As I researched my old files for my next book, I found the interview below with Raul Jimenez. Raul was one of the coaches with whom I communicated the most during the pre- and early social media days. He even convinced me to visit Bilbao on my first (only) trip to Spain, although we never met in person.
He was one of the first people I emailed when I was hired as a junior-college coach. Sadly, my email was forwarded to his wife who replied to inform me he had passed from cancer a few months previously. We never met in person, and we never were able to work together, as we had discussed.
I completely forgot about our interview, which is from September 2014. Spanish coaches have a clinic every year to remember him, and I figured I would re-publish now.
Raul Jimenez is the head coach of ZTE KK in Hungary’s men’s professional league. He previously has coached in the professional leagues in Spain and with various national teams. He has a brilliant basketball mind, and his blog (link) is a great read. He was gracious enough to take a few minutes during his preseason preparation to discuss some ideas related to his preparation for the upcoming season.
BM: How do you plan your preseason preparation from a player development standpoint?
RJM: Actually our plan started with the postseason work. We gave the players one week off right after the season ended, and we had individual meetings with all of them, those who we planned to keep and also those who would leave, to give them feedback and talk about goals and specific needs in the coaches' opinion and in their own opinion. Then we set a plan for each one of the players, with physical training, nutrition advice, shooting and fundamentals work, plus some key "spacing" situations we were going to keep or introduce during the upcoming season, which we kept practicing in our daily practices.
For the preseason, if we talk about fundamentals, we want to focus in some specific details of our passing and rebounding skills, so we planned this work during the seven weeks we have before the official competition starts. The first 20-30 minutes of every practice we work on those details. We don't have a huge staff but we try to individualize this work.
BM: How do you incorporate strength training into your weekly program in the preseason and during the season?
RJM: Our conditioning coach sets a schedule and we work together to adapt it to the "basketball" needs. Specific sessions at the weight room, and also during on-court conditioning sessions.
BM: How do you organize an annual, weekly, and/or daily program to ensure continual development from the players?
RJM: It is important to involve the players in the process. If they feel that they have control about this kind of work, they will have much better motivation and their adherence to the process will be higher. I want to know what would they like to improve, and we make a deal to go in that direction while improving some other things we believe will help them and the team. We set some goals for the season, and we adapt the work monthly. The plan is flexible and we can vary it if we need to. The coaches work in individual - group practices with the players, and we also have time for them to go and work by themselves on our court.
BM: What type of conditioning do you do during the preseason to prepare for the competitive season?
RJM: We do on-court and (not very often) off-court conditioning (except for the weight lifting with most of our sessions on the weight room). Proprioceptive and balance work is also included in our weekly plan, during preseason and also during the season, with one weekly team session and some individual sessions before team practices (usually 30' before) for those who need some extra work. Regenerative sessions with specific stretching. Cold and hot bath, sauna and ice sauna, massage...
BM: How do you develop better decision-making skills?
RJM: We have drills with different degrees of decision making. Also we work on real game situations. I like to show video, not only with our performance during practice (we record all of them) and games but also from TOP players in game situations. We give our players these clips so they can see how other players make decisions in different situations. I know for some of them this is useful and it's a help for them to "study" the game.
I like the part about involving players in the decision-making process. Strange how this seems like a rarity.