Basketball Arenas (Sports Palaces)
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Archive for September, 2009
Glory Days: Catching up with the Legends of Indiana High School Basketball
This review of the greatest basketball players the Hoosier State has ever produced includes profiles of Rick Mount, the first high school athlete in a team sport to make the cover of "Sports Illustrated," and other notable players and coaches. Photo insert.
Women’s Basketball: The Post Player’s Handbook
Post play can help win or lose ball games. Anne Donovan, one of the greats of post play and WNBA coach, enables coaches to maximize their players' skills.
Customer Review: Very dissapointing for such a successful coach
No doubt Anne Donovan was a great player and is a very successful coach. But it's clear to me she didn't let her strength & conditioning coach review her conditioning chapter. The fact is that basketball is an anaerobic sport, not an aerobic sport. And long distance running trains an athlete to run slow. LD running works the slow twitch muscles. Basketball is a sport involving short duration high intensity bursts of speed requiring maximum output, followed by several seconds, or minutes of rest. This cycle repeats over and over until the game is over. Jogging -off season or not- trains the athlete to run slow, to be slow. The most current research clearly shows us this. Her brief section on interval training should have been expanded, while tossing the rest out.
I was very surprised to find a highly regarded D1 college coach claiming that running suicides is a good thing. As Coach Hubie Brown says, nobody except the coach likes suicides. Players see it as punishment no matter how the coach calls for the suicides. There are far more effective ways to condition, including numerous drills that are fun, and the players may not even be aware that they are conditioning. What good is the stop & start action when the players know exactly where they have to change direction? Far better to make it more "game like" and line them up and have them run for a pre designated time (40 sec), and have them change direction on the coaches whistle. That way they can't anticipate, and it's much more game like.
Donovan's thoughts about stretching really show where her strength & conditioning knowledge is not current. Empirical evidence from controlled studies have concluded that a static type stretch prior to competition or practice actually diminishes speed & jumping in the short term. Modern programs are using a "Dynamic Warm Up" in place of the old fashioned cold static stretch on the floor. Don't take my word for it, just type "dynamic stretch versus static stretch" into your favorite search engine. There is still a place for static stretching, but it's after a work out, not before.
I was pleased to see Donovan recommends weight training both in season and out. And while she notes that female athletes do in fact have a higher occurrence of traumatic knee injuries, she does terrible disservice to current research and ways to mitigate this factor. She says "By concentrating on equally developing both hamstring and quadriceps strength, many believe many believe this can reduce the risk of injury." Who is "many?" I am constantly researching for more information on this so I can better help the female athletes I coach, and I've never heard that, or read that anywhere. Maybe she was referring to muscle imbalances? In any case, most strength and conditioning coaches look first at running technique, jumping technique, change of direction technique, and making sure athletes in a "ready position" stance do not have their knees locked straight; because flaws in those movements are the single biggest factor which can be improved to reduce the risk of injury. Finally, if you're going to leave an athlete alone in the weight room, then yes, machines are best for safety reasons. But strength & conditioning coach's will tell you that free weights are best, and "Olympic Style" lifts are best for athletes.
The rest of Donovan's book is fairly good. However it's nothing that can't be found in any number of post player books. A post is a post, male of female. The game is played the same and refereed the same. The women's game is just slower and lower. Overall, I found the book to be very disappointing.
Customer Review: GOOD FOR PLAYERS AND COACHES
I WAS LOOKING FOR A RESOURCE FOR MY DAUGHTER, WHO IS A TALL POST PLAYER, BUT ALSO A BOOK THAT I COULD ALSO USE AS A COACH. THIS BOOK WAS EXCELLENT FOR BOTH! IN FACT, I ORDERED 7 MORE COPIES TO GIVE TO SEVERAL COACHES AND PLAYERS IN MY TOWNSHIP TEAMS AND LEAGUES!! WRITTEN IN EASY STYLE FOR ALL AGES WITH PRACTICAL TIPS FOR ALL PLAYERS I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. COACHES, YOU WILL GAVE A GREAT REFERENCE GUIDE TO USE AT PRACTICES...GREAT DRILLS.
Going to the Mat From Center Court.(switching from basketball to wrestling)(Brief Article): An article from: Community College Week
This digital document is an article from Community College Week, published by Cox, Matthews & Associates on February 19, 2001. The length of the article is 3339 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Going to the Mat From Center Court.(switching from basketball to wrestling)(Brief Article)
Publication: Community College Week (Newspaper)
Date: February 19, 2001
Publisher: Cox, Matthews & Associates
Volume: 13 Issue: 14 Page: 18
Article Type: Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Basketball Coach’s Survival Guide
Customer Review: A program and career building block!!!
This book is essential for anyone who is considering entering the coaching arena. The book is not a primer on running plays and rebounding effectively. It is the keystone for building an effective program and increasing the effectiveness of the coaches who are entrusted with it! I have used this book and its philosophies to better understand my motivations on the sideline and improve my relationships with my players and other coaches. This book was placed in the working library of the Morris Center YMCA (Cedar Knolls, N.J.) where we used it to help push the enrollment in our Youth Basketball Association to over 450 children. I am now the Assistant Basketball Coach at the College of St. Elizabeth (Convent Station, N.J.) and I have assigned chapters for other coaches to read and several of the forms have been modified for my specific needs. If you are building a program, a career or both, this must be in your collection!
