Ultimatetalk Chat Request Line: Planning a Practice

Dave requested on Ultimatetalk Chat that someone post about planning a practice. I will give it a shot, but I acknowledge from the start that probably the most interesting thing about this subject is an assumed variety of perspectives and experience. I hope that folks comment on this post as that will most likely enhance my limited viewpoint.

When I first started planning practices, I struggled with the responsibility that allocating precious time to any task/skill/drill/scrimmage essentially defines that skill, etc, as a priority. So, while it is important to be able to plan a good practice, it might be even more important to define an overall plan for how your practices are going to develop over the course of the season. For example, at Wellesley, we are developing a "template" for what we are going to focus on at practice as we move from Sept to May. In the fall, the priority is teaching skills to new players. Most of our time is spent on throwing and catching. By April, however, much more time is spent on discussing tweaking our zone O, for example. We still work on throwing and catching, but the amount of time devoted to these skills is diminished when compared to September.

When looking at planning an individual practice, I think there are five components that make up a good practice. The amount of time spent on each will vary during the season, but all probably come into play at all practices. The five components are:

warm-up
skills and drills
team strategy
scrimmage

conditioning

I design my practices to flow in roughly the order above, and I work conditioning into the various phases.

1) Warm-up- Clearly, this involves some social throwing as folks gather, but I think a defined start to a focused warm-up process is positive. I also think that as the season approaches that a team can warm-up like they warm-up for games and this develops a positive routine. I think the typical jogging and stretching routines work well, but I am a firm believer in the various "active warm-up" routines that many teams do. I stole many of the exercises from Mike Namkung/Team USA via Gwen Ambler and added them to some of the exercises I learned from Bryan Doo. These exercises involve a variety of motions like lunges, shuffle runs, backward runs, etc, and also work on balance and footwork.

After the players heart rates have been elevated, I think warm-up can provide a nice segue to skills and drills. Typically, these are activities such as 10-throw, speed flow, go to, break mark drill, etc. To me, they serve the dual purpose of continuing to warm-up the athletes, but also working on fundamental skills.

2) Skills and Drills- After the "transitional" warm-up drills are complete, I think it can be beneficial to spend the early part of practice working on specific skills that need to be developed. This post is not an attempt at a skills and drills manual, but a few that come to mind could be cutting drills, dump drills, etc.

3) Team Strategy- It can be important at points in the season to allocate time for "walk throughs". This is time spent getting everyone on the same page on the details of things like stack spacing, set plays, and zone O and D. Time may be spent here doing specific run throughs/drills to get in reps on the ideas you are working on.

4) Scrimmage- Not much to say here. Hopefully, a scrimmage can build on the points you have been working, and you will be able to work on your execution. I think many teams approach a scrimmage as "the fun part of practice" and can lose focus.

5) Conditioning- Typically, conditioning in practice is sprint/fast twitch work. I think this is fine, and I like to weave conditioning into the practice and I find that conditioning can provide a good transition between your phases of practice. I also like to do things like: game to 3, shuttle runs, game to 3, sprint relays, etc, before doing a longer scrimmage to end practice. I know a lot of teams do sprints at the end of practice and I think this can be valuable as well.

In terms of the length of practice and the time allocated to the five components, I think that the minimum amount of time for a great practice is about 2 hours and the maximum is around 3 hours. As I said before, I think the time allocated to the five components will change during the season and its determination should come from a overall plan for what you want to accomplish between the beginning and end of your season.