What is a great way to condition for a high school basketball player?

Question

I've heard so many different methodologies in training for basketball, but I'm not sure which is best. I've heard programs such as:

• running 3 miles
• Running Cooper Test (longest distance ran in 12 minutes)
• Runnning 30 second sprints with with 30 seconds rest (Repeat 10x)
• Perform HIIT in the weight room
• Tabata Training
• Dr. Yessis 1x20 for muscle conditioning
• Maintain below 160bpm for as long as you can, so body learns to burn fat more efficiently.
• Run beep/pacer test daily

I feel like it's all across the board when it comes to basketball conditioning. I know that probably all of these ways work somehow. But is there an ideal way or a reference that you can point me to give me clarity in regards to this matter? Or can you help me understand what goes into basketball conditioning?

Answer 1

It's all across the board because there isn't one single answer. There is a variety of tools and methods that will lead to improvements in conditioning. Plus, one person could respond well to one type of training while another not. So you need to adapt the training to the person.

First, you need to define conditioning. I understand you mean "General physical preparation for basketball" i.e. strength and endurance work while leaving the skills for another part of the training.

You also need to define the demands of the sport (general time domain (e.g. length of the game), required capacities (e.g. jump abilities), specific time domain (e.g. short bursts of acceleration)) and match that to the constraints of your athlete to then define a training plan.

You will often hear that "Long Slow Distance (LSD) running is the only way to truly improve your cardio". This is also called base training. This is true IF and ONLY IF you are training someone that already trains like 2 hours a day because for that person, you can't rely on doing only High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) because you would murder them on the recovery side of things.

I believe you can't get a simple answer. You simply can receive a framework to work with and then go attack each aspect and tailor it to your needs.

Also remember that at some point you need to assess if what you are doing is producing the desired effect. If yes, keeping going. If not, then try to change one or two parameters and ... re-assess! And so on and so on.