5 Exercises to Improve Power

By Mike Mahon, BBallExperts.com

If I could show you five exercises that will noticeably improve your total body power and performance on the basketball court, these would be it. These exercises are great because they can be done on your own, are quick, effective and produce great results.

Power is important on the court, so let’s make you a force to reckon with when the games start.

Basketball Plyo Push Ups

This exercise will help basketball players learn how to give and absorb force effectively and efficiently. Mastery of this exercise will translate into quicker, more explosive hands and a powerful upper body ready to dominate the hardwood.

How to Perform It:

1. Place yourself in a push-up position, straddling the basketball with both of your hands.
2. Lower yourself down halfway to the ground.
3. Violently explode off the floor and catch and stabilize yourself on your basketball and hold for a one count.
4. Toss yourself off and land softly on the floor.
5. Repeat for desired repetitions.

Medicine Ball Wall Throws

This drill is great for hand-eye coordination, and the nature of the motions will dramatically improve your ability to pass, catch and control the basketball. That will drastically transfer to more precise passing and catching abilities on the court along with your new greater sense of power.

How to Perform It:

1. Face a wall with a medicine ball in your hands around chest height.
2. Violently fire the medicine ball at a predetermined target at the wall.
3. Have your hands out in front of you ready to absorb the rebound of the ball off the wall.
4. Catch the ball.
5. Fire it back at the wall for desired repetitions or time.

Medicine Ball Rotational Side Wall Throws

This drill is another great power exercise that every basketball player should learn to perform. I love it because just like all the previous exercises, it improves your hand-eye coordination, which is vital to becoming a successful basketball player. It also dramatically improves your body core strength, and ability to explosively change direction. Talk about a bang-for-your-buck exercise.

How to Perform It:

1. Stand in an athletic stance with your feet shoulder-width apart facing the wall sideways.
2. Hold the medicine ball with both hands and arms only slightly bent on the side of your hip farthest away from the wall.
3. Swing ball over to your hip and violently toss the ball underhand and forward against the wall.
4. Have your hands up and ready to receive the rebound of the ball back to you.
5. Catch ball on the bounce from your wall and make sure that you repeat it again and again.
6. Make sure you work on the drills with both sides of your body.

Medicine Ball Slams

Medicine ball slams are a tremendous upper-body strength and power builder for basketball player. This exercise is great because it can be done in a relative small area of space, it improves your sports performance, and players really enjoy doing it.

How to Perform It:

1. Stand in an athletic stance with your feet shoulder-width apart and the medicine ball tucked behind your head.
2. Explosively and forcefully slam the medicine ball into the ground as hard as you can.
3. Squat down and pick up the medicine ball and repeat for desired repetitions.

Medicine Ball Squat Throws

Of all the great basketball explosion exercises, squat throws is by far my favorite exercise. I like this exercise because it teaches you how to transfer the energy from the ground and explosively release it through your hands. Many players have trouble mastering this concept, but after regularly performing this exercise, they become much more explosive from head to toe.

How to Perform It:

1. Stand in an athletic stance with your feet shoulder-width apart while you are holding a medicine ball and chest level.
2. Quickly squat down to parallel
3. Explosively jump straight up and explode the medicine ball above your head as high as you can.
4. Let the medicine ball drop to the ground, pick it up and repeat steps 1-3 for desired reps.

3 Drills for an Explosive First Step

By Alan Stein, CCS, CSCS, StrongerTeam.com

When you have the ball, you control the game. The defense is at your mercy. You know exactly where you want to go and when you want to go there. This alone gives you a decided advantage over the defense. But adding an explosive first step to your arsenal can give you an even bigger advantage. Quickness is one of the top three traits for a basketball player. The quicker you are with the ball, the more of a threat you are as an offensive player. In order to be quicker with the ball you need to utilize game speed ball handling drills and quickness/reaction drills in your training program.

These drills, from StrongerTeam.com, add an element of reaction. The ability to read and react to visual and audible cues is important in the game of basketball.

