10 Proven Teaching Methods for Coaches (Part 1 of 2)

"Productive coaches spend 75% of their time teaching the sport to their players and the other 25% of the time coaching."

1. Understand Your Passion For Basketball...First.
Before jumping into coaching, coaches first must understand their passion for the game. Having a high level of passion for basketball tremendously influences your energy, creativity and ability to motivate players. Passion is contagious. If one player, one assistant coach or you come to practice excited and fired up, that emotion and passion easily is passed onto every other member of the team.

2. Setting The Stage For Teaching.
Prior to the first practice, meet with your athletes and explain your role as a coach and teacher of basketball. Let them know your purpose is to help improve their athletic skills. Impress upon them that you care about them as people and that you are concerned about their lives even beyond athletics. Feeling cared about makes a player more coachable- effort and concentration increase. If you care enough about them, they'll walk through walls for you. Part of you caring is to work through players' mistakes. Tell them mistakes are part of the learning process and the only true mistakes are ones of lack of effort or concentration- both of which are easily corrected.

3. The Importance Of "WHY"!
Don't assume players know why you are asking them to practice a certain technique or to perform a skill drill. Explain how everything has a positive effect on their ability to play. Be as detailed as possible.

4. Fundamentals First, Then Complex.
Know the fundamentals of the sport you teach. This enables you to design practice for your players' appropriate skill level. It also becomes easier to assist an athlete who cannot perform a certain skill. After grasping the fundamentals, players move on to practice drills focusing on more than one skill at a time. Don't expect to each complex basketball skills to players that have not mastered the basics. 

5. Use The WHOLE-PART-WHOLE Method.
In anything you do- offense, defense, showing film or diagramming plays- this method is priceless. It is often necessary to teach skills in parts or steps. Once again, in-depth knowledge of fundamentals gives you an advantage. Teaching a skill in part keeps the player motivated because he or she is forming a mental checklist for performing the skill correctly (educators refer to this as "task-analysis"). Moving from one step to the next puts the focus on process and progress, which allows you to praise the player for grasping a skill and working with the player in areas that need more practice. A good barometer to know if a player is mastering a certain skill is to see if that player is teaching the skill to another teammate.