Training During The Off-Season

You are here:

Home
Blog
Training During The Off-Season

December 12, 2019BlogBy Basketball Queensland

Your body is like a machine, and just like a machine, you need to maintain it and keep it in shape if you want it to perform well. For youth basketball, training in the off-season is a good way to get stronger and develop and maintain your skills, ready to jump into next season. Here are some tips to get your off-season training going, including some drills for guards and forwards.

Workout Tips For Youth Basketball Training

Get Healthy

Before you start training, you should attend to any niggling injuries. Ignoring something small can cause it to become a big problem later down the track.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

The first step in off-season training is to identify which aspects of your game you need to focus on and improve, and which ones you need to sustain. Identifying the areas, you want to get better in brings us to the next step, setting goals.

Setting Goals

Once you identify your weaknesses, your next move is to set your goals. Do you want to jump higher? Shoot with accuracy? Finish stronger at the rim? Decide on what you want to improve on and begin breaking it down into separate tasks. Let’s say you want to improve your passing; your task could be “do thirty minutes of passing drills 5 times a week”. Whatever it is, make sure it’s challenging enough without being too excessive.

Working Out

Spending useful time in the gym will improve your strength and conditioning over the offseason. The best way to fully utilise the gym is to work on every muscle group in your body.

Focus an aspect of training around a different muscle group, as well as different joint areas like the knees, elbows, and ankles.

Go through all the planes of motion that you experience in basketball. Forward and backward, up and down, side to side, twisting, working on different areas of motion will lower the chances of injury. Presses and pulls help upper body motion and lunges, laterals and step-ups in various directions will help with your lower body. Ask your coach or trainer what the ideal amount of reps is for your size and body type.

Conditioning

Intense conditioning isn’t as important in the offseason as it is when you play games. For youth basketball training, playing the occasional pick-up basketball should be enough to keep your skills and conditioning up. Otherwise, bike riding, running, and swimming are all good ways to maintain your conditioning.

Rest!

Make sure you get a good night’s sleep every night and don’t overexert yourself. Remember; this is the off-season, it’s not crucial for you to be in perfect basketball shape all the time.