The following three drills will improve your quickness, agility and reaction time. Perform two to three of these drills twice a week during the offseason. The time each drill is performed and the rest time between sets can transform each drill from a quickness drill to a conditioning drill. Because there’s a time and place for conditioning, make sure to stick to the prescribed times to keep these drills improving your quickness so you can achieve the most benefit for your first-step and scoring ability.

Ball Drop

Benefits: Footwork, hand quickness, eye-hand coordination

Reps: 30 seconds

Sets: 4-6

Make sure you're in a defensive stance.

Rest: 60-90 seconds

Instructions:

• Stand arms length away from partner in defensive stance
• Partner holds tennis ball in each hand
• Sprint to ball after partner’s throw
• Catch ball before second bounce
• Toss back to partner and sprint back to starting position
• React and sprint to next throw from partner
• Partner should vary distance, direction and speed of throws

Coaching Point: Your partner should vary the hand he uses on throws and constantly change-up the pattern. For example, throw left hand, left hand, left hand and then right hand because it’s much more unpredictable then throwing left hand, right hand, left hand. This forces you to react faster and improve your first-step.

Block to Block

Benefits: Lateral quickness and agility

Reps: 12-15 seconds

Sets: 4-6

Rest: 60-90 seconds

Instructions:

• Stand in lane in athletic position between the blocks
• Partners kneels at top of key behind three point line with two tennis balls
• Partner rolls one ball to either block
• Defensive slide to block, tap ball back to partner, slide back to starting position
• React to next roll and repeat

Coaching Point: Don’t ever cross your feet and make sure to stay low with your chest up and your hands up and active. You have to stay low to the ground so you can reach the ball and tap it back to your partner. Your hands should be in front and active like they are in a game so you can catch a pass or grab a rebound. If your hands are in by your sides you can’t do these things in a game and you can’t perform this drill. And most importantly, work hard. Your intensity of effort during this drill is crucial.

Star Drill

Benefits: Reaction and short burst quickness

Reps: 15 seconds

Sets: 4-6

Rest: 60-90 seconds

Instructions:

• Place five cones around three point line
• Perform athletic movement such as backboard taps, or defensive slides from block to block
• When partner calls number of cone, sprint to cone, challenge an imaginary shot, and back pedal back to starting spot
• Continue performing original movement
• React to partner’s next call and sprint to and from cone
• Repeat

Coaching Point: Adjust the drill by sprinting to the cone as if you are closing out on a shooter. Chop your feet as you get close to the cone, get low and keep a hand up to put a hand in the imaginary shooters face. Then sprint back to the start. You can also change the movement pattern used such as sprinting to the cone and then backpedaling back to the start. Each different movement helps work another part of your game.

3 Ways to Make Nutrition Work for You

By Danny McLarty, CSCS

You've been working hard on your game. Your handles, your jump shot, your pull-up J -- it's all coming together. That's great, keep at it!

But there's an area of improved performance that most people don't even consider: nutrition.

Eating right will help you perform at your highest. It will help with recovery from tough games, practices, and lifting sessions. Proper nutrition is also HUGE in putting on strength and size. After all, you can't build a bigger house (body) without having enough bricks (calories).

Let's Be Realistic

I'd love to sit here and tell you that I want you to have a few servings of chicken breasts and broccoli everyday. But I'd bet on the Washington Generals winning a title before I'd bet on the chicken breast/broccoli combo happening with any consistency. I mean, I have a difficult enough time getting my adult clients to follow my nutrition advice. There's no way I'm getting a 16-year old that is used to eating fast food, soda, and Twinkies (as their staple), to jump on the lean protein, fruit 'n veggie, healthy carb and healthy fat bandwagon.

With that in mind, it's going to take some work to make this whole nutrition thing work for you, rather than against you. Let's find out how to make it happen.

It Doesn't Have To Taste Bad

When most people think of healthy food, they think of boring, bland and nasty tasting food (i.e. the chicken and broccoli mentioned above). Well I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way. There are many great recipes out there that are both healthy AND tasty. I believe Gourmet Nutrition is the best resource out there that delivers that coveted tasty and healthy combination. At our house, we make meals that come from this cookbook on a weekly basis.

