basketball Body 101

There are numerous qualities to developing a basketball body.   

Range of Motion & Balance

A baseline of mobility, stability, balance & coordination is essential to everything and this section refers to young athletes becoming aware of their own bodies. A well created dynamic warm-up can be a fundamental part of improving these qualities.

Aerobic Capacity

We have aerobic capacity (ie. conditioning) and muscular endurance. In order to optimize your strength in the weight room, you should have a good base of aerobic capacity.  If you are out of shape then working on strength won't give you optimal results.  

Strength

The next parameter that becomes important is strength and it has 2 progressions: 

1. Strength for players with a training age of 0-2 years should focus on General Physical Preparedness.  GPP has direct transfer to the court for younger athletes. We use the 1x20RM program for these younger athletes to introduce them to the weight room.  

2. Players that have spent 2+ years in the weight room, should be transitioning to performing Specialized Physical Training and start transitioning to 80% of their workouts being sport-specific, while 20% still being your traditional resistance exercises.

Power & Explosive Strength

This phase requires a good baseline of strength otherwise it may lead to injury. This is where Olympics Lifts are performed, med-balls are used and we focus on a 55-80% 1RM for our weight room lifts.

Elastic & Reactive Strength

We now focus on true plyometrics via the Shock Method and begin moving our limbs at a very fast level.  All-out sprints of 40-70 yards with plenty of rest are a great example of true plyometrics, where the limbs spend less than 0.3 seconds in contact with the ground.

Pre-hab

Finally, pre-hab is great for preventative measures and also used during long rest periods during strength or speed workouts.

Make sure to read the "101" sections to get a high-level understanding of each piece of the puzzle.