In-Season and Off-Season Differences (Full Off-Season Plan)

The importance of strength training for basketball players, particularly during the in-season and off-season. He emphasizes the need for consistent training, balancing skill work with conditioning, and provides a detailed 12-week off-season training plan to enhance performance. The conversation covers strategies for maintaining strength during the season, the significance of conditioning, and how to structure training sessions effectively.

Takeaways

• Strength training is crucial for basketball performance.
• Maintaining strength during the season is a common misconception.
• Two training sessions per week is the minimum during the season.
• Conditioning should be tailored based on playing time.
• Utilize home workouts if gym access is limited.
• Screen time can reveal time available for training.
• In-season training should include both strength and conditioning.
• Off-season training should focus on building general strength.
• Specific conditioning drills can enhance basketball performance.
• A structured 12-week plan can guide off-season training.

Transcript

Stan (00:01.08)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of basketball body and mind. This is the third of let's call it our strength series. So please listen to the part one and part two. So this will make much more sense for you because in part one we talked why strength is important for basketball players, how it helps to jump higher, to absorb forces and to stay.

healthy. In part two, we talked about the five movement patterns that you need to do as a basketball player and what kind of exercises you need to do in order to improve first step and vertical jump. And today in part three, we are going to talk about how to train during the season.

how to balance strength, skill work, conditioning, also in season. And at the end of the episode, I will give you a full 12 weeks off season plan that you can start using right away. So part one, in season training. The biggest mistake I would say many of you who are listening and not playing in the highest leagues,

is the mistake is that you think that during the season you just maintain

It's, imagine you have 12 months to train, your season lasts nine, maybe months, 12, or 10 months out of 12. So you maintain 10 months and you train for two. There is no way for you to succeed if somebody else is training for 12 months. Even maybe they take a summer off and they rest during the summer, which is definitely not true, but

Stan (02:00.654)
they would still beat you by eight months. And if you are thinking that you will maintain, let's say you are maintaining those, you will not maintain, but you will lose. If you want to maintain, you need to sometimes push in order to kind of improve because if you just keep on doing the same kind of weight, most likely it will not be the same weight and you will just get weaker and weaker.

And also do not think that in season is the time when you just do balance work and the light band work. No, you have 12 months to work on your body, on your basketball and on your mind. But to simplify things in order for you to know how much you need to do, of course it will depend on how many practices you have, on how many minutes you play.

how much schoolwork you have. Of course all of these will matter but if we could draw a line what you need to do at the very very minimum is two sessions per week and if you are super tired you have lots of things to do one upper body one lower body and one core exercise that will be like 20 minutes. Okay short warm-up so

that will be okay 25 minutes. That's it. If next week you have less school work, if next week you have only one game, maybe you'll do three sessions. Maybe three sessions of 30 minutes. But two sessions, 20, 30 minutes is the least minimum you must do if you want to. Let's say, not maximize, at least keep your

Chances of turning pro if you are not able to do that Hey, you still have exercises that you could do at home You don't have to hit hit the weight room every single time if you have so little time Do it at home But you know I challenge you whenever you say that there is no time for me To go to the weight room or to do 15 20 minutes of extra work on my body

Stan (04:25.772)
I challenge you, take your phone and check your screen time. If you see one hour or at least 20 minutes on TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat combined, you had time that day. You had time that day. And everything else what you will say will be an excuse. And with excuses, you will definitely not get to the pro level. So just keep that in mind. Also,

In-season training is conditioning. Some of you will need to do a lot conditioning in in-season if you are not playing. So what kind of line we can draw in this part, in conditioning part is let's say that the line is 15 minutes a game. If you did not play 15 minutes, let's say you played five. So then you will need to do 10 minutes of extra conditioning until next.

team practice whenever you have. So if you are, let's say you have a court available, you can do this conditioning drill that I use often with my basketball players. So you doing this drill baseline to baseline and you walk for one court. So you start in one baseline, you walk to another side, then you run just regular run for two courts. So down and back.

