BASKETBALL, Linear 101, 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.
Many times coaches and athletes get so caught up in the creativity of their training ideas that they forget about the basics. As a coach and an athlete you must understand the mechanics of the drills and movements you use to train. The best drills will exhibit minimal at best results if taught with poor mechanics.
I am going outline and highlight the import aspects of linear movement to give you a better understanding of how and why we do the drills we do. You can than apply this knowledge to the linear portion of the basketball training program provided within this training manual.
ANGLES
The most fundamental component of movement resides in angles. Once you understand the importance of these angles to power output, reactional force vectors, and complementary re-actions, the rest of the linear movement picture becomes a little clearer.
All movement in the human body involves a rotational component. Your limbs all hinge from a pivot point, for which all movement revolves. The center of this pivot point is called the joints axis of rotation.
If you draw an imaginary line from the joint axis to the end of its limb, you create a lever arm. Any joint with a rotational axis involves a lever arm; it is a simple law of biomechanics. Although the body is composed of 3 different types of levers, we are going to discuss them in their most generic form.
Outside the body, levers are experienced in many forms. For instance, wheel barrows are levers. The wheel houses the rotational axis, and the lever arm runs the length of the wheel barrow to the handles.
All lever arms are divided into 2 parts. The effort arm or work side of the lever and the load side. If you think about the wheel barrow, you see that the effort arm would be the part of the wheel barrow between your hands and the load inside the wheel barrow. The load arm would be the part of the lever arm between the load and the wheel.
If you have ever pushed anything around in a wheel barrow you probably made sure to put it as close to the front, or by the wheel as possible. Undoubtedly you figured out that the closer to the handles you put things the heavier the whole thing felt. Now obviously the weight of the load in the wheel barrow doesn’t change, so why does if feel heavier? You are changing the ratio between the two parts of the lever arm. As the load arm (distance between the load in the wheel barrow and the axis of the wheel) gets longer the heavier the load feels.
Conceptually, this is the same as doing a dumbbell front raise. The more you bend the elbow the lighter the dumbbell in your hand feels. For instance, try to do a front raise with your elbow locked out. Now bend it to 90 degrees, and do it again. There is a huge difference in the muscle activity of the shoulder because the bent elbow front raise requires less work to complete.
Now let’s bring this all home to linear movement 101. If you wanted to move that dumbbell as fast as possible you would probably now think, well the closer I bring it to my body the lighter it is going to feel, so I will bend my arm. If it feels lighter I will be able to move it faster. Hopefully this makes sense- a shorter limb (lever) will move faster than a longer limb because the load felt in the muscle is less for the short limb.
This is one reason why joint angle becomes so important. We have to ask ourselves to consider what joint angle will allow us to move our limb at the greatest speed while maximizing the potential of the limbs musculature for force expression.
Next we must consider what joint angle will allow us to produce maximal force, power, and acceleration. To understand this some basic muscle physiology must be understood. First, what happens when a muscle contracts? Try to picture an old Viking battleship being paddled down a river. Visualize the oars on each side of the boat rising out of the water, moving forward, dipping back into the water and pushing their way back. This continuous movement creates forward motion.
There are paddle like proteins (myosin) in your muscle cells that act like the oars of this boat. They attach to other proteins (actin) which act like the water of the river. When the paddle like proteins of the muscles push against the water like proteins, the muscle is moved. The only big difference is the muscle is attached to something at both ends, so when it moves it moves toward one attachment while it pulls the other end along with it, which actually shortens the muscle.
Now three things can happen within the muscle. 1st the muscle can become so short that the paddles like proteins can find no more water like proteins (because they are all used up) and movement is stalled, 2nd the muscle can be so stretched out that the paddle like proteins may not have a water like protein readily available to attach to, or 3rd there is an optimal amount of paddles and water. It does not take a lot of education to realize that the 3rd instance is the most optimal for functional muscle contraction.
Years of sprint research has come to the culminating conclusion that 90 degrees not only produces great angular speed, but also allows for maximal force production. If you look at the stick figure at the left you will notice that 90 degree angles are prevalent.
First let’s look at the arms; the elbows are bent to 90 degrees. This shortens the lever arm created between the shoulder and the hand (remember draw a straight line between the two points to get the lever arm) allowing for a quick arm movement. Next, notice that the two arms create a 90 degree angle at the shoulder. This is formed at the terminal ranges of arm motion.
When the arms swing about the shoulder the hands should travel from the side pocket to the mouth. From a front view, lateral movement of the arm should be minimal, allowing the hand to come slightly in toward the center line of the body during their forward movement. There should be an aggressive drive on the back swing of the arm movement. Try to keep your hands slightly closed but lose and relaxed.
Next look at knee angle; once again a 90 degree angle will produce the optimal relationship between limb speed and power production. For start acceleration, (which is more important than overall speed in basketball) the 90 degree angle produces good mechanics for proper force reaction with the ground. You want the application of force to be slightly in front of the body’s center of gravity (COG) to insure forward movement. If the leg is straightened to greater than 90 degrees, the force is applied to far in front of the center of gravity causing a breaking action. Likewise, if the leg is flexed to far, the body begins to perform a kicking action to keep the force in front of the COG. This action involves weaker less mechanically advantaged musculature. When the limb is configured into the proper position the action resembles more of a stomping movement, which incorporates more of the powerful posterior chain muscles.
Foot and ankle configurations are key to ground reaction. When the knee is elevated there should be a concurrent dorsiflexion (try to touch the top of your foot to your shin) of the foot. This dorsiflexion loads the ankle mechanism allowing for a more explosive toe-off. If the foot is not dorsiflexed the following will happen: The ankle will be loose and flaccid. The power of the leg drive is dissipated through the flaccid ankle and the potential for ground reaction force is diminished. The ankle has to dorsiflex before the concurrent toe-off, increasing contact time with the ground. By learning to reflexively dorsiflex the foot during hip flexion, the efficiency of the leg action is greatly improved.
Head carriage is very simple; keep your eyes on the horizon. How many times have you been walking down the side walk or driving down the road gazing off to the side, and all of the sudden you realize that you have walked off the side of the curve or have driven off the side of the road. It is natural tendency for the body to follow the head; after all, it does house the command center for most of us.
Many times athletes run with their eye looking down at the ground. This usually leads to the neck bending and then the upper body hunching over (this problem will get discussed in greater detail here in a moment.) This leads to problems with bodily posture.
The body’s posture should remain pillar like, maintaining a straight line from ear to ankle. The core should be contracted to support the pelvis and lumbar spine. The head should remain in a neutral position looking to the horizon. If the pelvis and lumbar spine are not properly stabilized they will act as flaccid connections for the active running muscles. This will decrease the effectiveness of muscular contractions and concomitant power output.
Any hip flexion in the base leg will decease the amount of potential hip flexion in the active drive leg. Binding of the hip due to muscular activation of the firing base leg hip flexor mechanisms will impede the fluidity of motion in the active drive leg. Posture must me strengthened to a level that can handle dynamic stability.
In closing I would like to list the highlights of linear movement dynamics:
· Maintain a pillar like posture
· Keep your head neutral with your eyes on the horizon
· Keep the arms bent to 90 degrees
· Use a hip pocket to mouth arm action
· Aggressively drive your elbows back
· Relax your hands
· Keep your core tight
· Attack the ground with the drive legs foot dorsiflexed
· Develop this dorsiflexion engram
· Achieve a hip and knee angle of 90 degrees.
· Forcefully drive through the ground slightly in front of the COG
