The Best Players Are Trying New Methods & Ideas

For hoops lovers, basketball training is an excellent way to maintain strong shape and peak human condition.

Even the best basketball players in the world are always looking at new training methods as ways to enhance their skills.

Take, for instance, the case of Gonzaga superstar Drew Timme. His Bulldogs currently have the best odds of winning the March Madness for College Basketball.

Last year, Timme led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Championship Game, but they fell 86-70 to the Baylor Bears. After the heartbreaking loss, Timme went great lengths to up his game.

As detailed in a piece by Jim Meehan of The Spokesman Review, Timme joined a program led by renowned basketball trainer Tyler Relph. The latter works with several NBA veterans, including New York Knicks star Julius Randle and Los Angeles forward Nicolas Batum.

Relph works with several other notable NCAA players across the country. Per Meehan, Relph guessed that Timme was practicing 250 to 300 “NBA-range 3-pointers” daily.

Timme is widely projected to be a second-round pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. He devoted extra time to refining his game, and it’ll hopefully pay off over the long run.

One also just has to take a look at Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, widely regarded as the best NBA player of his era.

Maverick Carter, one of Jame’s close friends, revealed back in 2018 that the four-time NBA Champion spends $1.5 million per year on his body. This includes personal trainers, chefs and cryotherapy so that “King James” can maximize his production as he gets older.

Even at the age of 37, LeBron remains one of the NBA’s elite players. He was just two months shy of his 36th birthday when he led the Los Angeles Lakers to the 2020 NBA Championship in the Orlando Bubble.

The bottom line is that the world’s best basketball players aren’t doing the same old routines. Marquee names like Timme and James are always exploring new ideas and training methods to get the best possible results out of themselves.

How Basketball Keeps Players In Shape

Baseball helps with hand-eye coordination. Hockey helps enhance balance and agility. Soccer provides plenty of cardio.

In short, every sport offers different training methods and individual skills that athletes can work on. Basketball offers a little bit of everything.

For starters, basketball is a great way to get in much-needed cardio workouts. Getting the right amount of cardio exercising goes a long way in burning body fat.

In the game of basketball, you’re running up and down the court having to play both offense and defense. A standard game features five players on each team, so it’s not like soccer where you have double-digit players all covering a large portion of the playing surface.

With only 10 people on the court at a time, basketball players always have to be moving around: Whether they’re playing defense or trying to set up an offensive play.

High-level basketball training can also help you improve on vital skills such as hand-eye coordination, balance, ball tracking, speed, agility and more.

Basketball players have to boast all of these talents. You’re running around non-stop, and you have to react quickly. Practicing rebounding, for instance, goes a long way in working on self-balance and hand-eye coordination.

In some sports, like soccer or baseball, you’re not always guaranteed to get plenty of cardio and exercises. One team can easily dominate and dictate the play of the game in soccer, meaning the midfielders and forwards don’t have to do a whole lot of running around.

Baseball is a slow-paced sport. Unless you’re running around the bases aplenty or having to chase balls in the outfield, you’re not really getting intense cardio in.

But in basketball, you don’t have the option to sit back and avoid running. You always have to move around to get open. You have to run through defenders. You have to go for rebounds time and time again. In short, basketball games guarantee long periods of intense cardio exercises.

Playing basketball regularly can help anyone stay in shape. Not only that, but the game of hoops can help anyone build mental toughness and skills. For instance, the ability to make free throws in crunch time can greatly build your ability to work under tight-pressure situations.

In short, basketball is a proven and very effective way to get into shape – whether that comes in the forms of drills, training exercises or actual games.