Here’s a video that I picked up from Swedish coach and friend David Leman’s blog: Leman Coaching. (BTW – If you can translate Swedish, let me know. I know he’s got more nuggets on his site, but I just can’t understand them!)
In the video, Lithuanian coach, Evaldas Kandratavicius, takes a young basketball player through movement and agility drills. The content of the drills and whether either of us like it or not is not important.
What I’d like to draw your eye to is:
- Watch how this young athlete starts in stance, moves in stance and ends in stance. As we all continue to refine our coaching eyes, here’s something that we must make a point of emphasis when developing basketball players.
- Deceleration – There’s so much chatter about speed training out there. I’d suggest that if a “speed coach” or strength and condition coach is not working on teaching an athlete how to decelerate (i.e. stop, turn horizontal momentum into vertical movement, etc.), then consider asking some hard hitting questions. Basketball isn’t a 100-metre sprint. It involves starts-stops and changes of direction. Watch how well this young man ‘sticks his landing’ and/or self corrects on his stops.
/sef.
