Here's something I thought might help if you have some players dealing with typical knee pain (pain around the front of the knee- just below the knee cap region or just above) due to playing and practicing. It's not fun, not okay, but is common and needs to be dealt with. Every season I have 2-4 players who are either in growth spurts, or de-conditioned, or simply weak, AND they end up getting that nagging knee pain. We do 3-primary things for them to start sessions. 1. They roll their quads- all areas of the quads but especially that medial quad muscles that often refers pain to the knee. 2. We floss- use a band and wrap the area, just below and above the area, and perform movements to help the soft-tissue loosen- roughly 2-4 minutes. 3. Perform Spanish Squats- use a big band attached to a squat rack or attachment, step into the band loop and place around the legs at knee height. Get into a 1/4 squat while spreading the knees aggressively into the band- hold that position for 40-seconds. Do 2-3 sets and get those hips fired up. My players typically get through practice, games, training with little to no pain for that session- Thoughts?

Curious how you inject speed and quickness into your practices? During our in-season practices we focus our speed to match the offensive and defensive strategies of the day. If we are working on trapping in full court we dial in our Hip Turn abilities to Escape space and Attack new space. We spend roughly 2-4 minutes on the very specific footwork and reactions needed to become really efficient at this skill. We do the same for the various other footwork patterns.

Any coaches using Tagging Up for offensive rebound and defensive transition as the sole method? Curious how it’s supported your transition defense?

One of our missions this season, my 3rd with this program, was to understand what a "Win" really means in our program. We had games we won by 30pts and we didn't consider it a win based on our standards. We lost to a team by 20pts and it was a HUGE win based on our standards of how we want to play the game. The reason this was important was because we had to get players, and their parents, to live more positively in and around the program. We had to define our program more clearly and what we were chasing. Of course we want to win- we had the most wins this season in program history- that was great, but we realized we won a good many games this season because we paid attention to things we could control, what good team play was, what a positive team shot was, and a positive individual shot was, after a game we defended our 5-Core Principles (these were chosen by the players) Accountability, Unity, Positive Energy, Hustle, and Communication. If we checked the box on these, and we controlled game-play control-ables we considered it a win. What am I missing?

This drill by Mark has so many layers of learning it's crazy. The reason experienced athletes typically perform better, smoother, quicker than inexperienced players is due to "predictability". Athletes develop the subconscious ability to predict based on stored memories based on repeated past experiences. The more the players sees the same or similar patterns the subconscious mind retrieves that patters milliseconds before a conscious decision can be made. This Continuous Pitch Ahead drill is teaching athletes to predict, through a series of recognizable habits by opponents (defenders). The slightest tilt, or fake, or jab, or level change, that is seen often gets "predicted" and grabbed from stored memories of seeing that habit over and over and over. This drill works the defender and passer equally as well. The defender is learning Escaping Space and Attacking Space skills to develop more playing range. This drill is what I call "Athletic Movement Gold". Thanks Mark!