How to Create a Practice Plan Using Games
Changing over to using games in practice doesn't require much of a shift in how you plan your practices. It's the same as planning any other practice. The steps I use to plan it are below.
1. Have a Goal: What action(s) do you want to emphasize? Maybe it's the entire offense, maybe it's a specific part of the offense.
2. Find Games: What game(s) can I use to emphasize that goal? How can I modify current games to teach the concepts?
3. Have Variety: I look for how I can modify or use different games to give variety. I then look at how I can get into the motion from
different starts. For example running a game that incorporates a BLOB or transition start so it is more game like.
4. Have Drills in Your Pocket: If they are not getting it, have some drills in your back pocket so that you can stop, pull them out,
and teach what is missing.
Organic Coaching with Games
You can also do a little of what I call "organic coaching". In organic coaching, you let the players free play. As they are playing, you assess what they are missing. You then introduce a small sided (1 on 1 to modified 5 on 5) teaching game to work on what they are missing. You can see an example of this in my "mid-season" practice. I do like using organic coaching later in the year when what we need to work on can vary from day to day.
1. Have a Goal: What action(s) do you want to emphasize? Maybe it's the entire offense, maybe it's a specific part of the offense.
2. Find Games: What game(s) can I use to emphasize that goal? How can I modify current games to teach the concepts?
3. Have Variety: I look for how I can modify or use different games to give variety. I then look at how I can get into the motion from
different starts. For example running a game that incorporates a BLOB or transition start so it is more game like.
4. Have Drills in Your Pocket: If they are not getting it, have some drills in your back pocket so that you can stop, pull them out,
and teach what is missing.
Organic Coaching with Games
You can also do a little of what I call "organic coaching". In organic coaching, you let the players free play. As they are playing, you assess what they are missing. You then introduce a small sided (1 on 1 to modified 5 on 5) teaching game to work on what they are missing. You can see an example of this in my "mid-season" practice. I do like using organic coaching later in the year when what we need to work on can vary from day to day.
Sample Motion Offense Practice Plans
Below are links to several actual games based practice plans I used last year. One is an early season practice, one is a mid-season plan, and the final is a late season plan. Hopefully these give you a sense of how we used a games based approach to teach motion.
Early Season
This was our fourth practice of the year. It was dedicated to installing some offensive principals early. We also put in some set stuff along with the motion offense.
http://bit.ly/1LzohVE
Mid-Season
This was our 21st practice of the year. This was a more typical practice with both offense and defense being worked on. Also, this practice lets you see how we use short 5 on 5 games to dictate what we work on with our players.
http://bit.ly/1MlG5FB
Late Season
This is one of the final practices of the year. Usually practices were shorter than 2 hours at the end, but this one did go long. We did a lot of half court work to kind of polish our offense for the final games of the year.
http://bit.ly/1MEzZwN
Early Season
This was our fourth practice of the year. It was dedicated to installing some offensive principals early. We also put in some set stuff along with the motion offense.
http://bit.ly/1LzohVE
Mid-Season
This was our 21st practice of the year. This was a more typical practice with both offense and defense being worked on. Also, this practice lets you see how we use short 5 on 5 games to dictate what we work on with our players.
http://bit.ly/1MlG5FB
Late Season
This is one of the final practices of the year. Usually practices were shorter than 2 hours at the end, but this one did go long. We did a lot of half court work to kind of polish our offense for the final games of the year.
http://bit.ly/1MEzZwN