Can Practice Provide Sufficient Conditioning for Basketball?

Improving skill development within strength and conditioning.

A college strength and conditioning coach posted a video of players running sprints. The video showed players sprint to the free-throw line, turn and sprint back to the baseline, and then turn again to sprint to the opposite baseline. I do not run much in practices, but I use this pattern at the end of dynamic warmups to teach hockey stops (we generally move sideline to sideline, not baseline to baseline).

The NCAA maintains its archaic rules, which, to my knowledge, allow basketball teams four hours of practice and four hours of strength and conditioning (no balls) per week. With near certainty, these sprints were part of the four hours of strength and conditioning. Incorporating a basketball, as many suggested, to improve the sprints or make them more realistic was not an option due to the rules.

The video showed two sprints. The rest of their training is unknown. Therefore, the following is not a specific critique of the training or coach in the video, but a general critique based on numerous training sessions I have witnessed over the years. The title of my 2011 presentation at the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group conference was “Skill Development for Strength and Conditioning Coaches”, in which I described an NCAA D1 women’s basketball offseason conditioning session and the strength coach’s lack of attention to the direction changes when doing sprints.

I wrote about mindless conditioning in Fake Fundamentals because if you are not practicing good habits, you are developing bad habits. Running sprints for conditioning and not instructing and emphasizing proper changes of direction develops bad habits that must be corrected later regardless of the conditioning benefits.

In fall of 2019, I visited the Brooklyn Nets offseason workouts in September (I remember because a hurricane was hitting south Florida and the Nets kindly paid for me to leave town for a few days to observe workouts and offer feedback). The Nets ran sideline to sideline sprints. After the workout, when I offered my feedback, I asked if they had noticed anything about the sprints. Nobody had. There was one big anomaly. Every player turned to his preferred shoulder when changing directions, except one player. Nobody else noticed. Nobody else was interested in their direction changes. They were running just for some conditioning. I was curious about the player; was he left-handed, but shot with his right hand, as some players learn to do? Why allow players to turn in only one direction?

Right-handed players inevitably turn toward their left shoulders when changing directions, as this is the direction of almost every rotational sports movement: Golf swing, baseball swing, baseball throw, tennis swing, football throw, right-footed soccer kick, etc. This is normal and becomes habitual. However, these baseline to baseline or sideline to sideline sprints offer easy opportunities to practice turning to their right shoulders, the unnatural movement. Sprints should not be viewed as only conditioning; sprints are skill development too. Do players never turn toward their right shoulders during games? Should we never address movement weaknesses?

Addressing this does not require a large investment of time. During my initial sessions and dynamic warmups, we practice a hockey stop to change directions when sprinting in, changing directions, and sprinting out. We practice the hockey stop to both shoulders. I designate a wall in our gym (one baseline, one sideline). For the rest of the season, any time we sprint baseline to baseline or sideline to sideline, we change directions toward this wall. Therefore, roughly half of the direction changes during these sprints will be to the right shoulder, and half to the left shoulder.

We run the same number of sprints we would run otherwise; we simply alternate the directions of our changes of directions to practice hockey stops to both shoulders. Once we have taught the skill in the initial sessions and dynamic warmups, we do not have to re-teach the movement in our conditioning or other running, unless there is poor performance, as with the offseason workout I described in my 2011 presentation. Same work, greater benefits. Sprints as skill development, not just conditioning.

Earlier on the same day as the sprints video, I had retweeted about our preseason conditioning. “The strength and conditioning coach asked what I wanted for conditioning. I said nothing. ‘Get them stronger and faster. If I run practices correctly, conditioning won't be an issue.’ First game, one guy plays all 40 minutes in a game with 110 possessions, then plays 38 minutes the next day.” Another coach responded, “Exactly why you should listen to an S&C Coach. Just conditioning with the ball is stupid.”

