Off Season Chronicles

11:02 AM Ellis 4 Comments

What Players should do...
Routines change(no more 3 hour bus rides from Cape coast to Accra for matches), friendships have grown, priorities change(spending more time on school/work). As a player, what should you do now? When practice time comes and there is no practice, what do you do? When there are no games to prepare for, what do you do with your time? Considering that ours is a-non-paying-league-that-everybody-plays-for-the-love-of-the-game, I tried to custom the resource to our setting.

1. Go about your daily activities with less pressure for 2 - 3 weeks to keep you relaxed. It has been a long, physically and mentally draining season. If you want to improve, you have to give yourself a chance to recover.


2. Depending on your stage, catch up and get ahead of your schoolwork / spend more time at the office to and work more to compensate for the times you were absent.

3. Talk to your coach(or any other knowledgeable person who watches you play and evaluate your season. Talk about what you did well and what you did not. Determine the areas you need to improve on. Discuss the things you would like to do and how to accomplish them.

4. After taking the 2-3 break, start on your off-season workout program. The program should be about 75% skill work and 25% play.

5.Develop your shooting stroke. If you want to become a GREAT shooter and raise your percentage, it MUST happen during the off season. It's just TOO difficult to develop these skills and improve during the season. It must be done during the off season!

6. Start a strength training program. Your objective should be to gain strength from now until the season is near. But be careful not to over work one part of the body more than the other as several players lift weight and forget the need stronger legs to carry the muscles their putting on.

7. As you progress, add more play to your workout. You should be at about 50% skill work, 50% play. Don't neglect your weight work. Great strength gains can be made during this period.

8. Go to camps and clinics or train with other teams in situation where the camps and clinics are non existent. Learn form other coaches, play against different players. The more diverse your off season experience, the better player you will become.

9. When the off season is over, your routine changes. GET AHEAD in the classroom / do more work. Once the season starts, it is easy for your schoolwork to slip/ get permission from bosses to play.

10. When the season starts change your workout routine to 25% skill, 75% play.

11. Switch you strength training routine to an endurance and strength maintenance routine.

12. A week before the season, take some time off. Get ready to go!

As said in the previous post, lots of comments are welcome, remember its a team sport.

4 comments:

Off Season Chronicles

8:37 AM Ellis 2 Comments

Yea, like it or hate it the off season with all its issues(player movements especially) are here with us. After about six months of exciting but stressful competition(five months regular season and another 12 days of Thome Cabalan), everybody definitely needs a rest.

From the players, to the coaches, to the officials and even fans(I know lots of you wont agree because you wish there was all year round basketball). Everybody does take a rest or a vacation from their jobs once in while even if its not regular. But for us in the sports world, the off season should be more than a rest period.

I have been reading around trying to gather some information about what exactly we could do to help make us better for next season. This is going to be a three part article. For the next three days we see what players, coaches and officials are supposed to do in the off season to make them better for the next season. Remember, lots of comments are welcome.

2 comments:

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