Then you slowly jog for one court and then you sprint for three. So remember, walk one, run two, jog one, sprint three, repeat. One, two, one, three. Okay, so this would be the drill. And as I said, if you played five minutes, you know that until next in practice, you need to do 10 minutes of extra conditioning.

And if you don't have a court, measure 28 meters. let's say, depending on your size, but plus minus 28 to 30 steps outside, and you just do that. What, it's raining? It's cold? These are the excuses that you're going to use when you will not turn into professional? No.

Stan (06:50.73)
If you want to do that, if you want to become professional, you need to do that. And okay, let's say it's ice and it's dark and it's impossible, but you have weight room, hop on the bike and do 15 seconds all out, 45 seconds easy pedaling. And do that until you will collect total of.

15 minutes of work. So meaning your playing time plus this conditioning. So if you played five, so then extra 10 minutes of conditioning. But if you are running, I forgot to mention this. If you are running, you can do just as I said, but basketball is chaotic. So sometimes you need to backpedal, sometimes you need to shuffle, sometimes you need to do some jumps. So whenever you do those conditioning drills, the best would be if you could include

just randomly, maybe sometimes you just, instead of jogging, you will be shuffling. Or maybe sometimes instead of stopping and changing direction, you will stop and you will jump, you will turn, and then you will run again. Or maybe sometimes you are running, then you turn and continue backpedaling. So just play around, because that will lead you to more, let's say specific conditioning that you will need to do.

On the court when you will get your minutes played. So if you are playing more than 15 minutes a game You don't need to do extra conditioning. I mean in some cases you might but let's draw this line that if you are playing you don't need to but what you need to do is Lift at least two times per week Okay, this is the expectation that I have now part two

Let's talk about balancing the strength, the skill work and the conditioning. if whatever your goal number one is, let's say improve your skills, start with that. If your goal is to improve your body, start with that. If your goal is to improve conditioning, maybe then start with skills together with conditioning. But the idea is simple.

Stan (09:10.616)
whatever you want to improve, you need to improve more, you need to start with that. And sometimes people prefer, okay, now I'm thinking, okay, it will depend on the logistics. If you have access to the weight room or to the basketball court only at that specific time, so maybe logistics will guide you what you need to start first so you don't have any options.

but if you have options, so always start with something that you need to work more on, what is more limiting factor for you. Also, some people like to do this way that we also have done with some professional basketball players, that we start with the weight room for lower body, then we hit weight, then we hit court, we do all the court exercises, and we finish with upper body in the weight room.

Kind of three training sessions, if you will, but that's like a one long session. Some people prefer after doing upper body, get their shots up so they have that feel for the basketball, for the shooting. So you can do that way. Of course, logistics will be first, but keeping it simple, whatever you need to improve, start with that. And...

if you need to work on conditioning. So I would always aim to start with skills and you would start with weight room and then continuing with skills plus conditioning. So you add, let's say a few runs after the shots or you are doing more intense drills with a little bit less of rest. And then at the end, I would hit basic.

conditioning without passively and basic I mean I would just run up and down the court that could be a drill that I explained previously or baseline to baseline you are running for three minutes or you are running 17 sideline to sideline something basic just to push yourself and now let's go to the part three what I promised that offseason plan and let's divide it into kind of three phases

Stan (11:30.915)
let's call it early off season, late off season, and a little bit before preseason. So four weeks, like a preseason preparation, let's call it, before you go and join the team. So if we are talking about first three, four weeks early off season, usually the goal is to build general strength and muscle and just develop the...

