Medicine balls are weighted training balls that are designed to increase strength. Medicine balls are versatile training tools and can be used for basketball-specific drills and activities. Using a medicine ball can help improve overall strength as well as passing, rebounding, shooting and leaping skills.
Defensive Slide Passing
The slide shuffle passing involves players incorporating defensive slide drills and passing drills with a medicine ball. The drill improves strength, quickness, passing accuracy and conditioning. Several variations of this drill exist, but all involve the same principle. Players should stand lane-width apart and shuffle the length of the court while continuously passing the ball back and forth. During the shuffle, just as in a defensive slide, players should not cross their feet, but instead stay in an athletic stance with their knees bent, and shuffle by bringing their feet together and then apart. The standard chest pass is most often used during the drill, but you can incorporate overhead passes, and depending on your medicine ball, bounce passes and baseball passes.
Catch, Rebound and Outlet
The catch, rebound and outlet drill works with players, especially interior players, on their strength, hands and specific rebounding and catching skills. Medicine balls can be used for rapid fire drills to pass to the post players repeatedly with force to strengthen the hands and teach them to catch the ball. Simply have players stand in the middle of the lane and toss the medicine ball off the backboard, catching it high like a rebound and then throwing a hard outlet pass to a player standing at least 10 feet away. The goal is for the players to keep the ball above their heads on the rebound and increase their outlet pass strength over time.
Leaping Drills
Medicine balls can be used for a variety of drills designed to increase strength and leaping ability. Players can work on a variety of basketball-specific moves like drop steps and powering to the basket with the medicine ball. The added weight will make players stronger in their entire bodies, but especially the legs. You can incorporate box jumps, in which the player leaps onto a raised box that is 1 to 3 feet off the ground. This and other plyometric drills such as squat jumps can be used with medicine balls to improve leaping ability.
Shooting Strength
Several varieties of shot-specific drills can be done with medicine balls to increase strength in the shooting form and specific motion. Players can take the medicine ball and hold it at the start of their shot and simply push it up to full extension and back down to strengthen the triceps and muscles involved in shooting. In addition, taking a full shot at air or lying on the ground to simulate the shooting motion is an effective drill to increase strength in the specific muscles involved in the shot.
Member Comments