7 Creative Ideas for More Effective Practice Sessions

The Navy SEALS like to say, “Under pressure, you don’t rise to the occasion, instead you sink to the level of your training.”

Very few athletes are true “gamers” in that they can show up on game day and flip a switch. Most athletes need to prepare and build good habits, so they can call upon their skills when needed.

In order to best prepare your athletes to face certain situations during games, you need to inspire them.

Here are seven ways you can make your practice sessions a little more creative in order to increase their effectiveness…

Your culture is what you reward, permit, allow, or reinforce. If you want athletes to perform a certain way in games, then you need to prepare them. Success doesn’t happen in a day, but rather in daily repeated positive acts. These don’t happen unless everyone is inspired. The more your practices are creative and inspiring, then the more your athletes will be motivated to learn and perform at a high level.

Incorporate conditioning into drills

Quite frankly, there are very few times when you should be doing pure conditioning drills. Running sprints during practice isn’t fun for your athletes. Unless you coach at track or cross-country team, doing conditioning for conditioning’s sake is lazy coaching.

Good coaches incorporate conditioning into their drills. You can speed up the pace of play during practice. You can plan practice so there’s less standing around. The best coaches can almost trick their athletes into getting in shape through the drills they do in practice. You can increase their skill level and conditioning level at the same time.

Additionally, running for punishment should also be a last resort. Good coaches find alternatives. They know how to reach their athletes and inspire them to be their best. Good coaches focus on finding solutions and ways to inspire. Bad coaches react to the temperature of practice and are therometers rather than thermostats. Good coaches set the tone in a positive way. 

Create “Bad Breaks” during practice. 

You want to prepare them for situations they may face during competition. This doesn’t mean to break your athletes down so you can build them back up, but rather to prepare them better.

It’s important to let your athletes know ahead of time that you’ll be doing. They should understand the why. It doesn’t need to be a secret. Just introducing the various scenarios will be challenging enough on most athletes.  

The possible situations you’ll face during a year is nearly limitless, but that doesn’t mean you can’t predict some of them. 

Here are a few situations that you can specifically train for or you can use these ideas to come up with circumstances that match your team dynamics…

• From time to time make obvious bad calls against your first team (or certain athletes) during your scrimmage sessions.
• Take out your leading scorer as you practice your end-of-game situations so the rest of the team can develop the mental toughness necessary to make the crucial plays with that player on the bench due to fouls or injuries. 
• Provide obstacles that make a normal activity more difficult (e.g., for basketball free throws have your players shoot with an old or bad ball because you might not always have a good ball on the road. You could also stand close to them jabbering away while they try to shoot, or wave pool noodles underneath the basket).
• Crank up the music over the speakers making it difficult to hear simulating what you might face on the road.
• Turn the lights down during practice if you will be playing in a dark gym.
• Practice in the mornings if you’ll be playing an early-morning game.
• If it’s a tournament and you’ll only have a few minutes to warm up on the court, then only allow that many minutes for your players to get on the court early before practices leading up to the game.
• Turn up the temperature in the gym or open up a door during the wintertime to let some cold air in. This could get you ready for an unusually hot or cold gymnasium you might have to play in.

Use practice time to mentally prepare your team for the types of unexpected emergencies that crop up at various times through the season. This will enable them to be better equipped to succeed.

Install a quicker pace of practice

Keep your drills short and concise with a time limit. Don’t talk to long or let a drill go on for what seems like forever. This doesn’t train your athletes to think quickly and leads to disengagement. Your athletes have very limited attention spans so you can’t expect them to stay focused. It’s your responsibility to keep them engaged and one of the ways to do this better is by planning your practices better.

Many coaches will go longer with a certain drill if they’re not getting the desired result. If you absolutely need to go longer on a drill, instead of dragging it out, consider coming back to it later. Going on and on will not increase your athletes focus.

Make practices more game-like

The purpose of training session is to get your athletes ready for competition. Don’t just go through the motions and don’t create an environment of bad habits. Nearly everything you do in practice should have a reason and increase your chances of success in a game. Practice is where good (and bad) habits are developed.

Here are some ideas that can integrate a game-like component into your practices …

• Teach your athletes to play until the whistle blows. This will get them used to doing it during games. It also minimizes confusion between coaching and directing practice.
• Use drills that align with what you do. Don’t just use a drill because it’s a good drill. Use a drill because it helps your athletes become better within the scope of your entire program.
• Practice whatever you’ll likely face during games. This could include substitution procedures, alignment for starting lineups or the national anthem, special situations in a game, bench protocol, warmups, or a plan of action for timeouts.
• You want to coach instead of officiate during practice. Because of this, you probably view officiating as a necessary evil but one that is more of a nuisance than anything else. Use this as opportunities to learn or get ready for the games. Whether it’s you blowing the whistle or someone else (e.g. assistant, manager, or even a real official that comes in), don’t overlook this part of practice since it’s something that happens in a game.
• Instead of starting out slow in practice, start fast. Do a competitive or high-octane drill to set the tone early.

