The Balance Required for Improving your Game

Here at That Basketball Life we have spent a lot of time discussing drills that can be used to help improve your basketball game.  There are a ton of drills for dribbling, shooting, agility, defense and all the rest of the good stuff.  What I haven't spent a lot of time doing is discussing how you can incorporate all of the drills into a useful plan to help take your game to the next level.  In order to do this you need to incorporate a plan that not only teaches you how to use the skills but also when to use them.  

The "when" is done with the mind processing information.  At first your mind will be slow to process this information as you will spend more time thinking but eventually the thinking will become reactive and instinctive.  To nurture this process, you need to be involved in battles against other players.  I love small sided games (SSG) for this reason.  Going 1v1 or 2v2 or even going 3v2 and learning how to capitalize on the advantage are all invaluable ways of learning how to make the "when to use" process as instinctive as possible as quickly as possible.

In essence what players aspiring to get better need to remember is that spending hours at the gym alone sharpening skills is always a good thing but it's not enough.  There's a progression required that players need to take advantage of.  The progression is as follows:

1. Practice a skill by yourself - whatever the skill may be, use some time by yourself to get your body and mind used to the moves your trying to learn.  Solo reps are the best way to get comfortable with a move.
2. Practice learned skill in a SSG - once you learn the skill go out and try it in a semi controlled environment with an opponent providing resistance.  The resistance will allow you to encounter situations that you will confront in a game and will give you the opportunity to figure out how you can counter.  When playing in an SSG it is best to play against a person of equal or better skill but it does not matter if you can't find one.  If a 14 year old can only find his 8 year old brother to practice against then this is better than nothing.
3. Pick up games/Scrimmage games - this is the point where you can apply your skills in a game like environment without the risk of having your coach come down on you if the skill being practiced is not perfected yet.
4. Actual games - In order to try a move in an actual game you will need to feel pretty confident with that move and any counters you might need depending on the resistance you see.

In summary, I've been guilty of focusing way too much on the solo efforts and not enough on the SSG's and the pickup games a player needs to sharpen his skills.  This will change as the next few posts will focus on SSG's to help sharpen some of the most common skills in basketball.