I have trained many athletes of various sports and basketball is among the top 3 most prevalent. My hope here to is to offer a resource to players and material to coaches that will be thought provoking, leading to improved player performance. To cover all the intricacies related to different players, their positions, injuries, multi-sport athletes, differing age groups, differing genders, differing state regulations, personal preferences, etc. is beyond the scope of this article. I want to give a broad overview of training philosophy and training principles aimed at maximizing adaptations that will transfer to the court.

What makes a basketball player great? Undoubtably, there are several variables that are unique to the player and their position: Kyrie Irving’s ball-handling skills, Pippen’s defensive intuition, or the height of Muresan. However, as a strength and conditioning coach my focus is on what characteristics I can train that will help a player be the most prepared for competition. Studies have been done looking at the most common movements in gameplay, their velocities, performance measures of semi-professional and professional basketball players which give us an idea of the attributes of great players. A study completed on the University of West Virginia Basketball team revealed that actions in gameplay could be dialed down into running, cutting, jumping, rebounding, shooting, dribbling, and passing. When taken with other studies looking at anthropometrics, agility targets, and conditioning requirements of gameplay, I believe it would be optimal for a player to be able to finish a 7-minute mile at an RPE 13 or less, to have acceptable agility (acceleration, deceleration, change of direction) demonstrated by a respectable 300M dash (<54sec) and T-test time (<10.5sec), to improve their vertical as much as possible (27-32in.), to get to a BF% of 12-14% (males) or 19-21% (females) and a BMI of ~23.5-25.5, and to possess the skills needed for their position.

With this information you can create what the NSCA coins an “athletes’ profile.” To create this profile, you run the athlete through the tests, in a logical order, and see what strengths and weaknesses they possess. With this information you simply prioritize and/or maintain adaptations according to athletes’ performance results, and monitor performance changes and adjust training accordingly.

You set the training up based around the players sport schedule in an “in-season, post-season, off-season, pre-season” macrocycle with each block having its own specific goals; that is, to maintain physiological adaptations through season, recover from in-season demands, increase capacity as to handle and recover well from the sport specific training that is coming, and to get the athlete the most prepared physiologically for the season, respectively. Generally, a post-season is short and can be complete rest. Then, off-season training, is depicted by high training volumes, lower intensities, and more diverse exercise selection. Then pre-season training starts, volume decreases gradually from off-season, intensity increases, and exercises selection gets more specific and is guided by the athlete profile.

When creating this training, I find some useful questions are, “what does the athlete need to be more competitive?”; and “what does the majority of training literature and anecdotal evidence tell me is the best way to make these changes occur?” For a quick, simple example, let’s say you have an athlete who could play center but is not as heavy, nor strong as we might wish for him to be in his division of play, what do? Let’s run through the questions.

1. What does my athlete need to be more competitive?
   1. He needs to gain ~10lb across 12-weeks, increase lean muscle mass (LMM) in the process, and make significant strength gains in relevant movements pertaining to his sport.
2. What does the majority of training literature and anecdotal evidence say?
   1. He must increase calories by ~500-1000/day along with other nutritional changes such as 1.5-2.2g/kg protein intake, higher carbohydrate intakes, etc. Also, he will likely need to be doing at least 2-3 days/wk. of resistance training, his intensities will need to be ~68-95% with repetitions likely <8 per set at ~6-20 sets/movement or muscle groups/wk., with the exercises being related to his sport. This will need to be placed in off-season and beginning of pre-season as this will give us the most freedom with volume and recovery.

I’ll throw out a case study: a freshman in high school, playing starting point for JV. This kid approached me mid AAU season (May) and stated he was going into his sophomore year and likely to go varsity. He wants to be more competitive and has collegiate goals. I call his JV coach (collaboration is important) and he tells me the athlete is a phenomenal ball handler, high IQ player with great passes, yet fatigues late in the game, starts to lose the jump late in the game which makes him miss more shots, and is described as “slow”, “not athletic”, “needs spring”. His profile is below…

Male 74’’ 165lb (21 BMI – BF% via calipers ~12.5%

1-mile run: 7:16 RPE 17; Dyspnea score 7/10 (estimated 40ml/kg*min)

300M dash: 65s

T-test time: 13.2s

Vertical: 23.5’’

Max pushup test 16

Max Leg press 1.2xBW

Observationally: Athlete is average build, could use more LMM, strength is average, slow, lacks agility, aerobic capacity is poor which leads to poor recovery between sprint bouts in gameplay, lacks spring-step in gate – trots instead of sprints – leading to poor acceleration and top speed. His build makes me feel he will be sensitive to the training stimulus, so I plan to start him out at a moderate volume and track progress.

