drills to incorporate more running, as these conversations occurred around when we had a lengthy break between games and conditioning was a minor concern. I rotated through two or three different full-court layup drills, and the team had to make 50 or 100 layups in a row.
Similar to the college coach, my purpose was concentration. I searched for a drill to solve the problem of starting practices with a better mindset. The layup drills solved this problem.
The coach who sent the drill disagreed. He asked about defense. Pregame layup drills are a #FakeFundamental. Confusion.
Pregame layup drills are a fake fundamental when used as skill development. When teams miss layups in a game, and their coaches spend more time on perfect angle, three-quarter speed layups, the practice is unlikely to improve performance or transfer to better shooting percentages on contested, poor-angle finishes. As Canada Basketball’s Mike MacKay found, poor-angle layups are the most missed shot in (women’s) basketball. We spend hours practicing a different shot than the one attempted during games.
My purpose, and the college coach’s, was not to improve our game layup performance. My purpose was a dose of conditioning, but primarily concentration; I wanted to improve the beginning of practices. The team layup drill with X number of makes in a row appeared to increase team camaraderie, togetherness, and concentration. The drills solved my problem.
This also is the problem when coaches are beholden to theories or another coach’s beliefs. Every situation, every team is different. Coaching is more than motor learning. Coaching is more than direct transfer to the game. There are social benefits to certain activities. There are psychological and physical benefits. These may not transfer directly to game performance. Instead, they may prime players for the next practice activity, which is focused on skill development.
Coaching is not one thing. There are no absolutes. There are no black and white answers. Many coaches chafe at the Fake Fundamentals title, but miss the message from every introduction, which was to question traditional ideas, not to discard them. Think critically and examine your purposes. Do not just switch your mentor’s ideas for a content creator’s ideas, but actually examine, question, study, and think about your purposes for practice activities and the best ways to solve your problems.
Isolated drills are not the enemy; they simply are not the best way to transfer improvements directly to the game. Their use over the last twenty years has been exaggerated as we created a trainer-centered development environment. More time should be spent in more realistic, representative activities, but the greater need is understanding the specific problem before deciding on or designing the activity.
Drills are a tool. They are neither good nor bad. When needing to hammer a nail into a plank of wood, a hammer is the appropriate tool. A hammer is an inappropriate tool when needing to saw the plank of wood in half. Good drills are when the purpose and the activity align; bad drills are when they do not. Fake Fundamentals are when the purpose and activity appear to align, but do not, such as using the pregame layup drill to improve finishing on contested, poor-angle layups.
Determine your purpose and design an activity around the purpose. Drills solve a problem. The first step is knowing the problem you want to solve.