Practice Makes Perfect: 10 Training Tips

Whether you're a young player still learning the game, a college athlete attempting to turn pro, or a coach looking to help out their team, you should always be on the search for new basketball training tips to improve your game.

Below I'll share with you 37 important basketball training tips that will help you elevate your game to the next level.

Let's get started...

1. Always Have a Workout Plan There is nothing more important than having a plan for what you want to accomplish every time you step into the gym. This requires that you've spent time evaluating your strengths and weaknesses and you understand what areas of your game you should be focusing on.

• ​What shooting drills do you want to use?

• ​How many shots do you want to take?

• ​Do you need to work on your ball handling?

The answers to all these questions should be clear to anyone who looks at the workout you have planned for the day. Players can list their workouts on an electronic device like their phone or iPad, or be 'old school' by using traditional printed out paper with a pen to track your results (which I prefer). Having a plan will allow you to stick to a schedule and be efficient. You know exactly what to do and you go in and do it.

2. Treat your workouts like doctors appointments Similar to how people schedule doctor's appointments and work commitments, players must schedule their basketball training workouts too. Because if you don't schedule them, they probably won't happen. Schedule your basketball workouts into your calendar at the start of the week and then hold yourself accountable for going to them. How many times have you planned on working out but then other stuff just kept popping up?

• ​A friend asks you to hang out...

• ​You lose track of time while playing video games...

• ​You're busy watching on a TV series

And then by the time you look at the clock, it's too late to work out so you just forget about it and say "Oh well. I'll do it tomorrow". This can't happen if you want to develop as a basketball player. You have to make workouts a priority if you want to be successful. 3. Shooting is the most important skill in basketball Players must understand this. When you're in the gym, a lot of your workout time must be spent developing your ability to shoot the basketball. Every other skill is secondary to shooting. In the type of basketball that is being played today, it's very hard to receive significant minutes on the court at higher levels if you can't knock down an open shot consistently from the perimeter. Sure, there are players who make it all the way to the NBA or WNBA who aren't great shooters, but they're often either 7 foot tall or have elite athleticism most of us couldn't dream of possessing. To give yourself the best chance for success, focus on shooting. Your goal should always be to become the best shooter on the team.

4. Elite shooters make 1,500 shots per week Forget about all the parents on Instagram claiming their 12-year-old makes 1,000 shots every single day... Your goal should be 1,500 made shots per week. Here’s the simple chart I refer to:

• ​Elite Shooter = 1,500 made shots per week

• ​Great Shooter = 1,000 made shots per week

• ​Poor Shooter = 500 made shots per week

“Only 1,500 a week!?” I’ve had a lot of coaches say to me… If you also think this number is low, I want you to remember how many other commitments players have…

• ​School

• ​Homework

• ​Employment

• ​Team Practices

• ​Games

• ​Other sports

• ​Friends

• ​Etc

All the time these commitments require can really add up! Let’s crunch the numbers to see how much time 1,500 shots a week takes… Assuming a player makes one game-like shot every fifteen seconds (4 made shots per minute)… Good - 500 made shots would take 125 minutes = 2 hours and 5 minutes. Great - 1000 made shots would take 250 minutes = 4 hours and 10 minutes. Elite - 1,500 made shots would take 375 minutes = 6 hours and 15 minutes. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask of a player, does it?

5. Always keep a detailed shooting log I first started advising players to start tracking their made shots after reading a terrific article on shooting coach Dave Hopla. Dave tracks every single shot he takes… and regularly shoots 98%. Incredible, right? In fact, you'll find it hard to find any great shooter that doesn’t meticulously track their makes and misses when working on their shooting. So why don’t more youth and high school players do it? I have absolutely no idea! To me, it’s an absolute must if a player plans on improving their shot. Here are 5 quick reasons why tracking shots will make you a great shooter:

1. ​You cannot improve what you don't measure.

2. ​It makes every single shot important.

3. ​Players can set shooting goals and commitments.

4. ​Players will see improvements.

5. ​Players will find out their weak shooting areas.

6. Perfect your shooting technique As shooting is the most important skill in basketball, it's important for all players to develop a fundamentally sound, consistent, and repeatable shot. And the sooner a player can develop this, the better. It's much faster and easier for players to improve when they're using the correct shooting technique. Here are the 10 steps players must follow:

1. ​Shot preparation

2. ​Hand placement on the ball

3. ​Balanced base

4. ​Feet direction (the turn)

5. ​Consistent shot pocket

6. ​Eyes on target

7. ​Wrinkle the wrist

8. ​Elbow under the basketball

9. ​Balance hand

10. ​Rhythm shot + follow-through

7. Start every workout with form shooting Players should start every workout close to the hoop working on their shooting technique (hint - the pros already do). The absolute worst thing you can do is step into the gym and immediately start throwing up shots from behind the three-point line. Start close to the rim and get into a rhythm of shooting the basketball with good technique first and then gradually extend the range of your shot. Here's what I recommend:

• 20 makes from 3 feet.

• ​15 makes from 5 feet.

• 10 makes from 10 feet.

• 5 makes from 15 feet (free-throw line).

That's all you need to do. It's simple, it's quick, and you'll lock yourself in for a great workout. 8. Workout quality is more important than workout quantity There are stories that occasionally surface on the internet about a kid 'grinding' in the gym for 10 hours a day and shooting 3,000 shots... This is completely unnecessary (and often harmful). In fact, if a player is spending that long in the gym, they're most likely doing something wrong. Remember this quote... ​"Time in a gym doesn't make a man a player any more than time in a garage makes him a car." A smart and efficient player who goes to the gym for 1 hour can often achieve better results than a careless player who goes to the gym for 10 hours. "How?" By having a pre-planned workout and then getting in the gym and executing the workout at game speed and with 100% focus. 9. But the quantity of workouts is still incredibly important While the quality of a workout is more important than quantity, players who want to get better still need to be in the gym multiple times per week. No matter how effective your pre-planned workouts are, if you're only completing the workout once or twice per week, you're still not going to be able to develop at a significant rate. You must be in the gym 3 - 5 times per week working on your game. Any less than that and you simply won't be able to get in enough quality repetitions to give yourself a chance of becoming a great player. 10. Practice your skills under game-like conditions Another reason to add conditioning to your workouts is that it ensures you'll be practicing under game-like conditions. Understand this... During games, you're going to be sprinting up and down the floor multiple times before attempting to shoot. You're going to be fatigued physically and mentally. It's important to practice under these conditions so that you're comfortable executing your skills when faced with these conditions during games. Here are a few examples of how to add conditioning to workouts:

• ​Sprint to half-way and back after each shot attempt.

• ​Complete one suicide after each shooting drill and then practice shooting free-throws.

• ​Instead of using a basketball shooting machine, rebound the basketball after every shot by yourself.

Source: Basketball for Coaches blogpost

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