The 12 Week Best Basketball Training Program For Youth
A holistic approach to basketball training is needed to provide a fully rounded system. While most coaches will start with movement and end there, more experienced professionals understand that taking the time to look at the whole athlete is necessary to get the best results.
So the question is, what is the best basketball practice plan that makes you professional?
A Proper Basketball Workout Plan Includes The Following basic elements:
- Mindset
- Nutrition
- Movement
- Recovery
Let’s look at each element one at a time:
Mindset
Getting the mindset right is important because, without a clear focused mind, one is distracted during the game. Whether the distraction is conscious or subconscious, it’s nonetheless present and impacts performance indirectly.
- Showing No Fear
Becoming fearless with everyday improvement in all aspects of the mental game including mental toughness gets players through tough positions and difficult setbacks.
Being many points down in a game, it’s easy to give up and not play as well as one’s capable of which lets the whole team down. Instead, with mental strength and positive belief patterns, one can lift the whole team through powerful gameplay and clearer-minded determination.
- Drop Complaining
Basketball players only complain when they’re not willing to put 100% effort into getting the best results. One cannot always win, but one can always give 100% to every game.
Making a complaint about being tired or “the ball didn’t bounce right” doesn’t change anything about poor performance.
Complaining about it only makes you look weak and like you’re not willing to take responsibility for improving your game. The flip side of dropping complaining is being accepted for criticism that’s constructive.
This means taking fully onboard suggestions from coaches who watch your play and know how to improve upon it.
- Be a Master of the Game
Studying the play of other past greats of the game like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and more recent star players is a great way to reduce the learning time. Improving basketball IQ is all about seeing what works best and emulating that within your skillset.
In some areas, you’ll perform better with certain techniques than others, but overall adding knowledge through training programs that teach what other people have already learned makes better use of your practice time on the court.
Nutrition
Nutrition has come a long way in the last few decades. Today, we know that lean sources of protein fuel the muscles, and sufficient complex carbohydrates are the right combination for top performance.
- Avoiding Fatty Foods
Staying away from empty calories like French fries and fried chicken is obvious to many, and only makes the body sluggish. Top performance isn’t possible when sabotaging oneself with food.
- Five Meals a Day
Eating multiple smaller meals a day, usually, five every day is best to deliver small fuel incrementally throughout the day. Eating in this manner delivers the right level of nutrients to avoid either that lunchtime or evening bloated feeling just before a basketball match.
- Water & Electrolyte Sports Drinks
Drinking plenty of water and electrolyte sports drinks is useful too. Avoid all alcohol and sugary drinks that overload the body with poisons and toxins that the liver finds difficult to flush out in small or excess amounts.
- Vitamins & Minerals
A multivitamin regimen is also important to ensure you get enough of all the major vitamin groups, plus the essential minerals. Working out, practicing, and playing the game burns a lot of energy and also produces sweat.
When sweating, the body loses water, minerals, and other important nutrients through the skin. It’s important to replace these to ensure one doesn’t get a deficit that could impair game performance.
Movement
Training the body is about building up strength, increasing your mobility and agility, and producing more power and speed. We all have a certain amount of natural athleticism, but focusing on these elements improves whatever is already naturally present.
- Increasing Strength
Adding bodybuilding with weight training is an excellent way to increase body strength over a few months. The core gets stronger which supports the whole body. Legs put on muscle and endurance during a game to stay strong.
Arms bulk up enough to support longer throws at a greater distance and delicate, controlled shots for the hoop at a short distance too.
- Increasing your mobility and agility
Fast running drills, circuit sprints, and quick turns allow the body to get used to sharp movements and sudden changes in direction. Twisting left and right to catch balls and turning and moving emulate actions during a practice match or a full game.
Getting your legs and knees used to repeat abrupt stops and twisting and turning improves your mobility and agility. There is no shortcut to conditioning the body to handle the stress of in-game action.
- Producing more power and speed
With weight coaching, more power comes through automatically. With greater power, fast speed is possible with quicker passes sent over at greater speeds.
Of course, beyond a certain point, firing a pass or going for the hoop isn’t going to work when approached too quickly.
However, taking advantage of a gap in the court to push forward quickly and unexpectedly creates new opportunities due to improved speed and the power to drive through.
- Becoming the Best Player
The best players practice endlessly to improve their footwork, overall conditioning, dribbling with the ball, passes, and shooting.
Whether going for a free throw or to get the three-pointer, it comes down to being able to put yourself in the right position on the court to receive the pass, finding space to move forward, avoiding the opposing team’s players, getting to the hoop, and shooting accurately.
The best basketball players will tell you that constant and never-ending improvement through the daily practice of different aspects of regular ball play is vital to see better performance.
It doesn’t matter what area of the game you look at, putting in the time during practices and on the court is the only reliable way to produce better results.
Recovery
Recovery is an area of the game that few people take seriously. Most basketball players are young men and women who rarely seem to need rest. However, with the game being so competitive now, one has to be at the top of the game every time to win.
As legendary coach John Wooden pointed out, you must play to the best of your abilities every time. That also means allowing time for your body to rest and recover.
This is why weight trainers don’t work for the same muscle groups every day of the week and why Olympians take days off their training to recover. Without recovery, there is no success.
Observing these four key areas (Mindset, Nutrition, Movement & Recovery) all play a key role in affording the athlete the chance to perform to the best of their current abilities.
With further study of the training program and practice of what has been learned, your game will improve over time too. There are so many online basketball coaching programs available but you can go with the best coaching program which makes you a pro in the future.
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