Youth Basketball Training Tips for Aspiring Young Athletes

Youth basketball can be classified as players, boys and girls, from 12 – 16 years of age. This is a pivotal time, as it is generally around this age that athletes consider perhaps taking their basketball career to the next level. With this in mind, it’s important for athletes to consider the benefits of a healthy diet and an effective training program.

As you progress through your basketball career, it is important to focus on developing your core skills before moving into a more competitive competition. In youth basketball training there is a  focus on simple motion training to increase player’s awareness, thus giving them more time to learn the fundamentals.

Increase Over-all Gameplay With These Tips

Here are our 4 youth basketball training tips to increase your overall gameplay. They are split into 5 parts focusing on different areas of your basketball knowledge:

1. Planning Your Training

As you start to increase your skill and interest in basketball, transitioning from kid’s basketball to a more competitive level of competition, it is important to focus on planning your training sessions. Here is our basic training plan.

• Dynamic Warmup – Make sure you stretch while moving (i.e. lunges, high kicks)
• Fitness – anaerobic and aerobic
• Skill work – shooting skills and foot work
• Scrimmage drills – run through specific plays (invite a friend down to your local court)

2. Offense

Of course, the number one thing about your offense is consistency, this means practice, practice, practice. When you are practicing your shot focus on these parts:

• Follow through after each shot
• Take your time, focus on your form.
• Focus on: Spacing, Angle and Timing
• Pro Tip: Make sure that you do not dip one shoulder when shooting.
• Make sure to bend your knees
• When practising shooting, start by standing close to the hoop and move further away as your accuracy improves.

3. Defence

Fitness is a key part of defence, you need to be able to keep up with your opponent and quickly transition on the court between your offense and defence. When defending, it is important to focus on your ability to read the play of the game. Your team is only as good as its weakest link.

4. Overall Fitness

Basketball is an exceptionally physically exertive game and is a combination of anaerobic exercise with constant stop/ start play, and aerobic exercise. Implementing both these fitness types into youth basketball training can be achieved through a mixture of both circuit training and endurance training. An example of circuit training could be the repetition of 4 short drills with 30-second intervals of rest, i.e. sprinting the length of the court several times in succession with rests, then moving on to sets of burpees or jumping jacks. It is also important to consider your aerobic endurance, making sure to add in a medium pace jog, swim or other extended periods of exercise.

Before making any changes to your diet or training schedule talk to your basketball coach or parents to ensure that your wellness is not affected. It is important to keep balance in training load and nutrition to develop your youth basketball skills and go to the next level in training.