Personalizing an individual workout

Previously, I wrote about designing workouts for players who are at different skill levels. In this post, I want to focus on working with players who have different roles.

In a recent session I had three people in the gym: A keeper (a player in our offense who delivers handoffs to teammates), a cutter (a player who is not involved in handoff action), and me.

Below I’ll walk through how I personalized the workout for the keeper.

Even when you’re training players with contrasting roles, you can still run an intentional, productive session. This may not be ideal, but it pushes you to be more creative—and that’s the essence of rethinking the game.

First, ask yourself:

• What specific scenarios does this player encounter most often?
• What specific skills can they grow in these scenarios to be more successful?
• How can I design practice games that simulate the use of these skills within these scenarios?

In the video below, you’ll see us sharpen important skills (catching, pivoting, and finishing) within relevant scenarios (reading the primary defender and deciding whether to keep the ball or hand it off, reading help defenders on slip catches around the rim) that he is likely to encounter in real games.

And because the cutter’s role and skillset was very different, the workout ran like this: each player got five straight possessions in their own tailored practice game and then they switched. They were competing against each other the entire time, but each player was practicing their own skills and focuses within their specific role.

The result: a competitive session with personalized development that transfers to the game. In our next practice after this workout, you could see the confidence this clarity brought him: