The PGC Blog

If you want to instruct in a way that is really going to help your basketball team, you need to instruct before the bad thing happens, before the play takes place. In basketball, this opportunity—or failure—happens frequently.

Welcoming unfairness is one of the most useful principles in the life of any athlete. Champions don’t want to be put on an equal plane with others, they welcome the opportunity to show what they are made of under all sorts of conditions.

Golfers especially talk about “grooving” their swing, and in almost every sport a player strives for that feeling of “getting in the groove,” the feeling that everything is going just right. In basketball, there is one quick, specific way to practice shooting that is very effective for putting your shot-off-the-dribble in the groove.

Basketball is a thinking game but, as a coach, one of your major responsibilities is to take as many situations as possible out of thought processes and turn them into quick reactions requiring no thought at all.

Excerpted from a PGC/Glazier Coaching Clinic session in Los Angeles, CA. Tyler Coston spoke on How to Develop Leaders in Your Sports Program. Leadership is more than just doing the right thing.

There’s something propelling about being up and outdoors, or in a field or on a court—some place away from home—at six in the morning. I used to think of it as “getting ahead” time. At six in the morning the streets in my little town were quiet. Often, it was still dark. But I was out there practicing and it felt good.

Hydration is undervalued, but every great athlete knows they have to stay hydrated. Here’s the best way to tell if you are properly hydrated.

It is merely a matter of how you think. If, at the moment you see a double-team form, you think, “Oh no, a double-team!” you are likely to panic and throw a lob pass somewhere that someone can intercept.