Laying the Foundation for a Successful Season

Since the practice of strength and conditioning in basketball the game has changed dramatically. The sport at its highest level is much different than it was 10 or 15 years ago. At college or even high school level it has become much faster and more physical than ever before.
To cater for drastically increased physical demand many players now train year round and use the offseason period as an opportunity to regenerate and improve on various aspects of their game and physical conditioning. By following an appropriate offseason regimen will lay the foundation for the year ahead and further prepare an athlete for peak performance.
This three part article features introductory 4-weeks offseason strength and conditioning regimen based on three major disciplines: strength, conditioning and reactive training. Collectively the program aims to lay the foundation for later phases of heavier and/or more explosive style lifting, whilst improving your general conditioning and physical preparation.

Offseason Strength Training

The offseason strength training program presented here is a three session a week commitment that is high repetition and low intensity (weight lifting) in nature. This is the beginning of a basic strength and power program that looks to condition and stabilize the muscles while inducing hypertrophy (muscle growth).
In contrary to popular upper and lower body split program the training system presented here works both body segments every session. The program is designed in this fashion since basketball players of all level are often required to compete on a back-to-back basis and even in basketball tournaments featuring multiple games within a day. Therefore, it will be imperative for players to develop the work capacity to prepare for such an event.
Furthermore, a big part of this program is designed in a superset format allowing for minimal rests between exercise bouts. Exercises are grouped in tiers, coded here by [Tx], tiers of the same number are to be performed one after another, i.e. T2a and T2b exercises are to be performed one after another with less than 10 seconds break in between. By performing exercises in this manner will challenge the nervous system and tax the metabolic process which is great for muscle shaping.

This is the first phase of a 12 week training program.

* Weights prescribed here are only to be used as a guide, adjust as necessary.

Neal Wen (3 Posts)

Neal Wen is the Strength and Conditioning coach for some of the best basketballers in Australasia. Neal is currently the head strength and conditioning coach for the Melbourne Tigers and many other National Representative athletes as well as the Director of sports performance at AUBD performance. Neal's passion and innovating methodologies have him positioned as one of the leading experts in sports performance for basketball this side of the world.