THE GAME -THE MOVEMENTS

It’s absolutely incredible. You see it at all levels. Today’s top basketball players are a fascinating combination of power, speed, endurance, and mental toughness. Blend into this recipe for success, basketball skills that need to be refreshed, revisited, and reworked every day on the court. The game isn’t just handed to you. You need to embrace it! Yes, it’s often a long, hard journey to reach your goals, but what feeling of personal satisfaction and accomplishment.

How do teams win? Hard work? Great skills? Dedication? A will to win? Team chemistry? Communication? Outstanding shooters? Strong defenders? Good coaching? A strong bench? Yes, they all contribute, but let’s dig a little deeper.

It’s really about basics, isn’t it? The successful teams and players seem to always execute the plays and moves that make the difference between winning or losing. They’re prepared for success. Where does that preparation start?

It begins (and ends) on the court with the emphasis on solid fundamental skills and the movements required to perfect those skills. Basketball at its purest and most basic form is about on-court movement, and how well it is performed.

Movement is walking, running, jogging, sprinting, shuffling, and jumping. It can be forward, backward, side-to-side, up and down, at an angle, etc.  It may be fast, slow, quick, explosive, ballistic, well timed, poorly timed, or just plain late. Your success on the court is directly correlated to how effectively you move and your decisions when to move. Did you know that every 2 seconds you change your movement pattern during a game?  A total of nearly 1,000 per game. Research shows the following breakdown by types of movement recorded during a series of pro basketball games.  These are starting player averages:

standing or walking..........12 minutes
jogging...........   4 minutes
running (backwards/forwards.......4 minutes (slightly greater then jogging)sprinting..........................   3 minutes shuffling (at low to medium intensity)..........9 minutes
shuffling (at high intensity)......... 2 minutes
jumping.......... 41 seconds

(the total doesn’t add up to 48 minutes because of substitutions)

Do a few calculations and apply the percentages.
Look at shuffling - 31% of total minutes played. Nearly 1/3 of the game!

Think about your total game.
Your weaknesses. Your strengths. Work on both.

Running, sprinting, shuffling at high intensity, and jumping are intense activities. They represented 1/4 of the game. Although sprints during the game lasted no more than 5.5 seconds at a time, they led to other high intensity activities involving change of direction. All of which, places a great challenge on your conditioning and endurance. Basketball is truly a game played at the highest levels of fitness. You need to be ready mentally and physically.

To help you reach your goals, Training Zone Concepts has developed a foundation of basketball movement skills and workouts. The Basketball Challenge Series and Mind & Movement Training Program begin with teaching successful ways to move on the court. Practicing and perfecting those moves will give you a strong platform for developing your basketball skills. Now, let’s make the movements stronger, quicker, and more explosive by adding resistance via the SmartVest. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if you improve how you move on the court it will have a very positive effect on your overall game? OK, let's do it.