Weights

Basic Weights # 2 Core

All your power and explosiveness comes from the core. The very base of a strong foundation for weights and maintenance is having a solid core to work from. Many people over look the importance of working on the core body other than trying to look good but, the core is much more than your abs like many instantly think when they hear this word. In order to have a solid core all aspects need to worked. The main role of the core is to support the upper body, and more importantly the spinal column. If the muscles are not strong enough to support the spine sufficiently then you may well exceed the boundaries of the limited degrees of movement possible, resulting in injury to the ligaments. The body is a fine tuned machine so in order to have it working at its optimum level the body needs to be in tune and balanced. BALANCE is a big part of working out and preparing the body as unbalance will create a greater stress for another part of the body having to compensate for the weakness. This is often why people suffer from lower back pains.  

To begin this aspect of my blog i will only be giving two basic workouts to just get the body used to working on the core. One will be for the Abdominal's and the other for the Back. This will just be for a few days to help your body adjust to using these muscles. Then the exercises will evolve and begin using more areas and tougher exercises 

will begin to challenge your core.

Sit-ups

Find something to anchor down your feet such as dumbbells or even slide your feet under the sofa if you are going to do these exercises at home. Begin to do 4 sets of 30 sit-ups as this will work on strength and conditioning for the abdominals. Right now we want push your abs but we want to have some endurance so the muscles get used to worked for periods of time. take a roughly 45-60seconds rest inbetween each set to recover. DO NOT RUSH the sit-ups as the technique is more important that anything. Control the whole movements as if you just try to go threw the 30 as quick as possible not only will you not be getting the most out of the exercise but you will risk injury.

Plank

This works a mixture of both abs and the back as it involves holding the body rigid and parallel to the floor. Begin laying on your stomach and then raise on to your elbows and toes so that it looks similar to a push up. The focus of this is to keep your body straight, your shoulders, hips and ankle should all be in one straight line. It helps to keep your head in line too so your whole back and neck become involved in this exercise. Hold this position for 2minutes and repeat this 4 times. For this exercise take a 2minute rest between sets to recover and prepare. Stay strict with yourself and make sure your manage, control your body and keep the straight lines for best results.

 

Weights

Basic Weights #1

  Basketball mite be classed as a non contact sport but if you go into a competitive game thinking you dont have to be strong you will soon learn your incorrect, so some work in the weight room will help. For some basic upper body exercise to give you a good base to work from you should work on you'r; chest, shoulders, arms and abs. These groups of muscle come in handy during basketball games helping you to fight threw screens, box out, go threw contact and of course to shoot, pass and dribble the ball.
 Chest. For the chest you should do some bech, incline bench, Dumbell press, push ups and work some on the cables. Cables are my favorite machine as the list of things you can use them for seems endless.
 Shoulders. Shoulders are a key aspect in basketball and any sport as the shoulders connect alot of muscles together. For this you should do some kind of shoulder press, forward and lateral raises, and again make it on the cables. The amount of exercises you can look up for just the sholders on a cable should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
 Arms.  With dumbells do standard bicep curls, hammer curls, you can also to 21's with a straight bar or Z bar, you can also do over hand curls which will work other parts of the bicep. Start by doing a few pull-ups at first and build them up as working your own body weight is excellant conditioning. Dont forget the Triceps as when you are shooting, passing the arms are extending with the force of the triceps so make them strong too with; Dips, tricep curls infront and behind the head, push downs on the cables and even skull push-ups at first on the floor then build it up onto a ball.

All of these basic weight training exercises will be easy to find online for full video and step by step adive on how to do them correctly. In the next Weights blog i shall be posting some pictures and videos to show for the more complicated exercises i will be talking about. 

Conditioning

Step 1: Basic Conditioning. Miles and Quarters

  Basketball is a high intensity and quick recovery sport, so you have to condition yourself for this. To save injury and to perform the skills drills, shooting drills conditioning drills performed on the hard wood. You must put some time in to pre-condition your body for all these demands. One way i suggest you prepare is by doing a little times endurance running so you can monitor your improvement over a period of runs. For someone wishing to play College basketball or Professional basketball, no matter your size or position you should be able to run a mile in under 6minutes. Im not saying the first time you run it needs to be under 6minutes but you should be working to achieve this goal within a few weeks of running miles. In the top european leagues they have some 6'11 guys playing the small forward position so size is not an excuse. The bigs have to be able to run the floor just as good as the guards. For the smaller guys on the court you should be running miles in the mid to low 5minutes area, and remember point guards lead from the from.
  On top of the timed miles as i said basketball is a quick recovery sport so you have to develope this ability. Running the timed mile is to help build up your endurance and mental strength to push threw the pain barrier. This next conditioning drill to work on the bodies recovery period and again to help with mental toughness and push threw the pain. This exercise is called Quarters. Find a 400m track or measure it out. You will be running this 400m four times each time you do this drill. to start off you need to be aiming to run these quarters at a consistant speed so lets say one lap in 78seconds all four times then between each run you will have double the allocated time to rest before going again. You must be strict with the recovery time as this is to help the body speed up its recovery time. every 2weeks drop the time by 2seconds until you are running 74 or 72 a lap. This means you also drop the recovery time by 4seconds every 2 weeks. Once you hit the 74-72 times you need to drop the recovery down to a minute flat...yes 60seconds.
  Doing both of these conditioning exercises during preseason will certainly put you in good stead to get ready for the season. Maybe do the mile on mondays and the quarters on the the wednesdays so you have time to recover from each exercise.