Some athletes are ready to take on this years new challenge and some are adjusting to challenging academic loads. Here are 5 keys to making a great pre season debut.
Athletes should be transitioning to road work and plyometrics.
15-20 km road work and 4 sessions of plyometrics per week
1 week before preseason reduce road work and increase short sprint intervals at full intensity
Clothes and Shoes should be already purchased and ready for intense workouts - nothing worse than having sore feet or ill fitting workout clothes
Write down a list of personal goals for the season- review them half way and then at the end of the season
Overall athletes that arrive to pre season camp with strong cardio vascular have an advantage over other athletes. This advantage most often translates across the season. Athletes with reduced cardio vascular performances in pre season often can not make back the distance that is opened up over the first few weeks of pre season. The notion that ‘out of shape’ pre season athletes are at a disadvantage is not surprising but the concept that they also have a reduced chance of closing the gap might be new for some. It is an all to common precept that athletes can just ‘get in shape’ during the first few weeks.
While objective statistics are difficult to obtain due to widely different data sets for male and female athletes combined with a variety of different training camp styles - we do observe significant gaps in preparedness of athletes entering pre season. What we do know is being in shape and being in basketball shape are drastically different things, throw in ‘game shape’ and we are left with little to no objective measures of what it means to be ‘in shape’. For high school and collegiate athletes the most we can ask and observe is the ability to run 3-5 km, for high profile athletes we should be observing 5km with a moderately fast cadence.
Further reading on this can be found at;
Review of literature
ESPN article on 'Game Shape'
Basketball training loads