How Does Fitness Enhance Your Game

By Exercise Physiologist Danielle Grant (Reach Your Peak PT)

As a player of course you love the game and want to play better! (and hey unless you’re Michael Jordan there’s always room for improvement). Basketball is a sport. Whether you play NBA or run around your local gym, basketball requires a variety of fitness components but predominately it requires agility, explosive power, speed and cardiovascular endurance. Skills and accuracy aside, let’s take a closer look at these key components vital to better performance, enjoyment and recovery:

Agility – refers to the ability to change direction at pace while still remaining under control. In basketball this can be seen when defending or when trying to create a lane to the basket or through your opposition.

Power – the ability to exert maximal muscular contraction instantly in an explosive burst of movements. This is required for jumping, rebounding or for accelerating.

Speed – refers to the time needed to perform an activity. With a fast sport like basketball speed comes into play a lot, but most importantly with sprinting from one end of the court to the other.

Cardiovascular endurance – the ability to supply oxygen to muscles during sustained exercise. To prevent fatigue setting in, your body needs to do this very efficiently for the entire 40 minute match.

The greatest gift that fitness delivers is quicker recovery time. Recovering quickly from a sprint up the court will allow you to keep playing at your peak. If you can’t recover and meet the physical demands of the sport, fatigue sets in and you’ll begin to lose co-ordination, your reaction time will decline and your accuracy in shooting and passing will be poor. So focus on increasing your fitness to improve your recovery time to give your overall game a boost!

Look out for my Training Program coming soon.

Love your game!