Ethan Khoza recommends playing pickup two to four times a week in the offseason to maintain fitness, then adding sprint work like 17s and suicides as the season approaches. Use pickup games to condition while working on skills, like guarding the best player to increase defensive intensity.
Questions this video answers
Start on one sideline, run to the opposite sideline and back; each one-way court-length counts as one, continuing until 17 crossings (i.e., run across and back repeatedly up to 17).
Two, three, four times a week.
July 2, 2020.
Chapters
And then I got another question from Amanda, and, you know, she was asking, hey, coach, I've been having this question for a little while, and I was wondering, when should I start my basketball conditioning to be conditioned for next season? So this is a good question as well. I think that when it comes to conditioning, there's a couple different aspects to look at. So I think the first part is that when you're in the offseason, you know, I don't think you need to necessarily be unconditioned. Right. Like, I don't think you need to necessarily, like, stop running, stop working out. Obviously, you might run more during the season, but I think from my perspective, like, you should be. You should be playing enough in terms of, like, pickup. Like that. That's my first thing I'll say. You should be playing enough pickup that, like, you're still in pretty decent shape. You're still running up, down the floor a lot. And obviously, you know, right now, maybe some of you guys can't do that. So understandable. But at the same time, if you can, you should do that. That's the best way to stay in shape, in my opinion. Playing pickup, you know, two, three, four times a week, you're gonna stay in pretty good shape. And. But obviously, you know, not everyone's gonna do that. So, you know, what you can do still is add some sort of elements of conditioning to your. To your workouts. You know, players always ask me to make a conditioning workout, which I'll probably do at some point, because I think that you. You can have a conditioning workout, but at the same time, my. I think my preferred way of conditioning, again, is by playing. So, like, let's play more pickup. We're gonna get conditioned. Just if we just play pickup for an hour and a half straight, like, you're gonna be in pretty good shape. You do that a couple times a week for a few weeks. Right. But also what you can do is you can add sprints into your workout. So, for example, you might start off your workout doing some stationary shooting. We'll say, so you're working on maybe we'll say five shots, five spots. Okay? Or so, you know, you may. You make those shots. After that, you shoot your two free throws. Actually, maybe we'll say you make those five shots at those five spots, and then you run a 17. So if you guys don't know what a 17 is, it's where you start on one sideline and you run to the opposite sideline and then back. So every time you run across the court, it's one. Okay, so I run across 1, back, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, all the way up to 17. Okay? That in itself is a really good conditioning control. What you can do with that is you can start to time yourself and try and beat your time. So maybe you get it in a minute and five seconds, right? Well, the next workout, you're going to try and get in a minute and four. So you might do that shooting drill, and you go do that 17, and then you go back, shoot your free throws, go to your next drill, whatever. Maybe you run another 17 after the next drill. Okay, so you're just adding in conditioning to your workout. Or you might even say, I'm gonna go through my whole workout, right? And then at the end of my workout, I'm gonna run three 17s back to back. I'm gonna go 17, give myself 30, 45 seconds of a break. Then I'm gonna go, another one, little break, another one, little break, right? You can do that with suicides if you want. Whatever you. Whatever it might be. And I think that is a great way to also be conditioned. You don't necessarily have to do full conditioning workouts, though. Again, I'll probably make one, because you can. But all just really, just adding it into your game at this point, I think is very, very important. And I think as you approach the season, the biggest difference is that, Right. You know, right now it's. It's about to be July. You know, we're the end of June. I think the. The biggest thing now is, like, you know, you probably aren't going to be running as much, and as the season approaches, you're just going to ramp it up a little bit. So if you can play more pickup as the season approaches, you can play four times a week with your team or whatever. That's. That's great, right? If you just make sure that at the end of your workouts, you're running sprints, or maybe in between your drills, you're running sprints. Those 17s or suicides. As the season approaches, you start to ramp it up. I think that's important, too. But, you know, at the same time, my big thing is, like, you can stay in pretty good shape in the offseason, too. Like, you don't have to just stop running. So stop playing. That's the mistake players made, too, because if you're not running, you probably aren't playing. And playing is so important in the offseason. Like, you should be playing so often. Okay, so. So that. That's an important thing for you guys to recognize. You know, I think the good thing now is that with. And obviously this year is different with everything going on. But with aau, players are usually still playing in the offseason, so they still have that sort of baseline of. Of being able to have some sort of conditioning. Right. I think the only difference is as the season approaches, you sort of ramp up the intensity a little bit. So you add in a couple more sprints, maybe you play an extra night, whatever it is you can do. And honestly, we can even take a look at the context of what you're doing when you're playing. So when you're playing, maybe you make it your goal to guard the other team's best player. Right? Because you're going to have to do more work and you're going to be in better shape because you got to work harder on defense now. So I think that in itself, again, is going to help you not only basketball wise, but conditioning wise, too. Okay? So really, it's what it's about is it's not always about working harder. A lot of times it's working smarter. Okay, so how can I kill two birds with one stone? When I play pickup, I'm working on my skills, but at the same time, I'm getting in better shape, too. Okay, so that's something that I think of. But again, we can have this discussion through the full workout that I'll definitely drop at some point. But between playing and those extra sprints, you'll be in good shape. I want you guys right now go to the top link in my description and get my free elite perimeter score workout. We're going to work on a bunch of different skills that you need to have if you want to be an elite player in the perimeter. Make sure you guys check it out completely free. Click the link, I'll send it right to you.
