How to Be Athletic in Basketball? [Ultimate Guide]
Playing basketball requires a lot of strength and training. It is an athletic game in which you sprint, stop, turn, and jump very rapidly. Therefore, proper training and maintaining your health in mandatory to win a basketball game. But most of the people directly enter the court and start playing without preparing themselves for the game.
So, how to be athletic in basketball? To properly train yourself for the game, you need to know certain things like the common basketball injuries, important training tips, and the resting cycles important for your health. Let’s dig deeper into this topic to know more about it.
How to Be Athletic in Basketball?
Training for basketball includes all types of pieces of information like you need to know the common injuries you expose yourself. Also, you need to know about the tools that are required for this training and maybe join the best training programs that tell you how to be athletic in basketball.
Body and physical training require gradual training and a certain lifecycle, and you need to know a lot of other things as well. But don’t worry, we are going to list and explain all about this topic below.
Common Injuries in basketball
Basketball training is a game in which you can never avoid injuries and therefore, you should work to lessen the chances of getting injured. Weight training is the most effective exercise that prepares your body for a lot of types of possible injuries.
Some very common and dangerous injuries in basketball that we have observed are; patellofemoral syndrome (Kneecap pain), ankle sprain, and ACL injuries. These injuries occur because of the lack of rest given to the body of the athlete and excessively using tendons and certain ligaments while there’s not enough strength in the body.
Therefore, a resting season is very important for an athlete to prepare their body for the next session of hard work.
Although whatever you do, resting is the best medicine for a hard worker. But still, when training for the game, you need to follow these 5 principles to become a professional basketball athlete.
5 Principles of Basketball Training
Every basketball player or any type of athlete who wants to physically train for their strength and abilities should follow these 5 important training principles. This is because these principles help you train to gain the required strength, health, mobility, and performance.
These principles can be applied to any type of physical training but for basketball, these are tried and tested several times. Even now the most popular and grand basketball teams are adopting these principles and making their players train on these principles. This is because this way, even old age, and senior players stay on the court for a very long time.
Principle 1: Work on the mobility of your joints
This principle focuses on the mobility of the joints and how the strain and pressure around your joints are lessened. Basketball is a game of too many turns, sprints, brakes, changes of direction, and sudden jumps.
And all these activities come under mobility and that’s why your upper and lower limbs must be prepared for this. If some of your joints are dysfunctional, they will not allow heavy movement but compensatory movements.
And that’s how it may become a stressful trauma for you. That’s why you need to be mobile to produce a lot of force and absorb the shocks of the game.
Principle 2: Work on your tendons and ligaments
Tendons are the connectors in your body that connect your bones to the muscles. They transmit force and energy provided by the muscles to the bones to perform an action. These are a little bit elastic in nature and that’s why they help you in jumping and rebounding.
Ligaments are also very important to train in your body because when you jump, you jump with the help of tendons and when you land, you land perfectly because of your ligaments. So, ligaments are those shock absorbers in your body that do not let your bones break just because you jumped.
We’ve seen so many big physical training institutes lacking in giving them their due attention while training. However, they are as important as training any other body part.
Principle 3: work on the core to make it strong
The core of your body plays a very important role while you play basketball. When athletes jump, break, turn, sprint, or do any plyometric exercises, the core is one of the most active parts of their body. It transmits the energy of the entire body to the hips.
That’s how an athlete becomes able to outperform others. Even though the core of your body is not the power generator of your body but still, if you train and work on your core, it proves its worth significantly. If you don’t work on your core muscles, it may lead to weakness which will affect your performance.
For example, during rebound, when an athlete lands back on the ground the core helps to stabilize your legs, arms, and other body muscles to not fall.
Principle-4: Develop stability
Maintaining stability in your body and having a support base and balance are crucial to an athlete’s health. A basketball player especially needs to cater to their body needs because all the actions having an unstable body will not be right. You need to stabilize your entire body including the joints, ankles, hips, and knees when you know you will need to take sudden turns, jump, or stop and sprint. The aforementioned body parts are the core parts of your body that need to be maintained.
Principle-5: Movements are more important than the individual muscles for you
There is almost a misconception type of confusion about the muscles building exercises that all the types of exercises are good for you. And when they say this, they include athletes as well. But on the contrary side, this is not true because individual muscle training exercises are helpful for the athletes as well but only up to a certain extent.
Therefore, focusing on your functional strength training is what gets you to the top in basketball.
Although basketball is a game of complete body even including your emotions. So, one has to show skills as well as physical capabilities on the court. It also helps if you get a good coach who knows all about the player’s weaknesses and their specific treatments.
But even if you have nothing, adopting these 5 principles will help you a lot in your games.
Basketball is a game of strength and mobility. Even the players don’t know where they will have to change their direction and sprint backward. Therefore, they need to practice a lot for this game. Even on the court, they are always sprinting, turning, jumping, and running all just one after the other. So this builds your muscles and the core much more powerful and the players become more athletic.
No, at first you don’t have to be already. But basketball is a full-body workout that even activates your core; hence, it will eventually make you an athlete for sure.
It can be anything. But you can only call someone an athlete if they fall into the criteria of the athlete. And that can be tested in various ways and only the results will tell you if he/she is an athlete or not.
Well, it doesn’t necessarily fit every athlete in the same box. But a study by a biologist at the University of Zurich showed that people found the best performers more attractive than those who had bad performances.
Everyone in a team has their own importance and that’s why they call it a team. But according to the demography of basketball, shooting, defending, rebounding, passing, and dribbling are some of the most important skills that make you prominent.
How do you improve athleticism?
You can adopt these habits to improve your athleticism.
- Keep changing the workout
- Keep a record of your workout performance results
- Properly hydrate
- Properly rest
- Give your brain a tough time train
- Eat healthily
- Maybe use some supplements advised by professionals
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