Basketball is a mentally and physically demanding sport that requires players to be in excellent shape. To get there, you need to augment traditional basketball training drills involving shooting, dribbling and passing with vigorous and consistent exercise in aerobics, anaerobics, strength, endurance, and plyometrics. To give yourself a chance to succeed on the court, you've got to practice long and hard while you're off the court.
Aerobics
Aerobic exercises work to simultaneously build strength and fitness. They are of low to moderate intensity, and usually last between 10 minutes to an hour. Running, outdoor bicycling, stationary bicycling, and swimming are all great aerobic exercises of moderate intensity, and can be modified to suit the focus of your training regimen.
Anaerobics
Anaerobic exercises are designed to improve muscular and cardiovascular function during high intensity exertions of two minutes or less. Some of the best and most familiar anaerobic exercises for basketball players are wind sprints and suicide drills. Suicide drills are a frequently employed, end-of-practice ritual that force players to incrementally run back and forth between one baseline and various points on the basketball court, culminating in a baseline-to-baseline sprints. Anaerobic exercises should only be conducted after you’ve thoroughly warmed up and stretched out all your muscles. It’s preferable to save them for the middle to end of your training, possibly as a maximum-exertion conclusion to standard aerobic exercises—such as ending a 3-mile jog with a 100-yard dash, or an hour of stationary biking with an intense five-minute rally.
Strength Training
The primary objective of strength training for basketball players it to enhance muscular quickness and explosive power. This explosive power improves your acceleration, range, and quickness off the dribble, while reducing your risk of joint and tendon injuries. During the off-season, you should work to build functional strength in your lower back, abdominal muscles, and leg muscles, while making sure not to overdo it and injure yourself. Focus on incremental improvements and avoid drastic increases in the size of weights used or the number of sets or repetitions conducted in each set. Also be sure to work in conventional nonweight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups, at a level of 25 to 50 repetitions per set, three to four sets per training session. During the regular season, don’t think about building strength. Just keep the strength you do have by maintaining a steady weight and reptition limit during workouts, and focus on being able to quickly recuperate between games.
Plyometrics
Plyometric exercises work to improve muscle quickness and responsiveness, and are principally geared to improving lateral speed and vertical jumping ability. Some of the best plyometric exercises are box jumps, single leg box jumps, weighted box jumps, and lateral bounds. Traditionally, plyometrics are practiced on solid ground at the gym or at home, but you should consider performing some of them in a swimming pool, as you'll exercise your muscles with the same intensity as you would on land, but save your knees, back, and ankles from the intense stress of repeatedly landing on hard ground.
Endurance
Endurance exercises are not the most exciting part of a basketball training program, but they are every bit as important as all the others. Endurance activities often overlap with aerobic training, and involve many of the same exercises such as running, bicycling and swimming. To focus more on endurance and less on strength, cut the speed of your running or cycling in half, and double the amount of time or distance you commit to on each set.
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