With school letting out and summer approaching, many parents will take this opportunity to work with their youngsters on basketball and perhaps other sports skills. In many cases, they will also be sending youngsters off to basketball camps. In both of these situations, how much real mastery of skills will there be?
For example, in most sports camps teaching of skills for the most part takes place in play. In other words, corrections may be made in regard to the youngsters skilll execution during the execution of play situations. There is little if any teaching of skills by themselves with the instruction on a one-to-one basis.
When the skills are taught separately there is usually one demonstration and then the rest of the players practice or do drills as a group. As a result, some players who are able to make the changes or corrections may improve their ability to execute the skill. Those who can’t do not improve.
However in most cases, it is left up to the individual to make the necessary changes. They are typically not shown how to make the changes or how to improve their physical abilities that may enable them to make the changes needed. As a result the actual amount of skill mastery is very small.
In trying to make youth sports, especially basketball, more successful, it has been recommended that parents should become more involved in helping the youngsters. More specifically, they should teach a specific basketball skills every few weeks. The rationale behind this is that by becoming more involved and learning what it takes to help their offspring become better ballplayers, they may not be as prone to criticize the coaching or refereeing that usually goes on.
This is a commendable idea and it can be very successful if parents are truly qualified to teach skills. Most parents are not (which is also true of many coaches!). They may think they know, for example, how to shoot, run or cut, but if you watch the parents in action you will see that they mainly demonstrate what they think should be done and usually rather poorly.
Most parents are unable to correctly demonstrate a skill or portion of one. But demonstrations are most important for young children and the demonstrations must be very accurate. If not, the youngsters will learn poor habits, not good habits. Simply reading a book on what should be done is not enough.
Thus, for parents (and coaches) to be successful at teaching skills, they must take their assignment seriously. They must search the literature and/or good players to see exactly what is involved in executing the skills, get a good understanding of them, and then practice them themselves so that they can effectively demonstrate the whole or portions of the total skill.
Parents do not always have to demonstrate the total skill. Having a good player do this will usually be sufficient, but to effectively teach the skill, it must be broken down into its individual parts and these must be taught and learned before the entire skill is put together and mastered.
Parents and coaches should not think of skills as being secondary to playing the game. They should be paramount. If parents rely only on their own backgrounds, then most often they will not be teaching the skill very well and it will not be much better than the typical coach trying to teach it or having the skill briefly discussed and then forgotten as they get into more and more playing.
Understand that fun and satisfaction will come to the youngsters if they are capable of executing the skills well. This is when you will see the big smile on their face, when they are able to execute the skill well, as for example, successfully executing a jump shot or a three pointer or eluding their opponent, etc.
Good skills enable them to play the game much better, which in turn, brings them happiness which further motivates them to continue playing basketball to become even better. Teaching skills especially in the early ages, will do more to ensure successful playing in later years and it will be a constant source of enjoyment and fun. For more information, see Explosive Basketball Training , Build a Better Athlete and Basketball Offensive Plays at HSHD.