LADDER OF SUCCESS (PART II): SIMPLICITY

The following comes from a book that I started a few years back and have yet to finish. This is an excerpt from the chapter titled "Prepare and Compete."

CLIMBING THE LADDER TO SUCCESS

We are going to utilize a ladder to talk about how we are going to move forward and upward to become our best. As we start our climb to reaching our potential, we come to the first rung of the ladder which is SIMPLICITY. The drills composed in the following pages is just that – simple. They are meant to be simple so that each player can give their maximum effort, not only physically but mentally as well. There are probably an infinite amount of drills in each fundamental phase but we have handpicked a group of drills that are not only simple to execute but also give attention to the various skills needed to improve as a basketball player. Also, by keeping the drills and routines simple and going about it in a progressive manner, it will allow the individual to devote a high level of concentration to each drill series. The concentration level of each athlete varies and at times an athlete can have a very short attention span which makes our ability to keep things as simple as possible extremely important in gaining maximum results.

The ability of a coach to teach all the they need to be successful but in it's most simplest form is one of the absolute most important parts of teaching.  It is also something that I found comes later for most coaches.  Young coaches often get caught up in trying new things they learned at clinic even if it doesn't fit their system or their personality.

As my friend and mentor Coach Don Meyer says: "Get all the good ideas you can but only use the ones the fit who you are and what you want to accomplish." 

Coach Meyer once told me that before adding something to your system that it should fit these four criteria:

1. Your teaching personality

2. Your coaching philosophy

3. Your players' mental and physical skills

4. Your style and system of play prior to exposure of the new concepts

Here are a few more thoughts on "simplicity" from the masters:

“Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
 
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” -Henry David Thoreau

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art." -Richard Holloway

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” -Charles Mingus

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” -Albert Einstein