No Break for Athletes

There is no off-season. I never used to think about it when I was younger and watching various high school teams. However, as I went to high school and now see some athletes at UVM, I realized that playing a sport at a competitive level, even just a Vermont high school, requires off-season training. I don't mean to belittle Vermont high schools; but there are fewer kids competing for roster spots, so you have a higher percentage chance of being on the team. Since right now is the off-season for basketball players, I thought that I would compile a list of links to some of my favorite basketball websites for any players who need to improve, coaches who want them to improve, or fans like myself who just like to learn about basketball.
• http://www.guidetocoachingbasketball.com/
This one is especially good for younger teams as some of the information is pretty simple. However, there is a ton of information on it.
• http://www.coachesclipboard.net/
I love all of the play diagrams on this website. Also, the animation is a major plus. You can pay for more features, but the free version is good for me.
• http://www.hoopsu.com/
Another one of my favorites, but I think that whatever they lack in amount of content they make up in quality.
• http://www.coachlikeapro.com/
Slightly older website just by looking at it, but they do have some decent stuff about strength training and plyometrics.
• http://www.akcoach.com/
Sort of a differently formatted website, but there are plenty of ideas here for everyone.

I hope you like these sites, but just reading them alone won't help. Get out there, play, and get ready to dominate next year!

Photo by laffy4k on Flickr

Adaptation

Simply because power soccer is played on the basketball court, I am beginning to see many similarities to the game of basketball. Something that I recognized from our first match was the importance of the back cut. On the first few corner kicks, we were allowed the inbound virtually uncontested. However, as shown in the diagram above, eventually we were covered relatively heavily. This coverage is obviously a problem because there's no direct path to any offensive player. Once the back cut is employed, player number two will be wide open in that gap who then has options to either take a shot or hit player three who would be on the weak side hopefully wide open because the goalie should be on the side of the corner kick.

We did not design a play that involved back cutting. However, we adapted when the need arose because we had to. It's pointless to try to run a play that's going to hit the ball right to the other team, so Scott would pass to the open spot and Linda or I would get there often through the means of the back cut. While it didn't necessarily occur to me at the time, I now realize that even though we were just trying to get the ball in the open space, we were doing it via back cuts. There are so many more advantages to back cutting that I could tell you through the lens of many of the coaches whose books make up a large part of my personal collection, but I will leave it at this.

The above photo was made using Basketball Playbook Version 10. I previously have reviewed it on my blog, and it is free at http://www.jes-soft.com/playbook/. Read my review for what to do when the free trial runs out!

Coaches Need This! A Review

Basketball Playbook, produced by Jes-Software, is about as self-explanatory as a piece of software gets. The program allows its users to create animated diagrams of offensive sets, defensive sets, and even practice drills. I intend to highlight some of its best features here and also show some areas that I had to learn from. I have not been in contact with the software creators, so this is my honest opinion of a piece of software that I use myself and am not being endorsed in any way.

What makes this software worth downloading?

• Ease-of-use: I was able to pick up the software and begin designing plays right away. The only slight learning issue I had was with animation as the players move in between the slides you create. However, this system made sense when I realized that it was not dependent on the arrows you can draw to explain the motion. The player will not just move down the line. Nevertheless, in under an hour most people will have a solid grasp on how to use this program and most of its features.
• Price: Initially, you will download the full version of this program and have full use of it for 30 days. Then, you will have two options: you can pay $34.95 for continued use of the full product, or you can continue to use a more bare bones program that still has many of the same vital features. The reason I wanted to possibly upgrade to continue with was because once the free trial kicked on, I was not able to choose the option that allowed the diagram to be displayed with the high school and college three point line. However, I found a way around this; make sure that you create at least one play before the free trial is up that uses the high school three point line. After the free trial is over, rather than creating a new play, select the Copy Play option from the file menu. Choose the play that had the high school three point line, and you will have another file that has accurate court dimensions. All you need to do then is rearrange the players and/or delete unneeded players to have another accurate play without paying the price. All the features I needed were in the free version, so I believe that this software is a great bargain.

Most basketball coaches are looking for easy ways to explain their plays to young minds. I believe that this animation makes the learning of the plays much easier simply because the players on-screen move instead of just having arrows pointing to where they go. I highly recommend this product to any coach who wants to actually show their genius to their players rather than just talk about it.