Basketball is a sport that requires muscular strength, endurance, flexibility, good cardiovascular fitness, and speed, agility and quickness ("SAQ"). There are a number of workout programs that will help you address each of the elements that you need to improve your basketball fitness. Your first order of business should be to evaluate where you are now--in terms of fitness and skill levels--in order to determine which workouts you will want to emphasize.
Performance Tests
There are a number of performance tests that can help you determine your current strengths and weaknesses as they relate to your fitness level to play basketball. A few examples include the no-step vertical jump, which tests your vertical leap and leg power without any momentum; the sit-and-reach, which tests your flexibility, particularly in your lower back and hamstrings; the 4 by 17s test, which entails sprinting the width of the basketball court sideline to sideline 17 times (each full rotation counts as two trips), and tests your cardiovascular conditioning; and the push-up test, which tests your upper body strength.
Muscular Strength and Endurance Workouts
In the book "Complete Conditioning for Basketball," the writers state that a properly designed and functional training program for basketball players will improve their performance and decrease their risk of injury. Basketball players need both the muscular strength to grab that rebound away from an opponent, and the muscular endurance to last into the fourth quarter. Squats, bench press, lunges, resisted side-shuffles, depth drops, seated row and calf raises are just a few of the exercises that will help you.
Strength workouts are generally heavier workouts, whereas endurance workouts entail working with lighter resistance for more repetitions or longer duration.
Speed, Agility and Quickness
Basketball speed is not only about who can run the fastest 40-yard dash. After all, a regulation basketball court is less than 40-yards long. So training for speed with shorter distances will go a long way to help you in basketball.
Also, in a typical game, you will find yourself having to sprint or move while adjusting your body position (agility) and move or react fast (quickness) from a variety of positions. Vary your SAQ workout by training from a variety of positions, such as a shuffle, a back-pedal or even from the ground; this will help simulate game-like conditions and is a much more functional way to work out for your sport.
Cardiovascular Workouts
Distance running is important to your basketball training. After all, during the course of a full-court game, you may run several miles. However, what's equally important is training for the short bursts that are even more typical in basketball. Basketball, like tennis and a few other sports, is a "marathon of sprints." In a study of basketball players at the Victoria University of Technology in Australia, the researchers found that the average duration of cardiovascular effort was short but intense (think short sprints). Based on this information, including sprint interval training (full, or near-full, sprints with timed rest periods in between) in your workout is a good training method for basketball conditioning.
Combine your distance runs with some sprint-interval work for a well-rounded cardiovascular workout for basketball.
Core and Flexibility
Basketball players need a strong core (abdominal muscles and lower back). Traditional crunches, crunches using the stability or exercise ball, back extensions, "Super Mans" and medicine ball oblique throws are all excellent workouts for your core.
Flexible athletes are less prone to injury. Dynamic flexibility stretching before your workout, practice or game, and static stretching afterward, is best.
References
- "Women's Basketball" Magazine; There's Speed and Then There's Basketball Speed; LaRue E. Cook; July 2008
- "Complete Conditioning for Basketball"; National Basketball Conditioning Coaches Association; 2007
- "Journal of Sports Sciences"; The Physiological Load Imposed on Basketball Players During Competition; S.E. McInnes, et al.; October 1995
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