Tip #5 Develop Your Basketball Legs
What are basketball legs? When basketball season comes you’ll find out! The game of basketball requires:
- Sliding, low lateral movement;
- Sitting position;
- Lots of hops;
- Forward movement ;
- Side to side movement;
- Backward movement;
- Vertical movement
As a part of your preseason conditioning program find the time to get a lot of these movements in daily:
- Side to side;
- Back to front;
- Up and down;
It is important to get these moves in daily, but it is just as important to practice these movements with reaction. You want to get used to sitting in your stance, as well as exploding in your stance in all directions. Find ways to work on this on your own, even if your coaches or teammates do this or not. Spending some time on developing your basketball legs is an important key if you want to be able to perform your best this season.
Tip #6 Don’t Take Easy Play For Granted
Lots of players take layups for granted, and I’m just talking regular old layups
- Left hand
- Right hand
- Reverse
It is critical to understand lay ups are not to be taken for granted. I tell our athletes, the difference between not mentioned and honorable mention, All Conference and Fist Team All Conference can be just 3 layups a game which often people miss.
You may be thinking “What do you mean 3 layups a game, what does that look like?”. What I mean is this; if you average 12 points a game that’s not very significant and usually will go unmentioned at the end of the season. On the other hand, if you get 18 points a game this is much more significant and could likely earn you a first or second team all conference honors.
If you look at it, the difference between 12 points a game and 18 points a game is 6 points. 6 points is 3 layups. NEVER MISS YOUR LAYUPS. You accomplish that by dedicating a percent of training time everyday to finishing around the basket.
Tip #7 Take Full Advantage Of Every opportunity, Including Open Gym
Take open gym times as an opportunities to work on aspects of your game that need improving going into the season and into tryouts. Lots of players take open gym time for granted, but open gym time is an invaluable experience if you take it seriously.
- You want to have a goal and objective going into every open gym. That goal and objective should be to work on the aspects of your game that you’ve been training. This will give you an opportunity to see how it works in live action.
Lots of players go from doing their skills training to trying to implement in the games.
That’s wrong.
Here is what I suggest you do:
- Go from skills training to an open gym/free play scenario to see where it works/how it works;
- Go back to training to solidify it;
- Back to open gym;
- Then apply those apply those skills in a game setting.
Tip #8 Get A Training Partner
This is a key thing and very critical in my opinion. I feel like parents are managing lots of kids’ experience. If you want to make the team, its on you to take control of your development. One of the best ways to do this is find a friend/partner that is also going to be on the team and workout with them.
Make your partner someone that will push you. Set goals and make sure you’re working with someone that will help you achieve those goals.
Don’t be afraid to workout with someone you will be competing with for a spot on the team! Work out with them. Train with them. But here is the secret..
- You work with them
- You collect data and information
- You make sure you get EXTRA work in
- You OUTWORK them
When I was in school I would have multiple training partners. I would have a partner I would work out with Monday and Wednesday, then a couple partners I would work out with on Tuesday and Thursday, then I had my Friday and Saturday partners; nobody was as dedicated and committed to playing every day like I was, so I took advantage of that.
I aligned myself with 4 or 5 groups of guys who would only train 2-3 times a week, so every day of the week I had partners that would help hold me accountable to developing my skills and my game. In doing so these guys really helped me , unknowingly, become the player that I became and helped me reach my goal of State Player of the Year.
So, while you’re preparing for tryouts make sure to keep these things in mind:
- Get a training partner
- Find a gym
- Put your work in