As more and more athletes realize the importance of strength training as part of an effective conditioning workout, there is a new focus on how to make gym conditioning athlete- and sport-specific.

In-gym basketball conditioning workouts should focus on strength gains in all of the major muscle groups, since leg, core, arm, shoulder, and back muscles are all necessary functional parts of a basketball player’s game. Performing upper and lower body exercises with weights that allow mid-level repetitions (usually in the range of 6 to 10) will promote muscle mass increase without the “bulking up” effect that scares so many athletes in speed-driven sports.

The truth is that the awkwardly bulky look of a body builder does not come without a lot of work to that end and a special genetic propensity for muscle growth; and it does not come to anyone by accident. Fear of getting too big, or losing speed and flexibility due to muscle growth is simply unfounded in this day and age. As long as an athlete works to maintain or increase his speed and flexibility while adding strength training to his conditioning routine, increased size and strength will only help in-game performance. Basketball conditioning workouts are no exception.

If you’re still of the long-held opinion that strength training is not beneficial for all types of athletes, think again. In 2004 Michael Phelps was an outstanding swimmer, simply by virtue of natural ability and a lot of hard-spent hours in the pool. At the 2008 summer Olympics, he astonished fans and competitors alike by breaking 7 world records in 8 events; a feat helped in part by the addition of out-of-pool resistance training to his recent training regimen.

Regardless of whether a sport is played on a court, on a field, or in a pool, all serious athletes can benefit from resistance training. Effective basketball conditioning workouts should focus on increasing muscle size and strength in addition to speed, endurance and ball handling skills. After all, bigger, stronger muscles, working together, will let a player run faster, jump higher, and shoot and pass harder and more accurately. And isn’t that what the game is all about?

Tags: basketball, Basketball Workouts, bulking up, conditioning, endurance, strength training

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Basketball Workouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.