BASKETBALL, Linear 101 Part 1, By: Tony Reynolds, MS, CSCS, YCS II
Important Notice
Tony Reynolds, Progressive Sporting Systems Inc, and their associates
and affiliates are not affiliated with Anabolic Steroids in anyway and
do not promote or encourage the use of these drugs. His articles within this section of our site are published to offer a broad range of fitness and nutritional knowledge that will help you to achieve your health and fitness goals without the use of Anabolic Steroids.
It’s no big secret that most sports involve more than just a linear movement component. Unless you are a track and field athlete, you must train multi-directionally. Basketball is a very 3-dimensional sport. Athletes are always cutting, jumping, turning, stopping, and starting. If you were to break down any of these components through a biomechanical analysis, you would see that every one of them involves some kind of multi-directional component.
This article will guide you through the developmental properties for lateral movement. Although lateral movement is just 1 component of multi-directional movement, it is important enough that you should invest a great deal of your early off-season training in its development. If you have not read linear 101, please do so, it will give you an understanding of how and why the inherent muscle mechanics of movement function. In addition, it will give you a better understanding of the philosophies in this article.
Angles
Angles are crucial to the development of proper ground reaction forces. As we discussed in linear 101, not only does the angle have to be conducive to the production of optimal muscular contraction, but it must also be optimized for all of the extrinsic factors of movement.
Let’s look at the proper leg angles and mechanics that should be exhibited when an athlete assumes the ready position.
· The athlete should lower their center of gravity (cog) by sitting back in their hips. Their back should remain flat and the core should be tight and stable. This is usually something that needs to be addressed. Many times athletes want to look down at the ground. As a result their backs round. They should keep their heads up and focus on the horizon, and consciously think about their posture.
· Their weight should be on the balls of their feet. The athlete should have their weight on the front portion of their feet and balanced between the two feet. This allows the athletes to stay mobile. When the athlete stands flat footed, the musculature of the lower limb becomes flaccid. This musculature must then contract to aid in the production of movement. When the athlete places the load of their body on the front portion of the foot, the lower limb musculature is activated and pre-loaded. It is than able to instantaneously react to a movement stimulus.
· There should be a slight forward tracking of the knees, but they should not move in front of the toes. Many times athletes want to compensate for lowering their body and elevating on to their toes by pushing their knees to far forward. This allows them to keep their cog within their support system, but creates angles that are not conducive to movement. They should be reminded to push their hips back and to drop their shoulders forward.
· The knees should sag slightly toward the midline of the body (positive angles). Many people refer to this as a pigeon toed stance. By maintaining an inward knee angle, or positive angles, the athlete can instantaneously push the body laterally. This alleviates the added time created by having to first drop the knee before pushing. This in addition to the slight forward traction of the knee allows for instantaneous multi-directional movement without the use of a prep action.
· Stance width should be comfortable, but mobile. Stance width should allow for comfortable 3-dimensional movement. This not only means forward, backward, and diagonally, but also up and down. If a stance is to narrow, the athlete will not be stable. This stance is usually challenge by pushing the athlete from the side. If the stance is to narrow the athlete will lose balance and fall to the side. During leg drive, ground reaction forces tend to be to vertical with this type of stance. Contrastly, if the stance is to wide, if becomes difficult to displace the center of gravity. This type of stance is extremely stable, but not mobile. The effort required to overcome the wide base of support not only increases initial movement time, but requires a greater energy usage. In a comfortable stance, the individual should be able to freely move side to side within the base of support and should be able to take a quick step without changing their immediate posture.
· Lateral movement should always be accomplished through a pushing of the trail leg. This is a stronger and much more efficient technique than the usual reach and pull. While pushing with the trail leg you must be conscience of what the lead leg is doing. It is common to see a stepping motion that causes the center of gravity to oscillate. Rather the lead leg should remain relatively close to the ground and the center of gravity should remain in a constant horizontal plane.
· Spacing between the feet should remain relatively constant. When moving laterally the athlete should not close their stance up while striding. It is common for the athlete to over retract the trail leg on its recovery phase. This creates a commitment instance were changing direction becomes extremely difficult.
· Keep an active stance. Never stay perfectly still while in this position. You should try to keep your body active and ready to react. Many times if an athlete gets lazy and does not stay active in this stance, they will lose valuable reaction time. By slightly shifting the cog between the feet the athlete will keep mentally and physically attentive. Don’t for get that good technique doesn’t mean much if your athletes have lousy reaction times.
In conclusion I am going to leave you with a few teaching cues:
1. head up and back flat
2. lowered center of gravity
3. weight on the balls of the feet
4. knees slightly forward but not in front of the toes
5. hips back
6. knees in positive angles
7. feet at a comfortable mobile width
8. keep an active stance
9. always push don’t pull
10. don’t over compensate on the recovery step
