Skills Training
The importance of basketball skills training
Basketball is a sport where fundamentals are particularly important in an athlete's progression. The fundamentals are the foundation of every basketball player.
In terms of individual offensive skills a basketball player must learn how to.
While individual skills are important in basketball, so are collective principles. These principles will allow athletes to easily understand the game of basketball, play freely while providing a good level of team play. The most important offensive principles in the game of basketball are.
In the same vein as the offensive game, the defensive game depends on individual techniques but also on many collective principles. These techniques and principles are.
Last but not least, shooting is the most important part of basketball, as it is the way to score points. The three importance parts of shooting the basketball are.
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Athletic Training
The importance of athletic training in basketball
Basketball is an extremely dynamic sport that requires movements in multiple planes of motion as well as rapid transitions from jogging to sprinting to jumping. The ability to quickly elude defenders, rapidly decelerate to take a jump shot, or explosively jump up to grab a rebound are all skills required to effectively play the sport.
It is equally important for the athlete to be able to perform these skills in a variety of directions and in a controlled manner to ensure injuries do not ensue. This is why athletic development is an important aspect of becoming a great basketball player. This includes your strength, conditioning, coordination, balance, speed, and agility.
There are a lot of variables in becoming quicker, faster, stronger and more explosive on the court. I’m going to list the one’s that I think are the most important as well as some that are completely overlooked. In no particular order of importance:
1. Posture – this is definitely one of the points that are overlooked! When I’m talking about posture I mean having optimal alignment to transfer force for sprinting, starting, stopping, jumping. Here are some of the most prevalent issues when it comes to messing up your posture:
Tight hip flexors
Gluteal amnesia (a.k.a. your butt doesn’t activate and work like it should)
Weak core
Tight hamstrings
Stiff ankles
Rounded upper back (shoulder forward posture)
Forward head posture
These are definitely some of the most important issues that cause postural issues. If you are not in good alignment then you have what is called power leaks. These “leaks” prevent you from applying all the force and into the ground, making you a lot less powerful, as well as more prone to injury. The good thing is that a lot of times fixing one helps fix some of the others.
How to fix them?
A good program design that will address the issues with foam rolling, stretching, mobility and dynamic warm ups, as well strength training and corrective exercises that are going to get you where you need to be.
2. Technique – Yes, you actually have to have good technique for accelerating, running and stopping. Fixing your posture will help with technique but you still have to work on it to get good at it (especially when you’ve done it engrained the wrong technique). I know many players that have good speed, quickness and power only to have really crappy technique which is slowing them down.
3. Relative Strength – Just get stronger! I’ve talked about this many times before but one of the best ways to get faster is to get stronger. Even though it sounds simplistic, it goes back to force production. The more force you can apply into the ground the faster you will go. There is a catch though; you have to apply that force quickly. More on that later….
Front squats, box squats, deadlift variations, bench press, chin ups, strongman training and everything in between. If you want to get stronger you’re going to have to get to know the above exercises and start lifting in lower rep ranges (1-6 reps) rather than constantly doing higher rep pansy exercises.
4. Explosive Strength – This type of training will help us generate force fast and without the use of any elastic energy (momentum). Think about the first step in basketball, or jumping without momentum.
To train explosive strength you can use a lot of different tools. Some of my favorite are Olympic lifts (clean, snatch jerk) with a barbell or kettlebell, pause squat jumps and box jumps, speed box squats (chains and bands), tire flips, broad jumps, sled pulls, medicine ball throws and different accelerations and deceleration drills (and honestly, any other innovative exercise that will help you with explosiveness). These exercises should be done for lower reps with maximum acceleration and power.
5. Training Deceleration – You have to learn how to stop first. Most injuries in basketball come at a time of deceleration because the body cannot handle it. Train to decelerate whether it is from jumping or running, stopping and changing direction.
How should you train to decelerate effectively? Strength train and do absorption and plyometric drills to handle forces of deceleration. Drill proper landing and stopping mechanics, as there is an optimal way to stop (watch some players that always land on one leg when coming down from a jump).
6. Reactive Strength (Reactivity) – Reactive ability is extremely important. Basketball is an extremely reactive game as it is so chaotic and changes on play happen quickly, so when they do you want to be able to stop fast (which we covered) and then change direction and re-accelerate. Since this happens so fast, your tendons store the elastic when you stop and reapply into acceleration. The same happens when having to jump consecutively without pausing.
Reactivity can be trained to a pretty high degree (we will touch on genetics later). Plyometrics are a great way to improve reactive ability. There are progressions depending on the physical preparedness of the player which can range from simple hops and jumps to single leg bounding, depth jumps, etc.
7. Multi-directional speed and quickness – This is a combination of starting and stopping and being able to transition into different movements and directions. In basketball you may have to backpedal, then sprint and immediately drop down into a defensive stance and do lateral slides. All the above point will help you with multi directional speed and quickness but that doesn’t mean that training it with specific drills and technique will not help you, because it certainly will.
8. Basketball Skill and Playing The Game – All the above doesn’t matter if you’re playing basketball, you’re on offense and you have crappy ball handling skills, because you may have a quick first step and end up leaving the ball behind you. Being fast and quick and being crappy at basketball is not going to get you far on the hardwood (well, maybe you can still change sports and you can give me credit for being fast and quick there).
I know that should be self explanatory but how many times have you met someone that has trained their vertical day and night, they can dunk like no other, only to find out they really suck at playing the game of basketball.
Above is a thorough list of the things you need to fix or improve on to get quicker, faster and more explosive on the basketball court. You may already be good or proficient at some but need work on some others. Ussually the aspect that you hate working on the most, is the one you need to work on the most!
