Posts Tagged ‘vertical jump’

How To Take A Basketball Player From Intramural To All Star Performance: Part 1

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

This post will be a longer post……if you don’t want to get better and don’t give a s@*t if THIS happens to you…

My name is Freddy and I DIDN'T work on my performance

My name is Freddy and I DIDN'T work on my performance

Then DON’T read this!

How many basketball players out there are frustrated with their level of performance?

How many are sitting on the bench a lot more than they would like to?

Maybe it’s the fact that you’re getting blown by, dunked on and dominated on defense?

I’ve felt every one of the above!

I even gave myself the whole “must be the genetics” talk. But it was just a cop out!

A large part of my life was (and still is) dedicated to basketball. I played from as young as I can remember and started going to basketball schools as well as joining a junior team by  the time I was 11. From there I played through high school at the highest levels, got a college scholarship and started 4 years, the later on played professional ball in Europe, not to mention countless street ball tournaments and just cutting short of winning the Nike Battlegrounds Slovenia. I also played in the NBA Summer Pro League 5 years ago before completely dedicating myself to strength and conditioning. (more…)

How To Get Quicker, Faster and More Explosive On A Basketball Court

Monday, February 8th, 2010

I’m in my defensive stance driving the shooting guard to the left as it’s his weak side. My eye is on his waist so that I don’t lose focus of where his body is really going.  I take a step back in anticipation of his drive but none the less the guard hesitates and blows by me.

One of the most frustrating feelings you can have as a basketball player.

Or how about the one where you get shut down by a defender because you’re always getting beat to the spot?

When I had those things happen to me, my frustrations would drive me to train harder and stay after practice to play defense on the best scorers on the pro team (I was on the junior team at the time). It made me better on defense because I got better at reading the offensive players. But I didn’t get quicker and still couldn’t beat some of the players to the spot.

Still frustrated, it led me to reading and studying speed, agility and quickness training (and anything else that would improve it) from every resource I could get including going to Olympic track and field coaches and training with them. I believe that’s when my passion for training really begun (I had a purpose!), the first step to becoming a strength coach,  even though it would still be a long time before my basketball career ended. (more…)

Single Leg Vertical Jump

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Single leg vertical jumping is a very useful thing. I know many basketball players that have a great vertical of two feet but not anywhere close while jumping of one foot. Hopefully I don’t have to explain how important an explosion and elevation of one foot is, when it come to gametime. I will take Lebron James as an example, as the majority of his dunks are of one foot while driving towards the basket. Since you are running it is faster to take of one foot rather than square up and jump off two feet. 

Every type of jump has its advantages though. Jumping off two feet is more effective for rebounding because you will ussualy box out and go for the rebound straight up. Instead of choosing one or the other become good at both. The reason I am talking about it is because I have had the question come up lately and today another player and friend of mine asked me this:

“Is there a way to improve my one foot jumping to equal it to my two foot jump? I would like to have the ability to elevate from one foot of the drive!”

Now, this player has a very good vertical of two feet but not nearly as close that of one foot. So whats the catch? Well, here are some things that will explain and help you improve you one foot vertical: (more…)

5 Training Mistakes of Basketball Players

Monday, October 6th, 2008

When I was younger I played basketball almost all the time and I mean I played a lot. I also tried every program to increase my vertical, 40 yard dash, agility and ball handling skills. Basically I was always doing something to improve my game. Does it sound familiar?

I also had coaches telling me I should run all the time to stay conditioned, take it easy with the weights so I don’t get bulky and become slow, and to top it all off we would have a 3 hour practice every day(later on in my professional career even 2 a days with 3 hours of basketball specific training). I wanted to improve my performance so much that even back then I started reading books, manuals, you name it, just to improve my game and my performance. A lof of the information I read was contadicting what some of the coaches were telling me, especially when it came to strength and conditioning! I did a lot of the strength training on my own but I also had to do the team training as there was no way of getting out of that and I also wanted to set an example of hard work for my team. Many times I ended up overtraining and had sub-par performance and nagging injuries, but I was still a lot better of than some of my team mates, as they had season ending and in some cases career ending injuries.

From all the knowledge that I have accumulated through the years of study and implementation of strength and conditioning and my experiences as a basketball player from the high school to the professional ranks, I am going to give 10 tips that are essential for basketball players to improve their game and their physical performance in the off-season. Learn from my mistakes and from the mistakes of others and take your game to the next level: (more…)