Right off the bat we see his aerobic capacity, agility, and speed is not great; and his vertical is average. Our two questions:

1. What does my athlete need to be more competitive?
   1. He needs to improve his aerobic capacity (45–64 mL/kg/min) or a 1-min mile at 7-min RPE 13; his recovery needs to get better; he needs to be faster; he needs to jump higher and improve his muscular endurance; he needs to improve his agility (cutting, deaccelerations, etc.).
2. What does the majority of training literature and anecdotal evidence tell us?
   1. We need to get to the point of doing to ~200-300min/wk. of running during the off-season and maybe early pre-season time – drills should be focused mostly on moderate intensity Zone 2-3 work, secondarily on sprints with inter-sprint recovery as the main tool of progression. Aerobic training will be done post resistance training or on non-resistance training days.
   1. We need sport-specific plyometric training to improve vertical and perhaps include change of direction plyometric exercises for agility improvements. ~ 30-50 jumps/session at 3 sessions/wk. is a good off-season volume, choosing exercises that deliver the most ground-reaction force (GRF) and are sport-specific: vertical jumping, counter laterals, bounding, etc.
   1. To improve agility the athlete should do drills that focus on acceleration, deceleration, reacceleration, and change-of-direction: cone drills, suicides, shuttles run, ladders, etc. (you can sprinkle these throughout the program).
   1. 3d/wk. full-body resistance training (RT) should be done in the off-season at 65-95% 1-RM, ~9-15sets/major movement or muscle group/week with manipulation in volume primarily through sets/week and weight being lifted. As the athlete slips into In-Season their RT volume should decrease (theoretically to 10-30% of what they were doing on off-season, if not 0%) depending on their performance.
      1. On average offseason/pre-season will be 4d/wk. workouts at 12-20 sets/movement type/week; and in-season will be 2d/wk. workouts at 2-6 sets/movement type/week (data from Simenz, CJ et. al. Strength and Conditioning Practices of National Basketball Association Strength and Conditioning Coaches. JSCR NSCA, 2005 and is variable).

Now we have a conceptualization of how we want the training to look, and simply configure that training around the athlete’s schedule, prioritizing the training adaptations that will have the greatest impact on performance, and follow the general guidelines for the season the athlete is in. Continuing the case study…

Our athlete is in AAU (a hybrid of in-season and off-season) – 1 practice per week every Wednesday and on average a 1–2-day tournament every weekend, or every other weekend. He has access to a commercial gym with a basketball court. When talking to his AAU and high school coach they want the athlete to do at least 3d/wk. of specific shooting drills and ball handling drills, which the athlete is familiar with. AAU will end around July; so, July – September the athlete will transition to pre-season training, and then In-season will start.

While running the program I already know how I want progression to look: resistance exercises via weight being lifted (intensity), “Z” cone drills via moving cones to force greater deacceleration and acceleration, Ladder/Sprint drills via time, Zone 2 cardio is ~60%HRR so I will adjust Mets depending on HR, and the jump exercises via the number of jumps per week (all dependent on progress).

Pre-Season (Aug – Sep)

Our In-season AAU program was moderate volume (that is: RT 2-5 sets/movement/Wk. 1d/wk.; ~200min/wk. running/aerobics; 30-50 jumps/session at 2d/wk.) due to sport demands so we were slightly below what we would be doing during a true pre-season, if the athlete were not in AAU. So, I would continue the program as we transition in “pre-season”, but increase volume: add another RT day at similar per session volumes with similar exercises, add another 30-50 jumps/wk., add another 60+ min of zone 2 aerobic exercise, and add variable sprints: supra sprints, resistance sprints, etc. (depending on progress). The player is still accomplishing at least 4-5d/wk. of basketball specific drills – mostly shooting – done prior to workouts and at an increased volume on non-training day.

In-Season (Oct – Mar)

Here, practice, game frequency, and intensity increase substantially; therefore, the athletes training should be prioritized and decreased to just 10-30% of off-season volumes. For example, let’s say our player has improved his strength by 136%, VO2 peak is estimated 55ml/kg/min, and his T-test improved by 2-seconds, yet his vertical is still lacking at 27in. – we would decrease our jumps to ~40-50/wk.; while, cutting RT exercises to only compound movements at 10% of the volume, and do no sprint or aerobic training.

I hope this brief article gives some insights to some of the thought processes that go into a training macrocycle, and smaller cycles for a basketball player. Of course, there are too many variables and so much individual variation between players to be able to give an overview that answers all questions. Also, there is no one answer – many methods work. The trainer is always monitoring progress and adjusting variables based on data and not on simply “feels” or “that’s how it’s always been done.”

If you, or someone you know, have training questions please feel free to reach out to me via email.