Practice Drills to Build Defensive Intensity

Make defense the staple of your program by developing an intense and disruptive mindset within your players.

Legendary Junior College Coach Steve Schmidt is a Hall of Fame coach with four NJCAA National Championships. The common denominator throughout all of his success has been his defensive philosophy. Schmidt knows what works when it comes to team defense. In this video you will discover his proven system for teaching defense that is fundamental and fun.

Coach Schmidt starts at the foundation of any defense and demonstrates three variations of the 1-on-1 Zig-Zag Drill. Each zig-zag combination will teaches you how to disrupt the offense and create a mentality of being prepared to guard anyone on the floor.

As you watch Schmidt's on-court demonstrators in a 1-on-1 and 2-on-2 setting, you will see how he teaches his players to avoid moving their heads on defense as they guard, how to properly defend backdoor cuts, how to hedge a screen, be in help position, and be in denial position creating havoc with your opponent's offensive sets.

Coach Schmidt uses the Shell Drill to teach defensive positioning in the half court setting. Once your players have mastered the half court shell drill, Schmidt takes your through their full court pressing situation where your players can incorporate their 1-on-1 techniques that lead into a half court man to man situations.

Create defensive toughness at each position by running contact drills that also serve as conditioning drills. Schmidt introduces competitive drills that will increase enthusiasm and simulate game-like energy levels. To make the drills more game-like, Schmidt shows you how to uniquely award points to the teams who execute the skills properly.

Maintaining defensive intensity has been the key to Schmidt's success. Now, Coach Schmidt shows you how to teach it, how to drill it, and how to get your team to buy in to it.

53 minutes. 2013.