KID COACH'S CLIPBOARD: How to Teach Young Children to Shoot a Basketball

Teaching Young Children Sports

Sports Made Simple, Learning Made Fun (tm) is, arguably, the most important thing that needs to be remembered when working with young children. Teaching your beginner athlete(s) how to shoot a basketball requires getting them focused and providing you with the right tools to make this possible. As is often the case working with young children, choosing the right language is often the tool that makes all the difference in your level of success.

Although informative, many "experts'" promote systems that are spoken in language unsuitable for young children. Their systems, unfortunately, are not designed with young children in mind; adult-centric, instead of kid-focused, the difficult challenge we all face is making the difficult seem easy. Simplicity is particularly important when working with young children. Understanding simple isn't hard to do, what is often hard, however, for many adults to do is add the proper amount of "magic" that it takes to earn young children's trust and buy-in.

This blog shows you how to infuse "magic" into your teachings. It will help you build synergy and unlock focus and potential in ways that have never been done before. Coach Pickles' coaching method is designed to engage children's minds through a healthy form of storytelling designed to be fun for you and fun for your children.

My company Coach Pickles' Jelly Bean Sports, Inc has one overriding mission--Making Kids "Coachable" by Making Learning Fun! This forum allows me to share how easy it can be to translate sports to young children and give you the coaching strategies that keep sports fresh for your child every time out. Enjoy!

Parent-Coaching Basketball's Shooting "Pizza" Position

Teaching Time: 5 Minutes

# of Steps: 6

Level of Instructional Difficulty: Medium

Ages Appropriate for: 4 years +

Keywords and Phrases: pizza position, ear of the basketball, toppings, pointer finger, number one finger, booger finger, waiter, restaurant

1)Line children up on a line. Start with a basketball but tell children to put the basketball between their feet and squeeze. Multitasking is a big part of the game of basketball and this initial action works on that. Next, ask the simple question, "What are some of your favorite foods?" and spend two minutes fielding answers. This is a simple question everyone knows the answer to; always be sure, however to get everyone's input, the first step to achieving buy-in to your coaching. Continue asking the question, listening and repeating their answers exactly as they are said back to you. I'll say it again more simply, ask, listen and repeat--in an excited fashion--this is very important. It is a conversation, not a

This question and conversation, as a whole, is less about you and more about the children. You, in this case, are just facilitating and the children are actively contributing to the learning process. You are a sponge and it is your job to absorb what children are giving to you, and don't be surprised if your simply little question gets kids, even the shyest, yelling out their answers by the end of it all. Demonstrate you can actively listen to children and you will be amazed at how willing young children are to actively listen to you.

I spend so much time telling you how to do this because throttling the highly-strung, agenda-oriented coach inside all of us is an important part of recognizing children and their stake inside the learning process. This is a time for you to feel inspired as a coach by the work you do. Our jobs, as coaches, are to recognize children as individuals as much as we recognized them and are trying to mold them into team-oriented basketball players. When you can see yourself actively recognizing players individually, it should leave you, as it does me, feeling really, really good about your role as a coach.

2)Ask them, "What comes on top of a pizza?" Answer: toppings. Ask, "What is your favorite topping?" Again more opportunity for children to critically think about that what it is they, as individuals, like and listen to what it is their teammates like. Your building team synergy and continuing to prepare young children to accept your instruction. Asking your next two questions will lead you into the instruction, "Who has eaten pizza in a restaurant before?"

3)"How do servers in the restaurant hold the pizza when they bring it to your table?" Amazingly, most of the class will show you some variation of holding a tray. This, conveniently, will become known, from this point forward, as their Pizza Position. Of course, it is otherwise, called the shooting position but in shooting, form is everything and getting young children to exhibit proper form has be quick and it has to be easy if you expect to be an effective coach. Calling it the pizza position allows children to own the process. As you demonstrate a bent elbow and cocked wrist, ask "What is this called?" And then explain, the pizza position is the same way as severs in the restaurant carry the pizza from the kitchen to your table in some restaurant. Conveniently, you have just demonstrated, with little, how to properly hold a basketball prior to shooting. The pizza position addresses young children's difficulty in maintaining proper shooting form is quickly fixed from here on out by just using your verbal cue, "Pizza position."