Tip No. 1: Find a way to make healthy foods taste good. It is the only way (for most people) that you are going to stay with it over the long haul.

Parents/Coaches: It's Time To Step Up

Parents are the ones that are bringing the food home. So it is up to them to supply their children with fuel that will contribute to improving their kid's health and performance. It is pretty difficult for the athlete to properly fuel their body when they open their cupboards up to a bunch of chips and other snacks.

And coaches, you have the ability to lead by example. If your athletes see a coach that works out and eats healthy, the chances of him/her following your lead goes way up.

Tip No. 2: Parents and coaches, you have the ability to influence your kids in positive, or negative manner when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. The choice is yours.

Cook In Bulk

This tip is quick and to the point. Teenagers seem to have a bottomless gut! If you cook for just the meal at hand, then you'll be falling behind. With all of the games and practices kids play, they NEED to constantly be eating good quality foods. The easiest and most convenient way to do this is to cook in bulk and store the leftovers for later. This seems like such a simple tip but believe me, this can make or break you nutrition-wise.

Tip No. 3: When cooking, cook for the meal at hand, and make extra for the next few days to come. This will make life so much easier, and increase your chances for "nutrition success."

If eating healthy is just too boring for you, look into the Gourmet Nutrition cookbook. Parents and kids NEED to work together to make the above tips work. Together, you CAN use nutrition to help take your game to the next level!

4 Keys to an Effective Motion Offense

By Jeff Haefner, Breakthrough Basketball

Motion offense is the most flexible offense in a coach's toolbox, but that flexibility only turns into production when each of the four key elements are in place. When your team has all four elements, they create an offensive attack that is more than a little difficult to stop.

Key No. 1: Good Rules Make for Good Choices

The "rules" in a motion offense are better thought of as rules-of-thumb. They're the guidelines you'll expect your team to follow to keep the overall offensive approach within your philosophy. You want to find a balance between giving your team the flexibility to adjust to the competition and the structure to stick to your approach as a coach.

Rules create this environment for your team.

You'll want to create rules for every phase of offense. You'll want your team to have a rule of thumb for the number of reversals, when to dribble, cutting options, and more.

These rules help guide your players' decision-making when they're on the court. Rules such as:

• Don't stand for more than two seconds
• If the ball is dribbled, you go backdoor
• Every fourth pass must be to the post
• Dribble penetrate only after the second ball rotation

Rules like these act as guides to your players when they're on the court. As coach, your control over your team while they're on the court is minimal. These rules will be their guide when on the floor.

You will find your rules change from year to year. Each year you'll analyze your team, weigh their strengths and weaknesses, and design a new system of rules. Create rules that take advantage of their strengths and protect their weaknesses.

Key No. 2: Proper Spacing Makes for Difficult Defense

Poor spacing allows the opposing defense to help one another out when beaten. Proper spacing, on the other hand, makes this much more difficult. Helping out against a team that is properly spaced leaves offensive players open.

Fifteen feet apart is a good guide for spacing. Assigning "spots" to spaced positions allows you to get proper spacing back when, in the course of a practice; your team starts to lose its spacing. Get them to their spots and allow them to start the offense again and they'll soon build a habit of maintaining good spacing. But remember, the "spots" are simply guides or teaching tools. Don't make them hard and fast rules.

Key No. 3: Many Roles, One Team

Motion offense forces each of your team members to develop more fully than any play-based offense can. Ball handlers are forced to develop their basketball shooting, and shooters are forced to be good screeners. Any player can end up at any position on the floor, so they better be ready to play every facet of the game.

On the other hand, it would be naive to say that every player will become equally good in every phase of the offense. Some will always excel at shooting; others will always be better rebounders.

Your team members must understand what their role is on the team, but they must also understand everyone else's main role on the team. A top-notch screener will need to develop his shooting, but should not be taking a shot before the ball has touched a shooters hands.

The better your team understands each other's roles, the more effective motion offense will be.

Key No. 4: Maintain Discipline at All Cost

Discipline is probably the biggest key to a successful motion offense. Your team can know the rules inside and out, they may be perfectly spaced, and they may know every role on the team as well as they know their own. But when they lose focus or get emotionally rattled to the point that they aren't keeping these first three keys on the court, things will start to get ugly.

