How to Improve Your Speed on The Court

How quickly you can move down the court may mean the difference between winning or losing a game. Athletes require speed, and need to harness its use to work in their favour. Your basketball heroes, local competition and even yourself can all benefit and improve your game simply by moving faster.

The most successful players are typically those who understand how much speed is required of them during a game and when to accelerate and decelerate. So, let’s explore what you can do to improve your speed on the court.

Strength

Having adequate strength, will boost your ability to move faster. Weight training to build strength can improve quickness by building muscles that help our bodies to gain speed. Some of the areas that you can focus on include strengthening your legs (calves, hamstrings, and quads), your upper body, and core muscles (abdominals and back). Strength exercises for these areas include:

• Legs: calf raises, squats, leg curls and extensions
• Upper Body: dumbbell bench press, seated row, shoulder raises, bicep curls and triceps extensions
• Core Muscles: sit-ups, oblique rotations, and back extensions

Acceleration

Running in basketball rarely starts from stationary positions, it usually begins in moving ones, so when training to improve speed, keep this in mind. Starting your training from different positions such as turning, getting up from the floor, or accelerating from a side-shuffle is a more accurate representation of what it is like on the court and will help you translate more to the motion of actually playing the game. Which leads us to acceleration.

Acceleration is increasing velocity while already running, and during a game you will need to know when to do this. For example, there may be a rebound leading to a fast break, in which you run and then need to quickly accelerate. To improve your ability to move from one position to another as fast as possible, learn the correct body position required to accelerate, including correct arm action. While simple in nature, the way your body moves depends entirely on how you design it to do so. 

Deceleration

Just as important as acceleration, deceleration is vital to learn and practice and will allow you to have full control over your speed. Knowing how to slow down can help prevent injury to yourself and others on the court and will give you the chance to make accurate decisions. Incorporate breaking and slowing down into your training for the best speed results.

Practice makes perfect, so include these speed work drills into your basketball training and see how your game improves on the court.