Basketball Fitness and Conditioning Exercises to Use

Basketball isn’t just drills that involve basketball as a whole. There are also other exercises that are good for getting the body in shape. Basketball requires you to be in a certain shape.  You need to be able to push forth with bursts of speed and have some form of endurance.  Running, defending, jumping, all of that is important. 

With conditioning, you’ll be able to last a lot longer, and help your team get the victories that they want, by staying in tip-top shape, however you can. Curious about how you can be better at conditioning? Read on. 

Layup Drills 

Layups are important, because you want to be able to score these shots as fast as you can. They’re fast and require you to be quick to your feet. The drill begins at the baseline, and from there, the person dribbles to the court, and then shoots layups.  They then grab the rebounded shot, and then get a layup near the other end.  The court is circled until the layups are done in a time limit. This is done on both sides, to get better at shooting with different hands. You also may want to incorporate 1v1 shooting, in order to make it even more challenging.

Ball Dribbling Exercises 

Dribbling is important, because this gets you in shape to, well, move the ball around.  There are two popular ones.  There is the cone weave, where you set up cones in a straight line, and then, you dribble, weaving through the cones, switching hands each time you pass a cone. 

There is also the two ball dribbling, which works on ball handling and cardio.  It involves two balls, one in a single handle. The goal is to dribble from one end of the court to the next.  You can do high and low ball dribbles, weaving through cones too with this for an extra challenge. 

Sideline Sprints 

Sideline springs is something that involves a person going from one of the sidelines to the next.  You try to do this as many times as you can in just a minute.  It can be how many times you hit the sideline each time, or overall. 

If you don’t get the amount right away, slowly work up to this. 

There are also suicides, which are a variant of this. it begins with the baseline, then sprinting down to the free throw line, where you touch and then run back. You then go to half-court, then the father free throw line, and then, all the way to the other baseline.  You try to do all of this in order to improve endurance and sprinting. 

These are good for drills without basketballs. 

Other Exercises 

While you may want to do running, there are other variants as well. Exercise bikes are good if you want to just use your legs.  they’re great for the off season. An aqua jog is a running variant where you literally run in water. This is good for building up the chest, resistance, and is good for overall cardio and muscles being worked out. 

If you want to, there is also swimming and jump rope, which are good for working out the lungs, legs, and even the entire body! Finally, if you have no equipment, that’s not a problem. There are burpees and mountain climbers, which are cardio exercises that are good not just for moving around, but also boost lungs, and improve the strength of abs. When being a basketball player, you’ve got to do other exercises. These are some of the best conditioning exercises to try.