When trying to develop your players’ skills as effectively as possible, there are certain athletic skills which your players should develop. These can enhance their basketball performance and increase their effectiveness when they are on the court.
There are two main areas that you need to concentrate on when developing athletic performance. Although endurance is important and should also be developed, you need to look at developing strength and agility. Strength will help players take shots from further down the court and agility can help them evade other players so that they can get into optimal scoring position.
Many people think that vertical height is the key to being able to score more efficiently and it certainly does play a huge role in basketball success. This is where strength comes into play. By increasing the strength in their legs and torso, players will be able to get the explosive vertical thrust they need to achieve maximum height on their leaps. In addition, strength can help players run faster and this is very valuable on the court.
Strength building exercises such as weight training can be extremely helpful. In order to increase vertical height in your players’ leaps, you can also have them perform movements such as squats and squat jumps. You just need to remember to exercise the muscles of the leg evenly to prevent injury from unbalanced joints. Do not think that you can ignore the muscles in the back and abdomen as well since these can actually help to increase the height of vertical jumps as well. Finally, working on increasing arm and wrist strength can help to build the power of your shots and can decrease the risk of some athletic injuries.
Agility is important because your players need to be able to evade the opposing team. If they have worked on agility drills, they will be able to move safely at high speeds so that they can get into the best position and avoid injuries such as torn ligaments, strains and sprains. Agility drills can help your players so they should be incorporated into your practice sessions on a regular basis. In the beginning, you can work on agility without bringing the basketball into the picture and later, when your players are showing improvement, you can add the ball in order to increase the difficulty.
There are many different agility drills which can be used to your players’ advantage. They are available on the Internet. Look for skills which also work on increasing your players’ awareness of what is going on around them since this will help them to better decide which direction they should be moving when faced with a situation where they need to respond to opposing players.
Once you have worked on increasing the basic athletic skills which will enhance basketball performance, you can also work on increasing the accuracy of your players’ shooting as well as their general ball handling and passing skills. By increasing these skills, you will find that your players will end up becoming more well rounded and you will find that your ratio of wins to losses will also increase.
[info_box]Picture credit: Dennis.Vu • Creative Commons Attribution[/info_box]