So you can do three to four training sessions a week. Focus on those main movement patterns as I was talking about in part two. Higher reps, eight to 12 repetitions, moderate load. You don't have to lift too heavy in the beginning of the early off season. Now talking about lower body, maybe you will start with some.

isometric exercises like a wall sit or standing in a split stance and holding that position or some knee extension holds something for a couple of weeks to start with that and then doing those repetitions. In terms of jumps, there are few options that I would recommend you to start. Do some exercises in water, don't need to do high intensity like lower.

lower impact, so you do just lower jumps, or you can also do the sand work in the early off-season plan. If you want to do conditioning, I would not play basketball at all in this. mean, depending on your level, if you are a high level professional player, you don't have to do it for four weeks, at least rest.

give your body a rest. But if you are not that, at not that high level, maybe you will do two, three times skill work, low intensity, nothing crazy. But in terms of conditioning, I would do once a week, something other than basketball, football, volleyball, swimming, biking, hiking, whatever you would like to do. So those four weeks, three to four weeks,

Stan (13:50.755)
would be this, early off season. Now, if we transition to late off season, so week five to eight or week five to nine, so four to five weeks, we can start building a little bit more specific strength in weight room. So weight room sessions can be, for example, two lower body sessions with focusing on jumping and one upper body or

not upper body, but full body session, or it can be three full body sessions done in the weight room. really depends, but if I would need to pick one, let's say simplify three full body sessions and maybe two of them will have focus on the jumping and on the power. Lower body.

you will do little bit less of the reps because we will collect load from the other areas. And I will explain from what. So you keep like three to six repetitions, no more than that. And then you can add also contrast training that after strength, after the lifting, you do some jumps. And upper body, depending on the goal, maybe we will keep eight to 12 repetitions or...

we can also drop those repetitions down and combine that with the medicine ball throws. Skill work, we will be conditioning, sorry, my bad. I forgot about the conditioning. That's where we will collect lots of load for the lower body. That's why we are dropping in the weight room, the repetitions, but you can go outside and do some sprints uphill or you can run some sprints.

or you can do some hill sprints and for example, eight to 16 sprints of five seconds, either hill, stairs, flat, meaning just in the stadium and rest 30 to 60 seconds between. And you could do that one to two times a week. Idea is that for those five seconds, you push yourself hard and it's, let's call it, it's power conditioning.

Stan (16:12.302)
power because we are doing power exercise and it is conditioning because we're doing many reps. still, focus is for power, not for conditioning. That's why we are resting a little bit longer, 30 to 60 seconds. And skill work, we can also increase here, maybe three to four times, maybe at the end of the week, seven, eight.

You could do little bit of pickup three on three, but still in this late of season, it's not needed to do much of the contact basketball, maybe one on one. And skill work will be significantly higher. You can even add a little bit of running after the skill training. And last phase, week nine to 12, so last three, four weeks, is the pre-season, let's call it preparation.

where basketball and conditioning becomes a little bit more important, maybe 40 % importance and still developing your body in the weight room and running, it would be 60. But basketball sessions can be three to five times a week and you will at least a little bit play pickup basketball one or two times per week and definitely adding shooting under fatigue.

conditioning drills with basketball, intense skill work. Weight room, definitely keeping those repetitions low, two to five. Maybe you take out the jumping drills, jumping exercises in the weight room, but if your goal is to develop power, maybe you will be jumping on the box because you will be already jumping a lot on the basketball court.

Conditioning, we keep the same. We go for those five seconds sprints, but we just do once a week. No need to do more. And we just repeat that again for five to 10 times. And that will be our conditioning. So this is the wrap up for the episode. Three key takeaways. Remember, in season, keep.

Stan (18:33.992)
lifting, you need to train your body. Two short training sessions is the minimum requirement for you and add conditioning if you're not getting lots of minutes to play. Then balance, meaning balance your work. If you need to improve your, whatever you need to improve the most, always start with that. And off season, just take pencil and pen and write things that I told you and you will have clear.

12 weeks conditioning plan for you. As always, thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and share this episode. Let me know if you found valuable information. But for now, keep training basketball, and mind.