At this point you are 3-4 minutes into practice and half way to showing children how to shoot a basketball. Starting the process properly and using easy to understand terms, you should begin to see how my instructional methods are designed to allow you to go deeper with children and teach more about basketball in less time, Most importantly, my methods are done in ways children learn best.

4)Next, hold up your index finger and ask them, "What is this?" Ask them several times and get them to give you the most common answers. As children will tell you it is a pointer finger or the number one. You should kindly agree, and tell them they are right, but say, "It is something else too, what is it?" When you've exhausted their resolve, Ask, "Isn't it your booger finger too?" This will inevitably evoke a smile. Here and again you are building instruction by talking on a child's level and engaging them in ways that help maintain their focus. Ask them to point the booger finger on the hand that holds the pizza towards their nose. You might say, "Towards your nose, not in your nose." Most kids get how to hold a tray but fifty percent of the time the fingers on their shooting hand are usually pointing the wrong direction. I typically promote a hands-off approach to coaching. However, identifying the booger finger is awkward for some young children. They sometimes struggle to get their hand right and it is necessary for us to simply rotate their hand around. one time when another hands-off approach you can use to correct them as they get tired and their form slips. Essentially, what this instruction is promoting is self-directed learning.

5)When they are holding their pizza tray and pointing their booger finger at their nose, this is when you walk behind them and ask them individually, "What is your favorite pizza?" Kids, at this point, are anxious to get their pizza (a.k.a. the basketball). You are about to give them their pizza but before they get it they must say the type of pizza they like (i.e. cheese, mushroom, etc.) and the magic word, "Please!" You will say, "What kind of pizza for you?" They will say, "Cheeeese Pleeeze!" Take the basketball from between their feet and place it on their tray. When everyone has their pizza go back around the front of them and check their pizza position and booger finger.

6)They will quickly get tired or be unable to hold the ball with one hand. Tell them, "Put your other hand on the ear of the basketball." This will help hold it.

• Have patience. A few steps at a time. Children learn best by doing. Conversation is one way of doing kids can enjoy. Refine the pizza position and then add more instruction.
• Use a hands off approach to teaching. Use easy phrases children can understand and remember. This way they can be empowered through self-direction and self-correction, and learn more because the instruction requires their focus and concentration.
• If children lack the strength to push the ball high enough to reach the basket create a basketball hoop, with your arms in a circle and have them shoot their basketballs through it. They will get just as much satisfaction shooting, maintain form and see the ball go through the hoop more often. Fun in shooting comes from seeing it as just that first, fun. Avoid frustration. Focus and praise children first for their form then if the shot was made.
• Inspire children with praise. Encouragement can allow you control you otherwise wouldn't have. Children live for praise. Positive feedback builds confidence, improves listening capacity, helps develop emotional maturity, and enables a child's ability to find value in self-improvement.

1. "Where does Mom hide the cookie jar so the kids don't get the cookies?" Field some answers. Answer: Over or on top of the fridge. Hopefully someone says on top of the refridgerator. The next level of instruction beyond the "pizza position" requires you speak about the use of a player's legs during the shot and the follow through with the wrist. I use the imagery of squatting and a cookie jar. Get players in the "pizza position" to practice squatting maintaining their form, up and down, for one minute. Upon asking them the cookie jar question, with or without the basketball get children to stay on the line they are standing on and simulate shooting the basketball pushing it to the ceiling and putting their hand in the cookie jar over the fridge after they release.
2. Practice hitting the shooting square. Divide into teams. When team hits five shooting square five times they sit down.