At the end of the day, you cannot practice soft and expect to play hard. As Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell used to say, “You play like you practice and practice how you play.”

Take advantage of your breaks

Instead of traditional water breaks in which your athletes stand around for an extended amount of time and do nothing, try having “timeouts”.  If you get six timeouts during a game, then have six water breaks for 90-seconds. This’ll get both your athletes and your staff used to quick, concise instructions. You can even have them sit down or gather around just like it’s a timeout during a game. Talk about what’s next or review what just occurred. This saves valuable practice time. Regardless of whether you use this timeout idea, you’ll want to be intentional about your break time during practice so that you are maximizing your entire time at practice.

Add wrinkles to existing drills

You have drills you like to do during practice. Whether these are unique to your program or are used by most teams in your sport, you can still add some creative variations to them. This can keep the drill fresh or even make it more challenging, which can increase the skill level of your athletes. 

Some ideas could include …

• Add an extra ball to a drill.
• Use football blocking pads to increase physicality but reduce injury.
• Introduce a scoring or timing element to the drill.
• Find a way to double dip and use a drill for more than one purpose (e.g. when practicing free throws in basketball, have the non-shooters practice their rebounding while waiting for their turn to shoot).
• If a drill is too confusing already, then narrow the focus to just one thing.
• Manufacture artificial pressure to a drill that increases their focus or urgency.
• Change a rule to make things harder (e.g. Instead of “checking the ball” at the top of the three-point arc after a score during a halfcourt basketball scrimmage, the team would immediately take the ball out of bounds so the action never stops or if playing full-court, you might institute a rule saying everyone on offense has to cross halfcourt for the basket to count thus encouraging hustle during transition situations”.
• Instead of scrimmaging for 20 minutes straight, split it up into five 4:00 segments. Each segment could have a different goal to achieve or point of emphasis.

Every sport and situation is slightly different, but those ideas should get your mind percolating to think of things that will help your athletes.

Introduce a fun component

Let’s face it, nobody likes to be bored. This is especially true for your athletes. Don’t be afraid to make your practices fun.

Consider what you do with summer camps and how you try to keep things interesting all day long for the campers. Take this approach to your practices and your athletes may start looking forward to practice more and staying engaged a little bit longer. Here are a few ideas to consider …

• Play music during practice.
• Catch them being good and reward them more often. This reinforces what’s important and encourages them to do things right rather than avoid messing up.
• Add a fun component or friendly competition to your drills.
• Provide snacks before, during, and after practice.
• Eliminate confusion. Keep things simple.
• Empower your athletes. Let them take ownership in various parts of practice.
• Name the drills and plays so that they’re easier to remember. In fact, they could be personalized to your team, involved an inside joke, or relate to an entertainer or sports figure.
• Just like a public speaker needs a good opening and closing, start and end your practices on a high note.
• Maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Yes, their weaknesses can hurt your team, but it’s their strengths that will help your team. Find ways to utilize what they do best. Instead of working on their weaknesses all the time (which is boring and frustrating for them), spend time making their strengths even better. Take them from good to great in terms of their strengths.

It’s your responsibility as a coach to inspire your athletes. It’s not what you teach, but what they learn that matters. Most athletes struggle to pay attention which decreases their chances of learning. One of the main reasons they fail to pay attention is they lose focus, and this disengagement is often caused by a boring practice.

Talking about practice, man!

Hall of fame basketball player Allen Iverson had an infamous press conference in 2002 in which he used the word “practice” 22 times. Most of it was centered around the phrase “We talking about practice, man!” This became an instant meme and though it can be taken out of context at times, your athletes will sometimes have similar sentiments. Most of them only care about the games. In their mind, that’s when playing time is given and competition is decided. However, you have a responsibility as a good coach to help them understand how important practice is.

Games are a demonstration of how much athletes and teams have improved during practices. Wins and losses might be decided on game day, but they are earned during practice. It’s the same with playing time. Your team performs on game day based upon how they’ve prepared in practice. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you want to be good on game days, then be good on practice days.

Jamy Bechler is the author of nine books including “The Captain” and “The Bus Trip”, host of the “Success is a Choice Podcast”, professional speaker, and trains organizations on creating championship cultures. He previously spent 20 years as a college basketball coach and administrator.  TheLeadershipPlaybook.com is Bechler’s online program that helps athletes become better teammates and more positive leaders while strengthening a team’s culture. As a certified John Maxwell leadership coach, Bechler has worked with businesses and teams, including the NBA. Follow him on Twitter at @CoachBechler. To connect with him via email or find out about his services, please contact speaking@CoachBechler.com. You can also subscribe to his insights on success and leadership by visiting JamyBechler.com/newsletter.