August 25th 2009,

Sign up to coach early:  Often we as coaches sit back and wait to see what the coaching landscape looks like for a given season.  Before we know it, it's November and we are wishing we had started coaching when the team was first formed.
When you sign up early you give yourself, the convenors and the club a real edge to getting the season off to a great start with the most suited coaches in positions to improve a club's programs.

Come on you know you want to do it!! Sign up NOW!!


August 10th 2009,

Visualization:  Often a player becomes injured or ill during a season that affects their short term ability to participate in physical practice sessions.  What players need to understand is that practice can also take place in the mind.  As a coach we can encourage our players to practice outside of the physical and move into the mental side. 
This is especially beneficial if the skill that requires practice is usually completed from a stationary position, like shooting a basketball or hitting a golf ball.

Eg:  Shooting a basketball is a something that can be learned mentally to almost perfection, for most players.  Closing your eyes and slowly working through the mechanics of the shot, in your mind, over and over again, can create the perfect shot in the mind. Since the body only reacts to stimulation or instructions from the mind, when the body returns to physically taking a shot, the shot can be perfect from almost the onset.

Players should practice mentally anyway as part of their practice plan but in these injury situations the importance increases. 

Want to test it? 
Look at our Steve Nash shooting drills on the Burlington Basketball Channel or the Pete Maravich shooting video.  Watch it in a quiet room, over and over again until you have it memorized.  Once memorized sit in the quiet room and mentally shoot the ball yourself in the same fashion, over and over again.  Try 500 shots daily mentally.  This will take an hour. Constantly correct yourself by reviewing the video.  Be sure you are mentally repeating all steps accurately.

Do this for 5 consecutive days and hit the court yourself.  Work through the same process physically as you did mentally.  I think the results will speak for themselves.

We did this test on a 14 year old player who went for a family vacation of 10 days and realistically had no way to physically practice.  The player returned to the court 10 days later and was amazed to find not only had their shot not gotten any worse but in fact it had improved dramatically. 

The same test was administered by someone who had golfed maybe a total of 10 times over a 30 year period.  They were an avid Tiger Woods PGA Video game player.  In a tuneup to a family tournament the player mentally practiced Tigers Swing from the video game.  Since that swing was perfect (being the one Tiger choose to publish in the game) so too was the mental practice.

The result was a family tournament where this person hit a "hole in one" on a par 3.  The rest of the game went well for the first 6 holes as the person remained only 2 over par.  After the 6th hole the mind started to wander and his game deteriorated but for those first 6 holes he had proof.

Give it a try.