5 Best Exercises to Prepare for Basketball Season
Get Ready for Basketball Season with These 5 Workouts
5 Principles for Offseason Basketball Training
When you’ve finished the last game of the season you might be thinking it’s time to take a few months off but if you are looking to improve your performance during the next competitive season then this is the time to get to work. Focusing on basketball-specific training principles during the off-season will allow you to maximize performance and minimize injury risk when it’s game time again.
Basketball is considered a contact sport and it involves sprinting, jumping, landing, withstanding contact from other players, and pivoting quickly. If you want to improve your performance on the court you need to incorporate training elements that enhance your ability to perform each of these skills and prepare the body’s tissues to withstand the high forces associated with training and competitive basketball.
During a 10 year period of seasons between 2008 and 2019, 66% of professional basketball players sustained an injury with a median three game loss as a result of the injury (Bullock et al, 2021). The most common injuries occurred at players’ ankles, followed by knees, hips/groin/thighs and ranged in severity from mild to severe. While injury rates may differ for players outside of a professional league, it stands to reason that any player is at risk for injury and maximizing injury resilience in the off-season is a wise idea.
Incorporating strength training for the legs, trunk/core, and arms is an essential part of training during this time. Exercises like deadlifts, lunges, pull ups, hamstring curls, squats and overhead press target the entire body and can help support many of the skills needed on the court. Since many of you will already be doing a full body strengthening routine this article will introduce you to five other elements of training that you can incorporate to get ready for basketball season.
FINE TUNING YOUR WORKOUT ROUTINE
Stability Matters: though strength development should always be a part of pre-season training for basketball, don’t forget to incorporate exercises that develop stability. Stability is provided by coordinated co-contraction of muscles surrounding joints. Having good stability not only reduces the risk of injury to ligaments and muscles that can happen when they are stretched beyond their normal length but it is vital for transferring power through the body to make that three pointer or land on your feet when another player contacts you during a jump. Dynamic exercises standing on one foot, for example, can improve the motor control and stability of ankle muscles to prevent ankle sprains, a common basketball injury. Core stabilization exercises like pallof presses and shoulder stability exercises like plank variations are another good place to start.
Mobility: without enough flexibility in the upper and lower body and the spine it will be difficult to translate the speed and power you developed during pre-season training into quick changes in direction, explosive jumps, and powerful shots on the court. Off-season is the perfect time to start working on your flexibility. Static and dynamic muscle stretches and joint/muscle mobility exercises that target the hips, groin, knees, ankles and shoulders can reduce injury and improve performance.
Stiffen up those tendons: while it may sound counterintuitive, stiffness in the tendons that attach a muscle to the bone is actually a good thing. Stiff tendons are more resilient against injury. They are also capable of stretching further during a muscle contraction, storing the elastic energy and then recoiling strongly to produce more powerful movements. Stiffer achilles tendons, for example, are often seen in faster runners.
Many of us focus on concentric exercises in our workouts wherein a muscle is shortening against a load, for example, a bicep curl. Research shows, however, that eccentric and isometric exercises are much more effective at developing tendon stiffness. Eccentric exercises, also sometimes called “negatives”, consist of a muscle lengthening against a load. An example would be slowly or “eccentrically” lowering into a squat then standing up quickly. An 8-12 week eccentric training program for the calf muscles, for example, can significantly improve achilles tendon stiffness which may result in higher jumps and fewer tendon injuries (Geremia et al., 2018). Similarly longer duration isometric contractions of a muscle, in which the muscle contracts against a load but doesn’t change length, can also improve muscle strength and tendon stiffness (Kubo et al., 2006; Kubo et al., 2017).
Power training: If all you were required to do on the court was lift or push something heavy then strength training might be all you needed. Basketball players, though, need to accelerate or decelerate very quickly as they jump and land, change directions, and shoot a ball. This is where speed and power training become important. Power lifts at >80% of one rep max, plyometrics, and sprints are great ways to develop explosive speed. Incorporating the upper body into this type of training is important so you can catch, pass, and shoot the ball with power and control. This type of training is hugely beneficial to prepare for basketball season but needs to be incorporated carefully as it can be easy to injure oneself if done incorrectly. Your coach or trainer can help you build a program for speed and power that meets your current fitness levels to improve your play and decrease your risk for injury.
Basketball specific drills: being strong, fast, and powerful will certainly help during a basketball game but if this was all that was needed to be a great player then just about any Olympic athlete should be able to earn a spot on a professional basketball team. The reason strength, speed, and power don't automatically make a player great is that training for any sport requires specificity. If you want to be good at basketball you need to be practicing skills and drills that are specifically used during a basketball game. Training for soccer, for example, might help you get fit but it won’t make you a better basketball player. In the off season pick 3 or 4 of your favorite basketball drills for shooting, passing, and footwork and incorporate these into your training to hone your neuromuscular control.
Now that we see how offseason prep in the training room is important to prepare for basketball season, we should also acknowledge that the offseason is the perfect time to rehab any injuries or irritations. If you are currently injured or have noticed a pain or irritation that develops as training and practices ramp up, now is the time to schedule an appointment with the physical therapists at Evolve so they can help you recover and build resilience ahead of basketball season.
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