Chase, catch and turn

With thanks to Chris Oliver, at www.basketballimmersion.com, this is a conditioning exercise that the players will love.

Firstly, it’s competitive. Secondly, it has a risk/reward element, which makes the players think tactically about their actions. Finally, it has some great rugby outcomes.

• Split into two teams of five, as a minimum. They stand at each end of a 30m long, 20m wide box.
• A player from Team A starts a few steps ahead of a player from Team B. The Team A player starts the game.
• The Team B player runs and attempts to touch the player from Team A before they get back to their team’s starting point.
• If the player from Team A gets back to their start line, it releases their team-mate to chase. The chaser becomes the chased.
• A player can also be released to be chased if their team-mate gets touched. Once a player touches someone, they must recover back to their start line.
• To ensure each player has to run hard, each player must at least cross the halfway line prior to returning to their starting point.

Key refereeing points

• If a player runs out of the edge of the box, that also means a point to the other team.
• Make the teams call out their own score.

Scores and developments

• You can run this until a team scores a certain number of points, or on a time limit.
• Change the size of the box to suit different players. You can also run two games at once if you have lots of numbers. Plus, you could have 2v2, where two players run out.
• You can have two balls per team. The ball is transferred at the end of the run.