Discipline Ideas for Practices from Bill Self and Mark Few

As a student training to be coming a teacher, I've been reading about theories of motivation and discipline, between positive and negative reinforcement. I'm a big believer in positive reinforcement but as coaches, we all know that certain situations call for tough measures to be taken, especially when we're talking about kids in their formative years during high school.

In my past years, I've used the conventional methods of suicides, laps, etc... But I'm always thinking and looking for newer more innovative ways to maximize practice efficiency and effectiveness. Here are some interesting ideas that I've come across over the past year or so:

1. Bill Self, head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks, on using treadmills in practices, "We actually set a treadmill on the edge of the court. Whatever the emphasis is that day, if guys don't follow what they're supposed to be doing, what Andrea (Hudy, associate director of strength and conditioning) does is she jacks it up on the highest incline at a five-minute mile pace, which is really, really hard to do. We've had guys get on it that couldn't stay on it and it threw them off. Brandon (Rush) and Mario (Chalmers) one day did it for three consecutive minutes. And they were done. It was over." Former Oklahoma St. coach Sean Sutton referred to the treadmill as a coaches' "best friend".

2. This from Mark Few, head coach of the Gonzaga Bulldogs. To stress the importance of taking care of the basketball they will start scrimmaging in practice and have a ball rack on the sideline at practice with x number of balls on it. With each turnover the players commit, the ball is thrown away and they take a new one off the rack. When the rack is empty they stop scrimmaging and run for the remainder of the time.

3. One of the coaches posted the following response on the X's and O's forum: "We had players missing layups in our drills and acting like it was no big deal, which is very frustrating to the whole coaching staff. While on the road at a holiday tournament we were talking to the coaches at another school and they said they had the same problem until they brought out 'the board'. The board is a 20-24" 2x4 wrapped in a towel and sitting on the sideline at half court. You miss a layup, you get a board - you have to push the board around the perimeter of the court. We are at better than 95% makes on our layups in drills now.

So, there you go, 3 good ideas for punishment/discipline to think about using in your practices. I'm sure many of you coaches out there have your own methods and stories, please don't be shy and post away in the comments.