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…)