There’s a plethora of training tools out there to choose from when you are putting together your year plan.  One of my all time favorites is the weight vest, a great tool when your players are READY for them.  Incorporating weight vests into your teams training can build toughness and prepare your players for the demands of the upcoming season.  Like any training tool out there, it’s all about knowing when to use them, for how long, and making sure you have a specific goal to accomplish when using them.  Just throwing a weight vest into your workouts for the sake of using a cool toy will lead to potential problems.  When your body isn’t ready for weight vest training it will let you know in ways of soft tissue issues.  Knee tendonitis, shin splints and low back tightness are all warning signs that you are training incorrectly.

Why To Implement Weight Vest Training?

1. Improve team toughness.
2. Increase overall conditioning.
3. Improve overall power and explosiveness.

When You Should NOT Implement Weight Vest Training?

1. Players aren’t strong nor conditioned enough to handle impact of ground forces the weight vest demands.
2. Players have poor kinesthetic awareness and lack the coordination needed to move efficiently while wearing a weight vest.
3. If your only goal is to “spice up” an exercise just for the sake of it with no overall plan.

What I will cover in this article is when to incorporate weight vest training in your workouts and the progressions involved.  To maintain the brevity of this article I will focus on a jump circuit we do using the weight vest.

So, when is a good time to incorporate weight vests?

I like to use weight vests 3 different times of the year:

1. Preseason workouts for team toughness drills and our Jump Circuit.
2. In season for players with limited playing time to keep their competitive edge and conditioning.
3. In the Spring with our work capacity phase.

A Needed Break

It’s August 20th and my guys are reporting in for training camp after 3 weeks of doing their “take home” workouts.  Do I believe that most of them worked out during the 3 week break, yes.  Do I also know that training at home in an old high school gym with your old high school buddies talking about the good ‘ol days isn’t the intensity that’s needed to prepare them for the upcoming season.  Having said that I feel it’s extremely important to get a break once and awhile from the grind.  I often shake my head when I hear of coaches that want their players to work solid through the off-season and not take any time off for themselves or to spend with family and friends.  I’ve always believed that you’re going to get more out of your players if they have fresh legs and a positive mind rather than feeling as if they never had a break.  The elusive balance of work and rest is hard to find, but it’s needed in my opinion.

The Base

My number one goal when I first get my guys back is to set the tone early and often.  Hitting the reset button any chance I can get making sure they’re all on the same page.  Counting together, working together, and getting better together is very important if you want to improve from the year before.  I do this by putting them through a two week “get after it” phase that involves team building drills, toughness drills, as well as strength work.  Within this phase we will also spend a lot of time on landing mechanics, body awareness, and jumping technique.  From arm drive, knee bend, toe push-off, if it involves jumping or landing we will work on it.  By revisiting these mechanics and coaching cues it helps my guys focus on the importance of quality jumping and landing.  In turn giving me the confidence they will be able to handle the physical demands of the next phase.  4 week phase involving an increase in jumping, landing, and “moving like an athlete”.  Like my good friend Joel Smith, strength coach for University of California Berkeley and in my opinion “Dr. Jump” often says, “if you want to jump higher, you have to practice jumping” and that’s what we will do, jump and a lot of it.

Next Step

I use a 4 week progression with the goal of slowly building up the volume of jumping, all the while maintaining perfect jumping and landing mechanics.  It’s important to progress the players slowly, this allows your players bodies to adapt to the training demands.  Hitting your players with too much volume too soon will lead to injuries or at least soft tissue issues.  Quality is just as important, if 70% of the jumping they did during the workout was poor, you might as well just have them play “open gym”.  You’re the coach so hold them accountable and to high expectations and lastly, like my good friend and amazing coach Robert Dos Remedios says, “tell them what you want to see, not what you don’t want to see”.  This positive approach to coaching your players will do wonders with their jumping mechanics and their confidence.  If you see a kid jumping and landing perfectly stop everyone and “spotlight” him or her, having everyone watch them do the drill perfectly will breed more perfect drills by other players.  The more confident in jumping, feeling of improvement, the more enthusiasm will fill the air for following workouts to come.  You always want your players leaving your muscle factory feeling better than they came in.  The feeling of accomplishment is a powerful “buy in” in tool.

