With basketball season here it’s important to look at warming up for practices or games. Whether you’re starting games or coming off the bench, it’s always important to be ready to play. Warming up should get you there. So for the rest of the week be sure to check back with more warm-up related drills, tips, and techniques.
Warming up should accomplish a few things:
– Get your body warm and ready to play. As they say when you sit on the bench for a while you become “cold”. Warming up gets your muscles ready to run up in down the court.
– Get used to the ball. Smack it, dribble it, throw it around. Your hands have to get used to the ball so you can have the ball on a string when in the game
– Get your shot ready. Get up as many shots as you can to get a rhythm going with your mechanics, the rim, and where on the court you feel comfortable.
At Triple Threat we know this is very important and it’s especially important to warm up to prevent injury too. Here are three ways we like to start most of our training sessions to get your body ready to hoop.
1. Shoot around. Whether you’re a big man who is practicing layups or a guard working on his elbow jumper, it’s always good to get up shots before we get going. You need to get a feel for the rim and get your form down.
2. Exercises. The body always needs to be warmed up. Usually this means taking a few jogs around the court and then getting into a dynamic work-out. This includes dribbling while doing lines of:
– High Skips: This will get your legs ready to bounce around the court as basketball is a game where you need to get off the ground quickly.
– High Knees: Get those legs moving as fast as you can for the sprints you’ll have to make back on defense.
– Back Kicks: Kick your legs high up into your back to keep warming up the legs.
– Side-Steps: Similar to a defense slide, it is used to get your body ready for the side to side motion of basketball.
3. Dribbling Drills. This includes stationary and on the move. Dribbling with both hands, working on crossovers, dribbling around cones, getting used to the ball, and being able to fully control it. Some drills we use:
– Cone dribbling. Keep your feet in place and dribble around cones without moving your body. Â Your hand needs to have full control of the ball.
– Low to high dribbles. Focus on dribbling very low to very high on the body because you will have to dribble at all different heights during practices and games.
– Going slow to fast. Work on dribbling while jogging then move up to sprinting or speed dribbling as you get more comfortable with the ball and more warmed-up.
– Two ball dribbling. Now you can really get after it by focusing on dribbling with both hands at the same time. One ball dribbling should look like nothing after this.
If you like this post, here are some others you may enjoy (click title to read):
1. Warm-Up Week: Five Drills To Get You Game Ready
2. Warm-Up Week: Shooting Drills
3. The Ten Best Ways To Help You Tryout And Make Your Basketball Team