Want explosive power? Ditch the aerobics...

So, I was sitting contently in the upper-bowl of Energy Solutions Arena (up near the rafters, where I belong), watching my Utah Jazz wail on the 76ers, and it must have been sometime during the goofy half-time presentation that I picked up the program for the game and began flipping through it.  

Inside the program there was an article by either Mark McKown or Gary Briggs--one of the fitness trainers for the Jazz--talking about developing athletic explosiveness.  His comments were interesting, and I wish that I had the article in front of me to quote from.  

Basically, he declared that playing basketball is actually primarily an anaerobic activity, not an aerobic one.  This was stunning for me; the thought that all of those 3 to 5-mile runs were practically done in vain was, well, kind of a downer.  While there may be a kind of aerobic element to the sport, according to this trainer, the vast majority of playing hoops has nothing to do with endurance energy.  Players are best served by spending the majority of their workouts doing wind sprints, plyometric activities (jump training), and other explosive movements.  

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was right.  You DO have to be in decent cardiovascular shape to play basketball well, but true professional basketball--a sport that is high-speed, but more often than not a kind of stop-and-go activity because of fouls and other violations--is all about bursts of explosive energy.  

According to the trainer, many people go on these long runs to train for basketball, when they should be going on shorter runs at maximum speed.  If they don't train at maximum-speed sprints, they will actually tire out more quickly, despite their endurance training experience.  

On the flipside, basketball also is not bodybuilding.  The trainer dude stated that while we can basically break exercise down into the two aforementioned categories--aerobic and anaerobic--the anaerobic category actually is subdivided into two smaller categories.  The first is what we traditionally think of as anaerobic--slow, methodical weight lifting.  It is power and strength in 4-6 repetitions.  It is muscle and grunting and not a lot of dancing around like a pixie.

The second category is the explosive athlete, which is fast, explosive, high-jumping, ankle-breaking, slam-dunking goodness.  Again, maybe my efforts in the weight room have not been geared toward the correct end result.  

With this in mind, last night I had a totally different approach in the gym.  

It was legs night, which usually means squatting and calf-raising, and wall-sitting and all that jazz.  And, to be sure, there was still some of that in there.  But the very first thing I did when I got into the fitness room, was start jumping.  That's right, I just squatted down, and leapt as high as I could off of two feet with no running start.  As I landed, I tried to come down softly.  Then I immediately exploded upward again.  I did 10 reps, then did some lateral jumping off of one foot.  I also tried high skips, and 180-degree jumps.  When my jumping sets were done, then I finally started doing some leg lifts with weights.

I'll let you know when I play ball next to see if I feel a difference.  Check that, I'll hand you the rim I tore off the backboard on the final play of the game.

Okay, I'm still 5'9".  But you never know--I've surprised people before...