Building A Template

Part 3 of the 2025 Practice Planning Series

This article is Part 3 of the Don’t Plan To Fail - 2025 Edition article I released previously. Part 2 is here. Premium Subscribers got access to all 3 parts up front. Become a Premium Subscriber to get access to multi-part articles sooner!

Part 3 - Building A Template

I’ve posted before about building a Template for practice. The reason I Don’t Spend Much Time Planning Practice is because I spend a bunch of time planning my season blocks and my big rocks. I also use a pretty consistent practice template and format. As the great Carl McGown used to say, “the Marines are looking for a few good men, and all we’re looking for is a few good drills.”

You want me on the court; you need me on that court!

What does change a little year-to-year for me is the application to the specific team. Do I have 90 minutes, 2 hours, or 2.5 hours? Or am I a pro team with theoretically high amounts of practice time but big competitive loads to deal with that limit how much I can do before and after matches? Do I have 1 court? Multiple courts? Do I have to share a court?

I don’t think much about the drills I’m going to run, because I’ve been running the same (or at least, similar) drills for a while now. But I do spend a lot of time thinking about the application with the logistics of my situation. So, let’s look at some specifics of what I’m talking about:

U16 Club Team

I’m coaching a U16 club team at our new club this year. Here’s some of the relevant logistics:

14 players (13 + 1 practice player)

2.5-hour practices (6:00 - 8:30) twice a week.

Two coaches (myself and my club director and assistant coach aka wife)

1 court practice gym. We have to set up and take down nets, so I have to factor that in.

We have a “hard start” to practice, meaning: there will be somebody else (basketball) in there before us and we all start together. (As opposed to a “soft start” where the court is open and players can trickle on as they get in the gym; common with high school practices, for example.)

An additional factor is that most of these kids play quite a bit of beach volleyball and the beach season in southeastern NC is almost-kinda-sorta year-round. Our club is set up with the specific purpose of integrating indoor and beach and having as many of these kids playing both as possible for as long as possible. Because of this, a tweak I’ve made is to play a little less small-group games (particularly Doubles) at the indoor practices, because the kids are getting more of that on the beach. This is also why we only have 2 indoor practices per week, as opposed to many competitive indoor teams who go 3 times per week and/or include a weekend practice. I want to have a little less mandatory indoor stuff in order for the kids to do some voluntary stuff and/or have a family life on weekends.

So here’s how I sketched out my practice template for the year. I started with my 150-minute practice and divide it into:

45 minutes - Physical
45 minutes - Technical
60 minutes - Systems

In the Physical section, there’s some stuff like jumping and sprinting. This is also the time for players to work on movements of the game with a little less game pressure context. For example, most of these players are at least in the ballpark with a jump float serve, to the point where they can be in a competitive setting and say… work on the TACo concept. But a couple of them haven’t really even attempted a jump float before. They need some time to hit some jump floats with a coach and get a feel for the rhythm of it, without the pressure that they’re messing up the whole drill and everybody is staring at them. Likewise for some setter moves, defensive moves, etc.

In the Technical section, talking about a little bit of serve/pass (I don’t love to do a ton of serve/pass without the set and hit also involved, because the game context is critical, but a little bit can be helpful) and a lot of pass-set-hit stuff for setters and hitters to work on timing. At this age and level of player, they are transitioning from the “play it safe and hit it in” stage of U14 ball to trying to really play some offense.

And then the Systems section is mostly 6v6, with some mix of BSBH defensive-oriented setup and 1-Way Sideout drills.

Okay let’s get a little more specific:

Mapping The Template

Physical (about 45 minutes)

15 minutes - Atomic Speed off to the side while on the court either:
-Serve Tutor (2 or 3 players)
-Dig Tutor (could be everybody cycling in after they do a speed drill, or just a few players learning something at a practice)
(But every now and then, skip this and just play some Tennis to start practice)

15 minutes - Tutoring Stations
-Dig-Set on one side
-Blocking moves on the other side
-RSI off to the side on my Plyomat
(But every now and then, skip all this and play some Jamball instead)

15 minutes - Self-Toss
-2 or 3 practices for velocity for every 1 with more of a shotmaking emphasis
(But every now and then, just skip Self-Toss and play some 3v3 Queens 2-Touch for hand control and shotmaking)

Technical (about 45 minutes)

15 minutes - 4-Ball Passing
(but every now and then skip it and play some Doubles)

30 minutes - 2-Way Hitting
(but every now and then skip it and play some 4s instead)

Systems (about 60 minutes)

20-30 minutes - BSBH
30-40 minutes - 1-Way Sideout (Aceball, FBK, etc)

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Note: I share everything I do on here because (a) I like transparency and (b) I have the ability to elaborate and go into details. I’ll just say this: the Physical portion with its rotating schedule of speed/power drills and on-court tutoring is the least-efficient portion of my practice by the metric of: “amount of coaching brainpower and coordination it takes vs the payoff.” I do think there’s a payoff and a benefit, but I’ve spent a lot of time on the details of how to make all this work in a limited amount of time and court space. You may be better off just playing Tennis and Jamball to warm up. Run a couple sprints in a ladder format (ie: rather than timing, just pair them off and race… winner moves up next practice and lose moves down) and then go to Self-Toss.

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Once I have this template, it’s really easy to match Big Rocks to practice activities. I’ll also note that I think it’s better to “do less but better” in terms of what you’re trying to teach your players. As I sit down and think about what offensive or defensive concepts I’ll be able to explicitly teach this year, there’s plenty of stuff that I just won’t be able to get to. And that’s fine. It’s hard enough to know how to get in a good read blocking system and move from there. Dedicate steps, traps, commits, etc might be part of a more advanced defensive team’s playbook but I’d rather have these kids get good on the basics than mediocre at everything.

In the next article series, I’ll dig in to some more detail on this idea. Until then, leave me a comment, what does your Practice Template look like this year?