Basketball conditioning is extremely important for anyone wanting to see floor time.
The game of basketball requires speed and quickness, strength and skill, and a little stamina thrown in for good measure.
If a player can't sprint the floor for a fast break, play tough end-to-end defense, and dive for loose balls, he'll find himself sitting the pine for a long time.
If he makes the team at all.
The off season is the best time to develop basketball conditioning, as well as other important basketball skills.
To use the off-season to their best advantage, encourage your players to focus on three things: 1.
Developing Good Basic Skills - as the saying goes, players are made in the off-season.
Those two or three months when the player is out of school, out of practice, can be the best time to develop his basic skills set (dribbling, passing, shooting, defense, etc.
) If at all possible, encourage players to attend a good basketball camp, even if it's only for a week or two, to get some good instruction and to play against some organized competition.
Be sure players have a skills workout program to use during their off-season, a set of drills they can perform on their own or with a partner that will help them develop the skill set specific to the position they play.
This should probably be your last couple of practices for the season, after playoffs have finished - hand out a skills workout to each player, tailored to the position they play and the skills they should know, and then spend a couple of practices running through the workouts so players are able to do it on their own throughout the off season.
Focus the workout on basic drills, nothing complex, with emphasis on performing skills with proper form.
2.
Developing Good Aerobic Conditioning - players need to show up at the first practice already in good aerobic shape.
If you have to spend the first month of your practices just to get them in shape, then you'll find yourself a month behind your competition.
Put together a conditioning workout that will build the aerobic skills most useful for the start-stop, sprinting play of basketball.
In the off-season, you should also add in some endurance workouts - jogging or biking longer stretches.
While these endurance workouts don't really target conditioning that is specific to basketball, they will improve the overall cardiovascular health of your players and make them healthier.
And don't be afraid to encourage your players to play some soccer, or beach volleyball, or some other sport from time to time.
Some cross-training is a good thing, especially off season, as it will develop muscles and athletic skills that an exercise program focused on a single sport may not.
3.
Developing Good Muscular Strength - the off-season is where strength is built, when it doesn't really matter if your players' shots get a little messed up due to increasing strength.
You want players returning to you stronger and fitter than when they left you, so be sure to provide them a strength training program for the off-season.
Going along with strength training would be jump training.
Basketball is a game often played in the air, and the better vertical leap your players have, the better equipped they will be to snatch rebounds and defend the key.
So give them a jump training workout as well.
Sounds like a lot, but players can't afford to waste the off-season and expect to win a championship the next season.
And all these programs, taken together, will still only take up an hour or two a day, leaving lots of the summer for players to hang out at the neighborhood courts and play pick-up ball.
You can find the basketball conditioning workouts I use during the off-season on this page: Basketball Conditioning Workouts, from my Better Basketball Coaching website.