Top Offseason Strength and Conditioning
Exercises for Basketball Players
As a competitive basketball player, you undoubtedly know how important it is to stay in shape during the offseason. For today’s elite athletes, next year’s training begins as soon as the buzzer sounds on the final play of this season. Staying strong in the offseason is just as important as during the basketball season.
Explosiveness is measured by many coaches using vertical leap. Photo: Elite Training Academy of California.
A proper strength and conditioning regimen in the offseason is integral to preventing injury while building speed, agility, and muscle.
Let’s take a look at a couple of programs that you can follow during the offseason that will take your game to new heights and guarantee that you can form your own version of a dream starting five basketball team.
This first program will whip you into excellent offseason shape and set a fine baseline for more advanced workouts. Follow this schedule for four weeks:
Day One: do three sets of 12 to 15 reps of back squats, lunges, Romanian deadlifts, and reverse hyperextensions. Perform 10 vertical jumps and standing long jumps. Run 10 5-yard sprints, five 5-yard shuffles each way, and five 5-yard backpedals.
Day Two: do three sets of 12 to 15 reps of bench presses, military presses, and biceps/triceps presses. Go for your max in pull-ups.
Day Four: do two sets of 12 to 15 reps of back squats on each leg, step-ups on each leg, good mornings, and back raises. Follow this up with 10 vertical jumps and standing long jumps. Run 10 5-yard sprints, five 5-yard shuffles each way, and five 5-yard backpedals.
It’s all about strength on Day Five. Do three sets of 12 to 15 reps of incline presses, bent-over rows, dumbbell shoulder presses, and biceps/triceps presses.
Day Six offers an explosive conditioning circuit that will have your metabolism soaring. Do each exercise in the listed order for thirty seconds with minimal rest in between. Repeat the entire circuit twice. The exercises are kettlebell swings, prone holds, heavy jump rope, right side planks, jumping jacks, left side planks, kettlebell swings, crunches, heaving rope woodchoppers, and burpees. You’re verifiably superhuman if you’re not dripping after this circuit.
Days Three and Seven are off days.
If you’re looking for a more generalized offseason strength and conditioning regimen, follow this three-day-a-week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) template that allows you to customize to specific exercises of your choice. Simply pick an exercise of the recommended type and get to work. For example, you can do frog squat jumps for a speed/plyometric exercise and forward-backward sprints for an agility exercise. You get the idea.
Here’s how the schedule plays out:
On Monday, do a low volume of a high-intensity speed/plyometric exercise. Follow it up with moderate amounts of high-intensity metabolic conditioning and power/strength training.
After resting on Tuesday, start Wednesday with low doses of a high-intensity agility/plyometric exercise, a high-intensity metabolic conditioning exercise, and a low-intensity strength training exercise.
Thursday is another recovery day. On Friday, it’s time for a moderate volume of a high-intensity agility exercise followed by a high amount of strenuous metabolic conditioning and a moderate volume of mid-level intensity power/strength training.
There are no excuses for lounging this offseason. Hit the gym hard with one of these strength and conditioning programs to stay strong. You’ll make your next season as successful as a slam dunk.