The Circuit (All Jump Circuits done with 20 lb. HumanX Weight Vest)

Low Level Jump Circuit-LL JC-5 seconds a set-Focus: Quick feet, limited ground contact, competition with teammate (how many reps of a given exercise can you get done in 5 seconds).  Recovery time from this type of workout is fast less than 24 hours and it only last 5-8 minutes to complete. 1. Two foot hop 2. Hot feet 3. Speed squats 4. Knee Tucks 5. Butt Kicks 6. Lateral hops

High Level Jump Circuit-HL JC-15-30 seconds a set-Focus: Power, driving the body upward as high as possible rep after rep.  Maintaining quality while fatigue set in. Recovery from this type of workout is a little slower 24-48 hours, it lasts about 8-12 minutes to complete.  With increased demand on the body I like doing this jump circuit with a recovery day to follow.

1. Box Jump
2. Box Split Jump
3. Bench Jumps
4. Lateral Jumps
5. Band Jumps
6. Lunge Hops
7. Plyo-Skaters
8. 180 Jumps

Steady Progression

Week 1 Tuesday LL JC 2x Friday HL JC 1x

Week 2 Monday LL JC 3x Tuesday HL JC 1x Friday HL JC 1x Total 5 Sets

Week 3 Monday LL JC 3x Tuesday HL JC 2x Thursday LL JC 2x Friday HL JC 2x Total 9 Sets

Week 4 Monday LL JC 3x Tuesday HL JC 2x Thursday LL JC 3x Friday HL JC 2x Total 10 Sets

*Every player jumps differently and with a different rate of jumps per second so, it’s hard to know exactly how many jumps each player is getting in for each set.  This gradual increase in the volume of sets and days jumping I’ve found is a safe progression.

Game Plan

Dynamic Warm-up 2 minutes Dynamic Stretch 5 minutes Movement Prep 2 minutes (jump circuit) 5 minutes Lift 50 minutes Foam Roll 5 minutes Static or Band Stretch Circuit 5 minutes Break and a Shake!

Method to the Madness

There’s a reason I like using two different jump circuits one being a low level day, and the other a high level day.  This is because I feel it is easier to mirror those workouts to my lifts for the week, insuring built in recovery to each week.  How do I do this? It’s easy, if the lift is quick and explosive our jump circuit will be the same.  For example, if we have Jerks on the docket for our lift then the jump circuit will be low level, quick, limited ground contact circuit.  On the other hand if the day calls for big band squats in our lift demanding more “loading” then the jump circuit will include bench jumps, which also involves more loading, more of a grind say 15 seconds of work compared to the fast 5 seconds of the low level circuit.  Now these bench jumps should be explosive as well but, there will definitely be a dip in the power curve as fatigue sets in, that is when verbal coaching cues come into play, making sure quality doesn’t suffer.  Mirroring the workouts helps train the body in specific energy systems, helps players with coach-ability and their mental prep because they know what the specific focus of the day is (grind out, or fast), and in my opinion improves recovery.  On a side note I always start with our Jump Circuit after we finish the warm up, stretch, and movement prep.  I do this because I feel it wakes up your players and really gets their CNS firing on all cylinders.  This is also a great time to reinforce to them that it’s “winning” time.  If you have a player noticeable not engaged and not ready to go, drop the hammer.  I will often start the workout over or just tell the player to leave and come back when he or she wants to be part of the beautiful journey to getting better-ville. The mind needs to be right if you want your players to improve through the 4 week phase so, like I stated earlier hold them to that expectation.

Thanks for viewing, Create a Greatness and Go Cougs!

