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For any strength coaches out there who are just starting out training high school or college teams, you must realize that time is much more limited during the season than during the summer and off-season. I’m lucky if I get two, 30-minute sessions per week with the team. With so little time, I’ve had to trim all the excess fat out of the workouts and get down to business. There are also other issues that you may have to deal with such as player cramping and mental toughness. This article will hopefully serve as a guide to you whether you’re a player, coach or strength coach. As a little bonus as the end, I will highlight a great drill I use to build tougher players mentally and physically.
With only 30 minutes, I realize the main priority is to maintain the hard-earned strength and size we gained in the off-season. Every player went up at least eight pounds and one went up as high as 22 pounds. During a typical basketball game, a player who plays significant minutes can go up to five miles in an interval fashion, leading to huge excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (e.g. EPOC or oxygen debt) and leading to a huge calorie deficit. With this in mind, I choose three essential movements—a press, a pull, and a single leg movement. The multijoint movements stress a lot of muscle mass and cross several joints. I keep the reps in the 6–10 range and only have the players perform three sets at each station.
The players start a set on my whistle, which is normally every 90 seconds. This is done for a few reasons, the first being that I want to stay away from making the players sore, as usually can be seen with reps in the 12–15 range (bodybuilding style). I also don’t have a lot of time with the guys during the season. In addition, I want to maintain strength levels. I know that ideally we would perform even lower reps for strength, but I don’t care for the players to try and set PRs during the season. Weights in the 1–3 rep max range can also be a greater stress on the central nervous system, something you want to avoid at all costs during the season. The games and practices already place a huge stressor on the nervous system, so we have to try and balance recovery, strength maintenance, and performance. The players can try to increase weight from week to week.
Other areas that must be addressed are the core and flexibility. As with almost everyone I ever come across, basketball players are extremely tight in the hips. We always stretch the hip flexors, hip rotators, and low back. This can be done after or before the workout. Just make sure you get it in! You will also surely be faced with the problem of cramping during games. Much of the time, athletic trainers deal with this problem with bananas and hydration. This is fine and dandy when you’re talking long term, but if it is money time in the fourth quarter and one of your go to players is cramping, you better have a quick solution. Luck for you, I picked one such solution up during my competitive bodybuilding days. Calcium (or TUMS or Rolaids) taken before a game or at halftime or even once the player has already started cramping should do the trick. The calcium helps with the actin myosin cross bridges that have become locked, leading to a cramp. For you muscle heads, this also works before a big leg day in the gym (I figured this out after I almost landed in the emergency room with a severe case of cramping that lasted for three hours). Also have your players supplement with magnesium throughout the season, as most hard training athletes are deficient in magnesium.
Be sure to continue to monitor the mental state of your athletes. Basketball is a game of streaks. A player can be on a hot streak but then go into such a slump that he can no longer hit the side of a barn with the ball. Visualization will work wonders and the players will take to this surprisingly well if you explain why they should be doing it.
Finally, the drill I used the other day was more of a football drill, but I used it for mental toughness and to teach the players how to land after diving head first for a ball. I had a mat laid out with a line of players lined up behind the mat. I placed a medicine ball at the end of the mat and a cone about 30 feet beyond the end of the mat. In that empty space, I placed a player who had a stability ball. This was his ‘weapon.’ The next player up in line was to dive out on the mat and grab the medicine ball. The player then stood up and carried the ball like a football and had to get to the cone and touch it while the player with the stability ball was trying to prevent him with his ‘weapon.’
The players had a blast, and I believe if we continue this drill, the mental aspect of it will show up on the court. Use whatever training you can to get the edge on the competition and work hard!