I would like to introduce you to my approach to strength and conditioning for basketball with an overview of my coaching philosophy. It’s a challenge and a pleasure to work with the professional athletes of the Orlando Magic basketball team, and I hope casual players and athletes in other sports can learn a lot to apply to their own program from hearing how the professionals train.
Every program must be based on scientific principles of training.
There are many ways to train. Nonetheless, every program must be based on scientific principles of training to achieve the proper physical development of the athlete. With the Orlando Magic I use various training methods for a total-body fitness approach.
Strength training
The variables of strength training I incorporate come from power lifting: exercise order, days to train, strength percentages, distances, and rest periods. The speed endurance concepts (distances and rest periods) come from track and field, and establish the off-season aerobic base training.
Injury prevention
Injury prevention is key to my training philosophy. I first determine the muscular areas in the basketball athlete which are susceptible to injury. When I design strength and conditioning programs, I incorporate injury prevention with the principle of specificity of training for a complete program.
Specificity of training
Specificity of training copies the specific skills and movements of a sport or activity in your training routine. It’s important to use the principle of specificity in your training, especially in areas where you want to improve. Basketball is a game of running, jumping, stopping, turning, back pedaling, sliding, chasing, diving, shooting, passing, and dribbling.
I also note the exact distances and precise areas the athlete travels on the court – two steps left, right, back, forward, diagonal, vertical. I observe these movements and analyze them to help lay the groundwork for creating an exercise base.
You never improve if you continually do the same things.