Preparation pays off! How do you prepare and keep yourself active in the off season? basketball is commitment and to ensure you get the best out of it you must put yourself in the best situation. Here is 10 tips to help your game stay sharp in the off season.
1. Having a good workout plan. Map out what you plan to work on, you must breakdown the duration of the plan, every drill you will do and for how long. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses, plan your drills, ball handling and shooting.
2. Shooters shoot! repetition is important, to be a great shooter you got to put in plenty of time. Between 2-6 hours a week will make you a better shooter, the time you put in is the time you get out . Don't forget to keep a record!
Elite Shooters 1500 made a week.
Good Shooters 1000 made a week.
Poor Shooter 500 made a week.
3. Quality workout. Gym days, part of the requirement. Work on your strength, core and balance. 3-5 days a week is essential get good reps in, any less then your reps count for nothing.
4. Practice how you play: when we train , you cant put in nothing less then 100%. Walk away from any training you do and say you put in no less then your best. Train with the same intensity as you would put it a game.
Understand this...
During games you're going to be sprinting up and down the floor multiple times before attempting to shoot. You're going to be fatigued physically and mentally.
It's important to practice under these conditions so that you're comfortable executing your skills when faced with these conditions during games.
5. Personal evaluations: After you complete workouts you should do a breakdown what you did well and what was not done to the best of your ability. write down your strengths and weaknesses so you know next time you train where you excelled and where you can focus more work.
6. Free-throws: A consistent routine gives you confidence and a process to focus your attention on when shooting free-throws. Find a form a stick to it! Remember best way to practice free-throws is to emulate game conditions, run a end to end on the court before taking your shots.
Good shooters will gain 80%+ from the line.
7. Develop variations: Being able to explode past your opponent and then finish at the rim with a variety of moves is crucial to be a complete scorer. Here are 7 finishing moves all players should be working on: Regular layups (overhand) Finger Roll (underhand) Floaters Off-foot layups (example: right foot jump, right foot shot) Euro step Reverse layups Jump stop layups
8. Defense Becoming one of the best defenders on your team is a smart way for any player to stand out and increase their court time. How many players really want to improve defensively? Not many. The best way to improve your one-on-one defense is to compete against a live opponent. Preferably someone better than you.
9. Another fantastic way to improve your basketball training is to incorporate conditioning (sprints, bodyweight exercises) into every workout. This is important for several reasons, but the one we'll talk about now is the importance of improving your fitness. Improving your level of fitness will dramatically improve every single area of your game. You'll be less fatigued while shooting, you'll be able to sprint back harder on defense, free-throws will be easier, much better defense, etc.
10. Rest and Recovery: Let's be realistic... At some point you need to rest your body and recharge your mind. Resting is important both physically and mentally to ensure that you'll be able to continue to play at train at a high level. Here are a few exercises and tools that can help basketball players with recovery: Foam Rolling - By foam rolling you can increase your flexibility, improve blood circulation around the body, and it also removes lactic acid post-workout. Stretching - Daily stretching will prevent tight muscles, improve your range of motion, and can decrease injuries. Massages - Similar to stretching, massages will prevent tight muscles and assist with preventing injuries.
