Best Basketball Excercises

Basketball is unarguably one of the hardest sports in the world. It commands endurance, agility, power, strength, and speed to be a truly successful player. Here are some exercises, training schedule, and solutions to common mistakes so that will get you to become a better player you can be:

Mistakes

1. You Train Your Chest To Much:

I hate when sports commercials showcase a star athlete(especially a basketball or runner) doing bench presses. This is extremely misleading to any athlete without prior knowledge of proper sports training. In almost any sport(with exceptions such as football and boxing) the chest is the singular muscle group you use the least while playing. Although it undeniably looks good to have a big chest in the end it will end up slowing you down, reducing the much needed speed it takes to achieve things such as fast breaks and it'll wreak havoc on your endurance. It's just unneeded muscle. So stop doing those push ups and start doing pull ups because.....

2. You Don't Train Your Back (Lats) Enough:

 

Unlike the chest in the upper body the latissimus dorsi is the second most used muscle in the upper body (the shoulders are first) while playing basketball. They are used to get rebounds, dunking, and running. Most beginners make sure they are able to do a crazy amount of push ups (which are good for the shoulders but emphasizes what I said in my first point) and completely skip out on the pull ups which hit the two most important muscles.....your shoulders and your entire back. Pull ups are hard which is part of the reason they are so effective, it simply takes more physical strength to do pull ups. For the beginner who switches from push ups to pull ups as their primary upper body exercise for basketball I guarantee they will see a huge difference. Most beginners just don't know the......

3 Best Excercises For Basketball

1. Deadlift

The dealift is hands down the best exercise for basketball players and unfortunately the most unused. The deadlift is a nearly full body exercise, it not only hits your legs but also your lower back, abdomen, lats, shoulders, traps, and to a certain extent your arms. This is the number one exercise for increasing an athletes vertical and over all strength. Deadlifts are known to be an injury prone exercise and to my knowledge this is false. Of course correct posture and form are VERY important especially with very heavy weights but as long as your not lifting with your back the deadlift is very safe, it's arguably 10 times safer than squats. Squats are very trick to master because of the 90 degree positioning and if not kept in mind, it could much more easily be done wrong than the deadlift, also all you really have to do with the deadlift is drop the weight, if you find out the squat is to much for you to handle while squatting all you can do is embarrassingly fall down to the ground, hopefully having a weight rack to support you. The advantages of deadlifts are tremendous, just like.....

2. The Pull up

I said it before and I'll say it again the pull up is the most effective upper body exercise for a basketball player it catches everything that's essential to a basketball player whilst skipping that pesky chest. With the increased strength in the lats and biceps you'll be able to pull the ball away from your opponents(who probably still do push ups) the shoulder strength will help with this as well as giving you much more potential to dunk the basketball. There are many variations to the pull up but two in particular that I'd like to share. The first is the L-sit pull up the is pull up is much harder than the regular pull up because it incorporates your abdominal muscles to maintain an L shaped position. The exercise is particularly put to good use when a player drives into the basket and is fouled due to the new found strength in the abdominal plus the strength in th shoulders and traps the player will be more likely to absorb the bump of the defender, therefore still making the basket and a possible 3-point play. The second is the one arm assisted pull up. This pull up is primarily used as a strength exercise. If done right and on the right schedule, the one arm pull up will bring a sort of balance to your dominant hand and the other pretty much useless arm your stuck with and put major muscle on your back, making you bigger and more capable of absorbing the impact of a bumping opponent. With the combination of deadlifts and pull ups an athlete, especially a beginner will soar to new heights but they are nothing without........

3. Running

This is the bread and butter of exercises for basketball. If you can't run you can't play basketball therefore you must run ALOT this doesn't mean an hour a day or anything it just means about 5-30 minutes for 3 days out of the week. Running especially when set to a new limits such as 30 minutes(most beginners have never run for 30 minutes straight before) introduces new advantages not present in any other excecise. You create endurance EVERY WHERE and reduce the body fat so that when you do out right sprint on the basketball court you will be ultimately alot faster, BUT only use this for conditioning. Running at full speed for a short time is completely different than running 75% - 90% for a long time. When basketball season nears make sure to start doing short sprints (like 50 meters at the most) and to immediately drop the 5-30 minute regimen you put your self on. With deadlifts, pull ups, and running any athlete will be a force to be reckon with as long as they put themselves on the right........

Schedule

Over training is probably one of the saddest sites to behold in any athlete. It says that the athlete is working hard but not smart and his body is being torn down instead of being brought up because of it. In sports it is tragic irony at it's worst. Over training could even be worse than under training because people who haven't been training as much as they should could easily start working out and progress faster than an over-trainer who might pull or break something thus keeping them out of commission for an extensive period of time. That's why I'm going to provide you with an example schedule so that you don't do that, allowing just enough  recovery time to make progress:

Monday

Pull ups(one arm assisted) - 5-9 sets of 5 reps 2 minute 30 second rest

Deadlift - 5-9 sets of 5 reps(max) 2 minute 30 second rest

Pull ups(L - sit) - 3 sets of 8 reps 45 second rest

Running - 5-30 minutes(max pace)

Wednesday

One arm dumbbell chest press - 3 sets of 8 reps 45 second rest
Deadlift - 3-5 sets of 8 reps, 45 second rest
Pull ups(L-sit) - 3 sets of 8 reps, 45 second res
Running - 5-30 minutes(near max pace)

Friday

Pull ups(one arm assisted) -5-9 sets of 4-5 reps, 2 minuted 30 second rest
Deadlift - 5-9 sets of 5 reps(near max), 2 minute 30 seconds rest
Pull ups(L-sit) - 3 sets of 8 reps 60 second rest
Running - 5 -30(moderate pace)

Saturday 

Deadlift - 2-4 sets of 8 reps, 90 second rest
Pull ups(L-sit) - 2-3 sets of 8 reps, 60 second res
Running - 5-30 minutes(easy pace)

Lastly as I mentioned in my last post bodbot.com has a fantastic basketball workout regimen. It mixes up the exercises for you and creates a schedule based on their workout algorithm. It's really great and entails all of the tips I just discussed. Although a normal athlete in the basketball season probably shouldn't follow them during the regular basketball season because of games and such it is a good tool for summer physical conditioning.