Who needs what will be pretty individual and can be found out with some testing. To make it simple think of it this way, if you’re already a really reactive player but you’re too weak to lift up a bag of groceries, then you will see a lot of progress with improving relative strength and explosiveness (and make sure you’re posture doesn’t suck!).
If you’re strong but feel like the weight of the world is pulling you down when you try to explode, then you may do a lot better with improving reactivity, explosiveness and training deceleration (there is also a slight possibility you’re a fat ass and you need to get your nutrition in check….that would explain the weight of the world thing). For most players, they will do besy progressively improving all the above aspects.
Now that you know what you need to work on, get to it! Knowing what to do and doing it are two separate things and action takers will always rise to the top. Are you one of them?
The Basketball Mindset
As with other sports and high-energy activities, basketball requires a high amount of focus on things that take place in very short amounts of time. Decisions have to be made left and right, and the flow of the game is rarely interrupted. That kind of demand for attention can tire out the mind pretty quickly if it’s not exercised the same way as your muscles. Mindfulness is the habit of noticing and understanding our thoughts, feelings, and emotions in real-time. It requires paying deep attention to what is occurring in the present, as opposed to allowing yourself to worry about the past or analyzing what’s to come. Further, it’s accepting the present as it is without trying to force it into a mold of what you think it “should” be -- accepting each moment as it comes and embracing what that means to you.
Some of the world’s top athletes use mindfulness as a practice for strengthening mental focus so that they can perform their best in-game. Countless studies have taken the time to discover the connections between mindfulness practice or meditation and heightened awareness and performance in athletes. The benefits especially show themselves in high pressure situations.
“Meditation is not trying to go anywhere or do anything, meditation and being present is just seeing what’s there and letting it speak to you,” said George Mumford, meditation coach for Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, and more. “You start talking to them about how the mind-body interacts, you start talking to them about how you can slow time down when you create space between stimulus and response -- then three seconds is an eternity.”
Meditating can give athletes the ability to become hyper-aware of their surroundings in real-time, if practiced routinely over time. Focusing the mind’s energy on interpreting what is happening at present can be fairly hard to get right or understand immediately, but once someone can interpret the present in the real world, keeping the mind clear for rapid-fire decisions becomes more organized and efficient. Off the court, meditating can make the ability to find clarity in your thinking much easier, as your thoughts and reactions will begin to make more sense as they happen. It’s something someone can practice in their everyday life, which allows it to become more of a mindset than a practice.
Researchers have worked to prove connections between meditating and athletes’ performances in basketball and have found multiple inherent benefits involved. Since sports in general can be pretty high stress activities, finding ways to control or reduce it is super important to the athlete’s health. One study concluded that the impact of meditation is associated with lower stress levels in addition to reduced levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Being grounded, relaxed, and centered increases your ability to focus, concentrate, and clear your mind while under pressure. By consistently practicing meditation, your body can learn how to balance being relaxed in stressful situations by eliminating distractions and focusing only on the game itself.
It’s also been proven that enough sleep is crucial for every human to function at peak performance, especially athletes. Lack of sleep can bring on a lot of negative effects like easier weight gain, mood swings and irritability, heightened anxiety or depression, an inability to focus, and more. It’s common for athletes to be busy and thus struggle to find the right time to sleep, but practicing meditation can help the body recover quickly from training, heavy practice schedules, or even injury. It can provide the body with some of the same processes that sleep would normally handle. Meditating can also boost your body’s ability to grow during rest from training or playing, and boost the immune system to prevent illness that can get in the way.
Athletes who meditate can also overcome some of the more common “blind spots” that tend to make performance challenges seem worse than they actually are. They’re able to switch off a certain part of their brain that isn’t necessary during games or activities. Doing so allows some athletes to activate their subconscious and enter their own flow state zone. This is called transient hypofrontality, where a person shuts down the inner critic and ego to avoid distractions and center their vision and attention on the task at hand. Some athletes claim that entering this mode makes time feel like it slows down as the tasks and small check-offs fly by.
Meditation and mindfulness may be difficult to understand at first, but putting them into constant practice can help anyone be better at what they do, including athletes. Focusing mental energy is an important part of anyone’s game, so it’s crucial to exercise your brain in a way that allows it to focus when it’s necessary.
Planning For The Future
After ample rest, players need to formally evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. This step is vital to success; yet rarely done
.
Players need to clearly establish what they do well and what needs improvement. This can only be done effectively through a comprehensive evaluation by both player and coach.
Both player and coach should rate the following 15 traits on a scale of 1 through 10:
Skills
Athleticism
Intangibles
Players should write down what they believe; not what their parents or girlfriend thinks or what a scouting service says.
How do the player's scores compare to the coach's scores? Any score that the player and coach agree on is probably accurate. If they both believe ball handling is an "8", then it probably is. But what if the player thinks it is an "8" and the coach believes it is a "5"? Is it possible the player thinks an aspect of their game is better than it actually is? Regardless, I recommend you take the average of both scores to derive a final rating for each trait.
Which category is the best? Which needs the most improvement?
Ranking the categories will help players prioritize and plan what to emphasize during the offseason.
Before planning, let's define it by dividing the year into 3 distinct phases:
Players need to plan their schedule and take a look at everything that will necessitate their time.
Will they play a other sports? Do they need an academic tutor? Are they planning to play AAU? Will they take any summer vacations?
The more they know in advance, the better they can plan a realistic schedule.
And as stated earlier, the initial goal of the training should be to improve strength and power. Quickness, agility and conditioning are important, but like we said before, players need to focus on increasing their overall strength and address muscular imbalances first to build a proper foundation for long-term basketball development.
Personal Training
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