Basketball Practice Plan: How to Structure a Basketball Practice

A practice plan is a set agenda for practicing basketball. There are many different ways to practice the sport, from drills to scrimmages, and a plan can help you focus on what is most effective for your team. A practice plan can cover many aspects of basketball, including athletics, general fitness, team cohesion, and specific ball skills. By having a plan drawn up before the practice starts, both the coach and the basketball team can ensure they get the most out of their time on the court.

A practice plan should follow a set progression. While there should be a range of areas to work on—plays, drills, fundamentals, and so forth—the structure should always begin with warm-ups, progress with different drills, and end with a cooldown.

1. 1. Warm-up: Every practice should begin with a three to ten-minute warm-up. The warm-up gets the players’ blood moving, helps them focus, and warms up their muscles. There are all kinds of suitable warm-up exercises, such as running, shuffling, high knees, push-ups, and sit-ups, etc. You can also integrate footwork skills into this part of the practice.
2. 2. Skills and drills: Once the players are adequately warmed up, move on to skill development. This section should be the bulk of the practice. You can work on fundamentals like dribbling, shooting, rebounds, passing, ball handling, free throws, layups, as well as more specific skill-builders, such as left-hand and right-hand form shooting drills and crossover dribbling.
3. 3. Team strategies: The amount of time and energy spent on team strategies will depend on the basketball players’ overall experience and skill level. You can focus on different defensive strategies and offensive strategies. For example, zone offense and defense and formations and rotations should occur in this part of the practice.
4. 4. Scrimmage: This is where the skills learned will be put into gameplay. With less experienced teams, small-sided games are often preferable. This means one-on-one, two-on-two, and so forth, played on half-court. Novice players will get to use more of the space and be more active than they would be in a five-on-five game or a full-court game. If there is more than one basket and ball, have the players break up into smaller teams and play.
5. 5. Cooldown: When scrimmages are over, spend the last few minutes on a cooldown. Keep it simple with light jogging or walking, then static stretching. This helps prevent injury and allows the players to return to baseline.

When creating a basketball practice plan, start with an assessment of the overall skill level of your players. If they have a solid foundation in the fundamentals, you can spend more time on team strategies and scrimmages.

Once you know where to concentrate in your practices, create a time breakdown. The amount spent on each section depends upon the overall amount of time allotted to the practice. In a sixty-minute practice, you can spend five minutes on the warmup, twenty-five minutes on skills and drills, ten minutes on team strategies, fifteen minutes on the scrimmage, and five minutes on cooldown. You can adjust these amounts upward or downward depending on the length of the practice.

Making a basketball practice plan takes practice and advanced preparation. Follow these tips to ease the process:

1. 1. Build variety into the practice. It’s good to mix things up, even in the warm-ups. Have some drills half-court, while others are full-court, and be sure to use different basketball drills for every practice. For example, you can mix up the dribble drills from one practice to another.
2. 2. Plan for water breaks. Keeping hydrated is essential, and water breaks in between the different sections of practice can also be an opportunity for players to catch their breath and do a mental reset.
3. 3. Cover the different types of basketball skills. Some drills are best for developing individual skills, like speed dribbling or jump shots. Strategies like zone offense, motion offense, zone defense, three-man weave, fast breaks, and man-to-man defense help players develop interactive abilities.
4. 4. Balance offense and defense. It’s easy to overemphasize drills and strategies that focus on offense. Make sure you save time for defensive drills and moves like trapping and the defensive stance to help keep the players well-rounded.

Want to become a better athlete? The MasterClass Annual Membership provides exclusive video lessons from the world’s best athletes, including Stephen Curry, Tony Hawk, Serena Williams, Wayne Gretzky, Misty Copeland, and more.