Scott Thom

Some reasons for knee tendonitis:

Lack of VMO strength

Lack of Mobility in ankles and hips

Lack of proper knee tracking in squat portion of jump

Lack of deceleration strength

In this article I’ll focus on lack of VMO strength (the muscles on the lower thigh that surround the top of the knee), which I think is the most common factor in knee tendonitis, especially for players making the jump from high school to college.  These muscles are key being able to decelerate and jump, as well as absorbing force while landing.   I often get hoopers from high school that are extremely explosive and can jump through the roof but, they can barely squat a 45 lb. bar with good form, and without knee pain.  This is a recipe for disaster, as their bodies can create a ton of upward force but, when they land all of the impact goes to the knee.  Over time this creates knee tendonitis (inflammation of the tendons around the knee) and, there’s nothing worse than seeing a young athlete hobble around the court hearing, “coach my knees are killing me”.   It’s my job to get those legs strong so their bodies can handle the jumping, cutting, and overall demands of the season. The goal before season starts is to squat 1.5 to 2x your body weight for a 1 rep max going slightly past parallel.  This ensures me that their legs are strong enough to handle the demands of the season.

Building Blocks:

For those explosive freshman that have trouble squatting, I like to front squat them until they can squat their body weight (on the bar) for 6 reps.  I do this because front squats are a great tool to reinforce proper squatting mechanics, forcing you to keep a vertical posture because if your elbows drop so does the weight.  It’s easier for athletes with tighter hips to get lower in a front squat than a back squat and the repetitions done in the front squat phase will actually work in opening their hips up.  This way when they transition to back squats they’ll be smooth and solid.  It also helps to keep the weight lighter.  It’s easy to back squat heavy weight with bad form but, it’s almost impossible to front squat heavy weight with bad form.  This ensures me that we are building the blocks slowly and deliberately, one rep at a time.  Once they can front squat their body weight for reps then I’ll transition them to back squats and we will start the climb to squatting 1.5-2x their body weight.  This is just one example of what goes into our fall training phase.

After our fall lifting and conditioning phase, which is usually 6-8 weeks of 4 days a wk lifts, 2 days a wk conditioning my guys are strong and in shape, ready to take on the season.   The next challenge is to maintain this strength throughout the season, especially for your big minute guys 30+ a game.  It’s all about finding a balance of workload to recovery.

Proper Recovery to me means:

Rest-Getting 8 hrs. of sleep a night. TV off, iPad off, social media off, just solid good ole fashion sleep.

Hydration and Eating healthy-Staying hydrated, half your body weight in ounces of water daily, making healthy eating choices, “if you eat potatoe chips you’ll play like potatoe chips”.

Treatment- Using cold tubs after long practices or games, getting massages, foam rolling and stretching.

Maintenance Lifts-Getting lifts in at the right time of the week ensuring proper recovery before games.  Keep lifts simple in season and if you do change the lift know that your players are going to be sore until their bodies adapt to the lift.

Preventative Maintenance and Activation Exercises- Done daily before practice to help muscle activation.  Movement prep exercises done daily to keep potential problem areas under control.

If there isn’t a balance then eventually your players will “under recover” and flare ups with knee tendonitis and breakdowns will begin which will lead to losses.

Which brings me to my 5 preventative knee tendonitis exercises that done in season, will help to prevent knee tendonitis from flaring up, maintain leg strength, improve activation, and will keep your hoopers from saying, “coach my knees are killing me”.

My 5 In Season Knee Tendonitis Relief Exercises

1. Backwards walk on the incline treadmill 1×20 steps
2. Reverse sled drag 1×40 ft.
3. Knee band pressouts 1×20 ea.
4. Small rom leg press 1×20 ea.
5. Eccentric leg extension 1×20 ea.

Players that have a history of knee tendonitis should do this routine daily, the closer it is done to the start of practice the better.  This will ensure that the muscles around the knees are warm and ready for the demands of the game.

As you can see there are many factors that can create knee tendonitis in your basketball players but, if you take the time in the preseason to become stronger, make a conscious effort for recovery, and use these 5 exercises, I feel confident that your players knees will feel better, stay strong throughout the season, and overall help your players to keep playing at a high level all season long.

Thanks for reading

Create Greatness!