Wednesday, January 24, 2007

U-17 Basketball: Pre Season Preparation

I am in charge of preparing the team physically for the tournament. This is an all year process that is especially important in the off season. I am of the school of thought that we should train strength, speed and power all year, and only train for game specific endurance as the season approaches. That is what we have been doing. In the off season, the team lifts weights (squats, pulls, presses, single leg work) 2x a week. And does speed work 1-2 times a week. This is in addition to friendly games, and drills done in training.

Both strength and speed work are low volume. Gym sessions are 3-4 exercises of 4 sets each. Speed work is done to a maximum distance of 50m and in most cases is 5-20m, working mostly on acceleration.

4 weeks before the season started we began energy system specific training. Bodyweight circuits and court runs mostly. These are done together with intense skill drills as well. The reason to start late is because these guys have a 3 month long season and have time to play themselves into shape. In addition, more than 8 weeks of intense intervals tends to burn guys out (that would be just in time to be weak for the playoffs) so I am conservative early in the season.

The team entered the season fresh and ready:)

You can check out our progress at this blog here!