We have an on going debate in my school, my home, and amongst all my coaching friends and colleagues. The topic is the multisport athlete. The points of contention always seem to be what is the goal of sports at certain levels, how and when should you specialize and whether the nature/history of community dictate how the sport is managed. There are lots of issues but you can see why people have varying opinions.
Let me start by saying I was a dual sport athlete. Up until I was 17 I competed at reasonably high levels in basketball and swimming. Once in high school I limited my swimming to outside of the my high school basketball season and trained year round for basketball (this limited my opportunities but I swam because I was good at it, not because I wanted to be an Olympic athlete). Also growing up I tried a little baseball, soccer, and volleyball in competitive leauges. While doing things like sking, jogging, and a variety of sports recreationally.
I'm not interested in debating the finer points of if, when, and how you should sport sepcialize. Everyone has to make their own decisions. I am going to say if you want to compete in leagues with competitive teams that are producing high level athletes, its only fair to your kids to do the same things. That being said to create atheletes that perform at a high level we should follow what the science tells us, not what worked for some group, some time in the past.
So what do we know scientifically speaking:
Prior to Age 10 kids should play a variety of sports. The point of which is develop basic phsyical attributes and motor skills. This should be done through games and activity based learning. They should play a variety of sports every week doing each a couple of times with no one sport going for more than 6-12 weeks consecutively.
Between the Ages of 10-14 young athletes should play complitmentary sports (activities with similar movements and requisite general motor skills). They should begin training with sport specifc activities and select a prefered sport. This sport should have a high intensity training period lasting 20-30 and they should train 3-4 times per week for this sport, in addition to other sports activities. 75% of the their time should be spent training skills and physical attributes with 25% in actual preparation for competitive games/competitions.
Between the ages 14-18 (the high end range of kids opportunities in our area) kids should be sport specialised. They should be training 6-9 times per week during high intensity training periods in that sport. These periods should occur twice a year and total 42 weeks. Training should be 50% skills and phsyical attirbutes and 50% compettion specifc skills. Exercises and training should be geared towards their sport specialization.
That is science of it. I know these numbers may or may not work in individual settings. I also know that if your goal is not high performing athletes these targets are not needed. I would like to say again: if the goal of your program is to give kids a place and chance to play, you can do that without putting kids up against athletes who are training specifically to be high performance. Telling kids its ok to do less and just play more, while then making them compete with high performing sport specialized athletes is setting the kid, your coach and your program up for failure.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
We do in fact have an offense . . .
The title is in response to a lot of the people that see us play and don't believe we're in fact teaching anyone anything on offense. Trust me we do. My favorite moment was year with our boys playing the best team in the province (at any level). After the game a local official said: "Your kids have to do something other then one guy dribbles and passes to the other guy to shoot it. There are guys on the floor watching those two guys play."
It was true we didn't execute very well and the only two kids who can compete against a team at that level ended up being the ones who could get open and get most of the shots. The point being I still felt we were running offense, our other kids just weren't skilled enough to run our stuff against them. We got open shots (or at least as open as we were getting when compeltely out matched). Isn't that what offense does.
As far as I'm concerned (and I've been wrong before, more frequently when my wife is present) offense is simple. You are trying to get someone a shot they can make. What makes offense complicated is lack of skills. If you can't shoot or people have to shoot from a certain area or range then suddenly you have to do all sorts of crazy things to get people the ball in those places. My feeling is that if we can shoot it, then all we have to do is beat someone one and one.
Once someone is beaten 1 on 1 with a cut, post up, mismatch off a screen, dribble drive, etc . . . then someone is getting an open shot. If no one helps then we get a layup. If someone helps late we get free throws and/a layup. If help is early then somone is open and by moving the ball someone should get an open shot.
Our offense basically is a lot of rules/concepts about spacing and movement to make it difficult for teams to help. We look to score by relying on individual skills. If we win then it is because we had better talent or we worked our but off defensively. If we lose its because we weren't better than their defense and our d wasn't good enough to get us the win by itself.
I know that there are many who feel the job of the coach is to put their kids in the best situation to win. Buld your system around the talent you have, blah. blah, blah . . . I'm coaching high school aged kids still learning to play the game. Most of them will play after school only in an informal or recreational way. Do I want their basketball experience for the rest of their life to be: go set a post screen and seal??? I want kids who can play. A kid who can get out and run with anyone and be able to shoot, attack, pass from all positions.
We have an offense. It is teaching kids to put themselves in situations where they and their teammates can use the skills they train to use. Why does it have to be more complicated then that. You can't do much better then an open shot can you???
It was true we didn't execute very well and the only two kids who can compete against a team at that level ended up being the ones who could get open and get most of the shots. The point being I still felt we were running offense, our other kids just weren't skilled enough to run our stuff against them. We got open shots (or at least as open as we were getting when compeltely out matched). Isn't that what offense does.
As far as I'm concerned (and I've been wrong before, more frequently when my wife is present) offense is simple. You are trying to get someone a shot they can make. What makes offense complicated is lack of skills. If you can't shoot or people have to shoot from a certain area or range then suddenly you have to do all sorts of crazy things to get people the ball in those places. My feeling is that if we can shoot it, then all we have to do is beat someone one and one.
Once someone is beaten 1 on 1 with a cut, post up, mismatch off a screen, dribble drive, etc . . . then someone is getting an open shot. If no one helps then we get a layup. If someone helps late we get free throws and/a layup. If help is early then somone is open and by moving the ball someone should get an open shot.
Our offense basically is a lot of rules/concepts about spacing and movement to make it difficult for teams to help. We look to score by relying on individual skills. If we win then it is because we had better talent or we worked our but off defensively. If we lose its because we weren't better than their defense and our d wasn't good enough to get us the win by itself.
I know that there are many who feel the job of the coach is to put their kids in the best situation to win. Buld your system around the talent you have, blah. blah, blah . . . I'm coaching high school aged kids still learning to play the game. Most of them will play after school only in an informal or recreational way. Do I want their basketball experience for the rest of their life to be: go set a post screen and seal??? I want kids who can play. A kid who can get out and run with anyone and be able to shoot, attack, pass from all positions.
We have an offense. It is teaching kids to put themselves in situations where they and their teammates can use the skills they train to use. Why does it have to be more complicated then that. You can't do much better then an open shot can you???
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)