Playing Basketball to Condition for Basketball
Incorporating specific drills with high training stimulus.
Preseason conditioning is not a large concern for me as mentioned last week. I coach basketball, not cross country, and I want basketball players, not distance runners, bodybuilders, or Crossfitters. I cannot remember coaching a team in which conditioning was a problem beyond a varsity team that started the season with zero players and ended with 11, none of whom had played on a basketball team at any age. Even with them, fitness was down the list of our problems; I had to teach the basic rules. Every other team I have coached either had basketball players who played enough to maintain some type of fitness year-round or multi-sport athletes who simply had to transition their football or soccer fitness to basketball conditioning in a few practices.
I might expect more from a fitness standpoint when official practices started if I coached an NCAA D1 with the current rules (four hours per week of strength and conditioning and only four hours per week on the court with balls). I would expect a higher level of conditioning from the first practice in the NBA because of the short training camp and extremely long season. I am less concerned about optimal conditioning with adolescents. Any deficiencies are remedied quickly in my experience without devoting much energy to the problems. Last summer during our training camp, we (U17) slept in when the U19s ran laps on the track. We practiced twice per day for a week; did we really need to run more?
Every summer, college strength and conditioning coaches post shirtless pictures of players like they are auditioning for the next Magic Mike, and NBA players post about their added 15 pounds of muscle. Then, the season starts, and Stephen Curry — “far below NBA standard of explosiveness and athleticism”; Luka Dončić — “non-athletic, could struggle with physicality, may have peaked”; Kevin Durant — mocked for his bench press at the NBA Combine; and Nikola Jokić — “described as slow, non-athletic, and not strong enough” — continue to dominate the NBA. Athletic skills are important, but most underestimate the athleticism of Curry, Dončić, Durant, and Jokić because, as immortalized by Moneyball, “We're not selling jeans here.” Athleticism is great, and every level has a baseline or minimum accepted level, but ultimately basketball is a game of skill and intelligence.
I start practices with a dynamic warmup, often for 10-15 minutes of a 90-minute practice. The warmup focuses on teaching and developing general athletic and movement skills, builds in intensity, and generally finishes with a tag or keep-away game. Basketball is a game of movement, and these movement skills require skill development, just as with basketball-specific skills such as shooting or dribbling. Most basketball-specific movements require less time and instruction because they are specific applications of general movement skills that are practiced daily in our warmup.
As an example, a coach asked about teaching closeouts.
Our basic closeouts are a sprint-and-stop and a sprint-and-hockey stop, depending on speed, the attacking player, and other situational variables. A sprint-and-stop is a jump stop. A sprint-and-hockey stop was mentioned last week with the sprint and direction changes.
We mix each into our daily dynamic warmup, just as we add some curved runs and backpedaling. We do not do every skill every day, but touch on each a few times in a week.
The dynamic warmup might end with a sprint to the volleyball line, sprint back to the sideline, and sprint to the other sideline and stop. In terms of skills, we practice a static start (acceleration), hockey stop to change directions, hockey stop to change direction, and jump stop. We change directions toward the same wall in each direction to turn to each shoulder. We do not devote time to static closeout drills because we practice the general movements in our warmups. We reference the hockey stop and jump stop from the warmup and incorporate them into shooting drills, then one-vs-one and more competitive drills.
Beyond the dynamic warmup, common games and drills can serve multiple purposes. To add some conditioning into a practice, I use: Full-court three-vs-three no dribble; full-court five-vs-five with a 14-second shot clock; half-court three-vs-three Playmakers Rules; full-court one-vs-two/two-vs-one. I manage the time to maintain intensity. I want fitness at a high intensity level; recovery and less-intense physical activity is much easier to accomplish.
The 14-second shot clock prevents walking, setting up, and more. The ball remains in action; there is no recovery time. Half-court three-vs-three with the Playmakers rules is similar, as players cannot relax: One pass out to clear the ball after a make or miss could lead directly to an open shot. There is no setting up, no wasted time checking the ball. The goal is to keep the ball in play and keep players active for the entire duration, unlike other forms of three-vs-three where it might take 30 seconds to check the ball and re-start play after a basket or a five-vs-five game with a minute break for free throws. No-dribble games tend to be more intense because players must get open within five seconds, and players cannot use the dribble to slow down or manage the game or clock.
There are, of course, other ways to incorporate less intense conditioning. I use some two-ball shooting drills, and nearly any shooting drill with running can add some conditioning.
Possibly the biggest factor in terms of conditioning during practice is the activity time. Many practices involve more talking and less action. There are obviously times and situations where more instruction is required and practice will have a slower tempo and less physical activity. A coach may use a heavy instruction day as a low intensity day and follow it with higher intensity the next day (or possibly a game day). A coach may couple the heavy instruction with higher intensity activities at the end to provide an intense training stimulus, but with a low volume. There are many way to manipulate the daily, weekly, monthly, and season practice schedule to elicit sufficient conditioning, intensity, and recovery.
Unfortunately, most practices and seasons trend toward the middle; easy/light days are too hard, and hard/heavy days are not hard enough. As Matthew Perryman wrote in Squat Every Day: Thoughts on Overtraining and Recovery in Strength Training, “Our mindset needs to be thus: Light is light. Heavy is heavy. The middle ground is best avoided.” We do too much, which decreases intensity. We equate hard with volume, not speed. We go until players are worn out, not until the goal is accomplished. We fill time. More, more, more.
Conditioning is not a concern for me because I talk and instruct less and play more. I do not need a GPS unit to inform me of which player is running less or sitting out more; I use my eyes. I talk to players. I ask questions. If my best-conditioned players look worn out, I back off. I end early or play some fun games. The best way to get conditioned to play basketball is to play basketball. We play a lot of basketball during our practices, and we are generally well-conditioned for games.