Instill in your team a trust for the motion offense system. Make sure they realize that they must stick to the system, no matter what happened the last time they came down the court. The moment they start to doubt the system and start trying their own thing, things fall apart because the rest of the team can no longer anticipate their next move.

Develop these four keys in your team and you'll create a motion offense that is difficult, if not impossible, for opposing teams to stop.

If you’re interested in learning more on this critical topic and to get free basketball drills, be sure to look over the many great resources available at www.winningdrills.com.

3 Simple Ways to Make Yourself a Better Guard

By Shelby Turcotte, TheUnGuardables.com

Every player I deal with, no matter what level of skill or athleticism, is looking to get better. While there are countless things any player can work on, some have a much faster learning curve and can be applied right now!

Here are three simple (not easy) ways to make yourself a better guard:

Stretching

Add the three most effective stretches for guards to your daily routine: the 3-way hamstring stretch, hip flexors stretch, and prone calf stretch. I don't care where or when you do them, but do them...every day! You can do them when you get out of bed in the morning, before a skill session, after training, at night or any other time that you find to do it. Why these three stretches?

• Because of how much guards tend to shuffle on defense and push off laterally, the hamstrings tend to get really tight from overuse. Add the fact that basketball is very quad-dominant (front of thigh) and you find your hamstrings getting tight to help balance the body. Stretching the hamstrings in all three planes of motion will help to keep them loose and allow you to actually get lower and move quicker on defense.
• Short hip flexors are making you slower and lower than you should be. Tight hip flexors negatively affect your ability to sprint and jump well. Because of the low athletic (almost crouching) position you're in on the court (playing defense, driving to the basket, and coming off of screens) your hip flexors get very short. The shortness doesn't allow your glutes to maximally contract to run, jump, sprint or stabilize properly. Your glutes should be your main source for speed and jumping on the court as well as moving side to side. Loosening up the hip flexors will instantly help.
• Ever sprained an ankle or had knee pain? Listen up. Most knee pain comes as a result of either poor hip mobility or poor ankle mobility. A fair amount of sprained ankles come from poor hip mobility or poor ankle mobility. One of the easiest ways to help reduce (not prevent, you can't prevent everything!) ankle sprains and improve knee pain is to make sure that you have enough ankle mobility. This starts with stretching the calf to get proper flexibility in the foot and ankle. By having proper motion at the foot and ankle you allow the ankle joints to get into a proper position, which will help ensure that it is most stable--thus reducing or minimizing the risk of injury.

Jumping

Don't just jump! Avoid using only "jumping" exercises to help improve your jumping and playing ability. By "jumping" I'm referring to two-footed patterns where the feet leave the ground at the same time and in the same pattern. One-footed hops (same as a jump but is referred to as a hop when it's on one foot) is a much more effective movement that translates to better on-court performance. Since the majority of basketball is played with one foot having more weight or pressure on it than the other, you can be very effective in training it in a similar way. By training this way you become better at stabilizing and you'll see immediate improvement in your ability to move around the court.

I like to have athletes use multi-directional hops as part of an on-court or pre-weight room training warmup. You don't need to spend anymore than 5-6 minutes doing these to see the benefit.

Conditioning

Don't run to get in shape. The No. 1 mistake I see most basketball players make is going out for a 2-3 mile run thinking that they're going to be in great basketball condition. Before you think you're going to get a FREE pass on doing conditioning, hear me out. Basketball is made up of a wide variety of athletic movements: shuffles, crossover, sprints, zig-zags, backpedals, etc. Add all of the basketball skills on top of that: dribbling, passing, catch and shoot, off-the-dribble shooting, etc., and all of a sudden you have a sport with a very large skill set. There is nothing constant about the game of basketball. You never just run at a slow-moderate pace in a straight line. Because the skills of basketball are so specific, you should train that way.

In the Minute Madness Drills on TheUnGuardables.com, I have a variety of drills that train basketball skills in a very guard-specific, skill-specific manner. While each of these drills only lasts 60 seconds, they can make for a great workout.