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There are multiple issues with his statement. First, I said I would condition through correctly planned practices; I did not say anything about the basketball. This coach inferred this through his personal bias, as many did with the post about the sprints with the left-shoulder turns. Second, I was a more experienced strength and conditioning coach in terms of years of experience, level of experience, education, peer-reviewed papers, and more than my strength and conditioning coach. Following my beliefs is listening to an experienced strength and conditioning coach. Third, the strength coach agreed. He had hoped I did not want to condition in the same way as the professional team, with a high volume of running. Finally, from a previous newsletter:

Performance Assessment for Field Sports cited a 2006 study by Impellizzeri and colleagues titled “Physiological and performance effects of generic versus specific aerobic training in soccer players” published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine. The study compared a 12-week program of running (general training) to a 12-week program of small-sided games (specific training). The sport-specific group used heart-rate monitoring, whereas the general-training group ran at 90-95% of maximum heart rate. Both groups showed improved work rate and distance covered, but there was no significant difference between the two groups. Impellizzeri concluded, “The choice of aerobic training mode can mainly be based on practical necessity as both training types are effective.”

This is one study and specific to soccer, but suggesting conditioning solely with the ball is stupid ignores such studies. Small-sided games have been found repeatedly to offer many of the same physiological benefits as high intensity training and other methods of conditioning with the added benefit of improved skill performance. In environments when the preseason is short (no lengthy training camp like the professional team), there are few reasons to spend the time and energy engaged in off-court conditioning.

I do not run very much, and we certainly never run for distance (see Fake Fundamentals). Any off the court running is for speed development and inoculation against injuries, not conditioning or aerobic development or anything of that nature. We do, however, run in different ways during practice, whether as part of drills, tag, and more. I incorporate backpedaling and curved running into drills — again with and without the ball — because both have been shown to reduce hamstring injuries, at least anecdotally, among other reasons.

Interestingly, while our team was not conditioning with our strength and conditioning coach, our best player was training with the professional team in their preseason training camp. He did not play in our initial games, which is one reason a player had to play the full 40 minutes: We were missing multiple players for a variety of reasons. Their training camp included a lot of off-court conditioning, and our best player strained his hamstring during one of these conditioning sessions. The hamstring injury nagged him all season, despite recovery and rehabilitation sessions with the professional team’s strength and conditioning coach and physio, causing him to miss practices and games and spend much of the season on a minutes restriction. This injury occurred while conditioning without a basketball under the supervision of the professional team’s strength and conditioning coach.

My strength coach was excited when I said I wanted him to focus on getting players stronger and faster. Most strength coaches lean toward these factors; we are enamored by the vertical jump, 40-yard dash times, bench press numbers, and more, not mile times or beep test results. Years ago, shortly after the college basketball season ended, the women’s basketball coach at a different NCAA Division 1 program had her team running longer distances (400m to 1200m repeats) on the track. The strength and conditioning coach explained the running undermined his efforts to build speed, strength, and explosiveness in the early part of the offseason. The basketball coach — now a very well-known coach — responded that the strength coach did not understand basketball because that is how everyone does it.

Is something correct because “everyone does it”? Many things may be correct, or rather not incorrect, but is it the best approach? Should a more effective approach win out? Is our goal to optimize the training program or to be satisfactory?

There seems to be a heavy emphasis on peak conditioning at the beginning of the preseason program based on the circulating social media clips of conditioning tests and workouts. Conditioning in August and September has never been a concern for me. We are not training to peak in September; we want to peak in the postseason, whether March, April, or May, depending on where I have coached. The true conditioning need in August and September is a baseline to maintain practice intensity to sufficient levels for the duration of the practices and workouts.

Team and player development through the season

I prefer to develop speed, quickness, strength, power, and movement skills early in the season and build tolerance to greater workloads as we progress than to start the season with great aerobic capacities with no regard for movement skills or habits. Improving the efficiency of these qualities should improve performance and reduce injuries, which is essentially the goal of most offseason and preseason programs. From there, a mix of a dynamic warmup to provide a small training stimulus every practice, drills that require different running styles (backpedaling, curved running), and small-sided games should provide sufficient conditioning and game preparation.

I ran cross country as a high-school freshman because everyone said it would be good for basketball. I was faster over the three kilometer distance at my first practice after a summer of pickup basketball, basketball camps, and a summer league than after three months of cross country practice. I was not out of shape when basketball tryouts started, but I also had an adaptation period of a few days to regain basketball shape, despite being one of the top seven runners on the Section Champion freshmen cross country team. Running in straight lines over great distances is not the same as playing basketball. Nothing prepares one to play basketball better than playing basketball, even if outsiders consider that stupid.