Mar 3, 2017An Inside Look
The game of basketball is framed by a number of truths that dictate the physiological and biomechanical demands players are exposed to. These tenets also serve as the foundation for our offseason philosophy and programming for the University of Maryland’s men’s basketball team.
Perhaps the most important truth about basketball relates to its functional density. The required movement patterns of the game are variable and extend into all three planes of motion: sagittal, frontal, and transverse. With the confined dimensions of the court and stop-and-go nature of the sport, having a large and dense movement capacity is extremely advantageous, so this is our primary focus during the offseason.
Another emphasis is ensuring the highest level of transfer to the court with our programming. At its core, our training stays as fundamentally relevant to basketball as possible. This increases buy-in from players and enhances the coach/athlete relationship.
Here is a look at some of the ways we achieve this:
• We break our strength and power training into progressive phases. Starting in the spring, we go through a higher-volume phase, aiming to enhance players’ general strength, lean body mass, and technical proficiency for all lifts.
At the conclusion of our spring work near the end of April, we incorporate the triphasic tempo principles created by Cal Dietz, MS, CSCS, Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Minnesota. At its core, the triphasic method trains the body’s ability to load and explode, and it fits well within our overall philosophy.
• We know that basketball players must skillfully and efficiently load and explode in three planes of motion, so we aim to incorporate all the fundamental global movement patterns in each of our strength workouts, such as squatting, hinging, lunging, pushing, pulling, carrying, vertical and horizontal core work, jumping, hopping, and leaping. These movements are trained bilaterally, unilaterally, and three-dimensionally.
• It’s also important for us to provide adequate overload to stimulate significant adaptations in strength, power, and structure. Therefore, when relying on load as our primary variable, we prefer using traditional barbell exercises, including the Olympic lifts, front squat, back squat, and trap bar dead lift. Because of the sagittal plane vertical collapse nature of these lifts, we can safely create overload without placing the athletes in a compromised biomechanical position. Plus, these movements are ideal for generating enough stress to elicit the adaptations we are looking for in rate of force development.
• However, we know basketball is not only played in the sagittal plane. So while the aforementioned exercises make up our core lifts, we employ auxiliary techniques to challenge movements in the other two planes of motion. Typically, we program them around our primary barbell lifts in isolation or as contrast exercises.
One of our most popular auxiliary strategies is using a matrix, which consists of exercises performed sequentially in all three planes. For instance, a lunge matrix could be a set of lunges anterior/posterior, same side and opposite side laterally, and same side and opposite side rotationally.
• Progressing with this idea, we also integrate purposeful reaches and drivers using tools like medicine balls or ViPRs. These allow for greater freedom of movement than a barbell but still challenge the concept of load and explode.
• Core training is completed by utilizing the whole body in a ground-based, upright fashion. Our go-to tools for this are the Keiser Functional Trainer, ViPR, and med ball.
• Combining our core and auxiliary lifts, we perform each workout in structured exercise blocks. The first block is a power complex where we pair an Olympic lift or kettlebell swing with something that integrates three-dimensional vectors, such as a med ball rotational wall throw. Typically, the second block is centered on a squatting variation, such as the back squat or trap bar dead lift. The third block is focused on an upper-body lift, usually the bench press or strict press, and the fourth block incorporates the remaining fundamental movement patterns.
