Practice with a purpose
We help teams, coaches and players transform the way they practice so they can improve their decision-making, build confidence, and maximize their potential.
We take the guesswork out of practice
Players and teams spend countless hours in the gym in and out of season, between pickup games, travel team games and tournaments, summer league games, or just “shooting around.”
But what if none of it is actually leading to improvement? What if it is making you worse?
Over a decade of studying practice design, teaching methods, and skill acquisition, combined with experience across all levels coaching and refining practice methods, we have done the work to figure out how to get players and teams better, including:
What to practice
Where should you focus your practice time? What skills are generalizable across teams?
How to practice it
What activities and teaching methods best serve long term learning?
How to measure it
We know how to assess and measure your basketball intelligence.
Our vision
Playmakers was created from a simple premise; that carefully designed practice and thoughtful feedback can help players and teams achieve greater improvement in less time.
We can follow through with our vision by the way that we approach practice and our dedication to continuous improvement.
The Playmakers Difference
Decisions, not skills
We structure practice around decisions rather than isolated skills like ball-handling or shooting. Players learn how to create and attack space, and how their decisions impact their teammates.
Games-based approach
Most of our practice is a series of carefully designed games. We use constraints that help to focus on a concept but allow us to maintain the fidelity of competition, merging learning with play.
Guided Discovery
We don’t give players the answers. We ask questions and get them to think for themselves. We teach players to see the game and understand the “why” behind everything we do.
Individualized teaching
Even though our sessions are in groups, we individualize our feedback and teaching methods to the greatest extent possible. That may be through coach feedback, film, or individual constraints.
Learning Centered Design
Sessions utilize learning principles such as retrieval, spacing, and interleaving, so learning is more likely to transfer and last. The pedagogy of what we do is just as important as what we work on.
Never mistake activity for practice
“Doing the same thing over and over again in exactly the same way is not a recipe for improvement; it is a recipe for stagnation and gradual decline.”
-Anders Ericsson, Peak: The New Science of Expertise
We see a lot of frustration in this game from both players and coaches that in a lot of cases stems from not fully understanding what to practice and how to practice:
Players:
Not knowing what to work on or how to work on it
Working hard each day, but not seeing clear signs of improvement
Doing what the coach asks but not seeing the playing time or results you want
Losing confidence in your game and not knowing how to get it back
Spending your weekends and evenings in the gym, hoping it will help you improve.
Which can lead to . . .
Poor performance
Loss of confidence that feeds back into your performance
Burnout or loss of the joy of the game
Overuse injuries
Coaches:
Performing well in practice but struggling in games
A team that works hard but still feels disorganized offensively
Repeating yourself to players over and over, but the same mistakes persist
Recycling the same practice plan or drills, or losing the attention/focus of the team
Being at a loss for how to spend your practice time in the most productive way.
Which can lead to . . .
Poor performance
Frustration and exhaustion taken out on your players
Loss of team chemistry
The feeling of “losing the team”, players tuning you out
There are 2 types of practice . . .
Naive Practice
Doing something repeatedly, expecting that the repetition alone will improve one’s performance.
Mindless, Generic
Unstructured
Comfortable, stagnant
Self-led or amateur coach
Deliberate Practice
Individualized training activities specially designed by a coach to improve specific aspects of performance through repetition and successive refinement.
Targeted and individualized
Structured
Progresses as you improve
Led by an expert coach
. . . We specialize in the deliberate kind.
3 Ways to Train
Team Camps
Over the course of 3 sessions, and through a series of fun, competitive and engaging games, we challenge your team to think quicker, coordinate better with teammates, and create advantages as a team.
Team camps are all about:
Building a shared work ethic, competing with each other
Learning team concepts and moving as a team
Making better decisions
Embracing a fun and improvisational style of play
Team camps are arranged by request. Reach out and we’ll find dates, times, location that work for the group’s schedule.
Virtual Training
Get deliberate, cognitive repetitions in interactive sessions with 1 on 1 expert coaching. Over a 30 minute session, players will get the opportunity to see the game from a coach’s perspective and get repetition making decisions in areas where they need the most improvement.
Utilized by many professional athletes, there is evidence that the same areas of the brain that are active during physical practice are also activated during visualization activities.
Offered year round, this is a great way to get individual attention as a complement on-court work or as stand-alone training sessions. We can incorporate film of the player in action, and/or film from college and professional contexts.
Team/Program Consulting
Team consulting involves remote film & analytical support or in-person evaluation and support for practice planning, developing of principles of play, or game review/feedback. It could be for any level from youth through professional, girls or boys, individual teams or large programs.
Benefit from our years of experience and knowledge in:
Developing and applying principles of play across different offensive schemes and levels of play
The science of learning and skill acquisition
Practice design and the Constraints Led Approach
We identify areas for improvement in how you play and practice, and identify bottlenecks to your team’s success.
General Inquiries
Feel free to reach out to better understand what we do or create a custom arrangement. Whether you are a player, coach, parent, or basketball enthusiast, we love to connect with open-minded, growth-oriented people.