Teaching Players How to Push Hard

One of your responsibilities as a coach is to make sure that every player on your roster is pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone.  As we've discussed many times in the past it is outside the comfort zone where a player will increase their chances of making significant improvements.  How do you consistently push your players to their limit without pushing too hard?  A lot of that lies in each player.  Some players just naturally want to get better and will push themselves hard.  Other players are less motivated and need pushing to get up to speed.  Your job as a coach, is to know your team and do what needs to be done for your team to improve.

The best way to do this is to stress competition.  You need to show your kids how valuable competition is and make them thrive in it.  I like to do this in 3 ways:

•  Talk to them in before our first practice.  What I like to tell them is 

"We will play many games this year.  In some we will be losing, in others we will play teams that are faster than us, in others we will play teams that are bigger than us, and still in others we will play teams that are better than us.  Regardless of who we play, I want to make sure that they take our best shot.  I want to always play hard, never play scared, and always be ready to play.  All of that starts in practice."

• Have competitive drills in practice.  Make all drills competitive. If you do layups drills, have the team make a certain number.  I like to have small sided games and have them compete this way also.  Don't make losers run sprints.  Practice should be demanding enough without them.
  
• Verbalize what you want and always remind them.  The first thing I will tell my team is that I want them to compete.  I tell them to work hard in all of the drills and don't be afraid of making mistakes.  I tell them to practice fast and hard.  Faster and harder than they feel comfortable practicing.  The tempo in practice is high but as a coach you need to remember that fast can be sloppy and that too sloppy can mean developing bad habits.  So when I push the players, I tell them fast but not reckless.

By making the practice competitive, and by verbally reminding the players to keep pushing themselves and competing, you hope to establish an environment where the players understand that they need to play hard and compete.