basketball training drillsToday, I’m going to share with you a handful of basketball training drills that will help get your players in shape and ready for game time.

Military Press

Here we want to work that upper power area–the shoulder and the chest area. We get real good lift with our military press.

We’re going to contrast this with an explosive vertical medicine ball toss.

Here we want to respond to the ball and pop it immediately back up in the air as soon as it touches the hands. So we get quick explosive response from those muscles, teaching them how we want them to work.

Sit-Ups

Here we want to work the abs while we’re working the total body.

Have your players place their hands across the chest, touching the shoulders. The back is flat. Bring the knees and the chest up at the same time.

Leg Lifts

Here we want to lift the heels just a couple inches off the ground. With the arms out wide, we have a more stable base. Bringing the arms across the body makes the core more unstable and makes the work more difficult.

We’re working on contracting both the abs and the lower back to stabilize the core.

We want to do five sets of five to fifteen seconds.

Knee-Ups

We want to start with the heels one inch off the ground with the arms out wide, bringing the knees up as high as we can. Bring the knee up, the heel up under the hamstring, and the toes up toward the shin.

Do these for three sets of 10. Bring the arms across the body to make this more unstable and more difficult.

Here’s a variation of the knee lift: Bring the heels just up off the ground. Now, focus on single leg. Bring the knee all the way up, straighten the leg, bring the other up.

Do three sets of 10 with each leg. With the arms out wide, we have a much more stable base. Bringing the arms across the chest creates an unstable base and makes the work much more difficult.

Super Persons

With this basketball training drill, you’ll lay on the ground, on your belly.

Here we want to extend the arms and the legs as far as possible. Flex the lower back, lifting the chest and the legs up off the ground. Hold for approximately a two-second count.

Stay under control. Don’t flop down to the ground like a fish out of water.

Do three sets of 10-20 repetitions. We can also do these single arm, single leg.

You can also do Super Persons using opposites–right arm, left leg; left arm, right leg. Try not to push with the opposite arm and leg. Make the core of the body and the back do the work.

Focus here on three sets of 10 with each side.

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