Pain is a natural part of sports. However, in order to become a skilled athlete, coach or trainer, it’s important to understand what certain types of pain mean. Sometimes pain means an injury (sharp, throbbing or numbing pain) while others are protective signals that prevent us from doing damage (soreness or fatigue).
1. Soreness from Synergistic Dominance: Fatigue in the Stabilizer Muscles
If you’ve ever experienced low back pain after a game or knee pain from excessive jumping, it’s likely that you are experiencing synergistic dominance.
In any movement there are muscles that work to create the movement (agonists), those that work against the movement (antagonists) and those that make sure the joint doesn’t fall apart under the multitude of forces on the joint (stabilizers).
Stabilizer muscles work to secure the position of a joint or multiple joints in order for the prime mover to increase or decrease the angle of that joint. When the agonist muscle is weak, it fatigues quickly. Stabilizers are forced to work harder to pick up the slack. This is called synergistic dominance. Because this is not their main function, they too fatigue and soreness, pain or injury occur.
For instance: hip flexors, psoas, core muscles and quads stabilize the hip and knees during deadlifts so that the hamstrings, glutes, and spinal erectors can help you stand up straight under load.
If the glutes are weak, the lower back muscles have to work harder to extend the hip. Since lower back muscles are stabilizer muscles, not prime mover muscles, they fatigue soon after the glutes. The result is a sore back.
Solution: Movement Skill Drills
Basketball should practice movement skill drills that recruit the appropriate muscles to perform sport-specific techniques. For instance: in jumping, the athlete should train to activate the calf muscles and leverage the elasticity of the achilles tendon, instead of trying to use the same muscles that are involved in a squat.
How to Train for Movement Skill Improvement
Movement skill training should be incorporated into the daily warmup routine. This also means that the warmup routine should only consist of exercises that mimic the movements that will be performed during practice.
Energy should not be wasted on jogging when the game consists of long periods of walking, standing and dribbling broken up by short bursts of sprints, throwing and jumping.
The intensity of movement skill training is based on the speed of movement. Warmup exercises should be progressed from 50% to 100% speed over the course of 1 set. The full warmup should only last 5 minutes in a targeted training session.
Exercise Selection
Here is sample warm up for an athlete preparing for a team training session:
4 rounds 20 seconds with 10 second breaks of side sprints, at increasing speeds
1 set of passing drills
1 set of shooting drills
1 set of 5 shuttle runs at half court length
The athlete, coach and trainers can use this warmup as both an assessment and a movement skill exercise to determine which movement skills need to be improved, which muscles need to be strengthened, and whether there are mobility issues that need to be addressed.
2. Soreness from Explosive Movements: The Muscle Quits Due to Depleted Fuel Reserves
Explosive movements can include jumping, throwing, sprinting or any sudden production of force from a static position or from constant speed. These movements recruit fast twitch muscle fibers which are fast-fatiguing relative to slow twitch muscle fibers.
Fast twitch muscle fibers contain fewer blood vessels since they primarily use stored muscle glycogen rather than oxygen for fuel to produce force. More blood flow means more dependence on oxygen. Less blood flow means more dependence on glycogen. Because they rely primarily on glycogen stores, they only have 10-30 seconds of continuous use before soreness and fatigue sets in.
The greater the density of fast twitch muscle fibers you have around a given joint, the greater its capacity to produce explosive movement. Subsequently, the greater the capacity of the muscle to produce greater - and more instances of - explosive movement before being depleted.
Solution: High Intensity Resistance Training
Basketball athletes need to incorporate high intensity resistance training into their programs in order to develop their fast twitch muscles. This will lead to progressively greater force production (strength), increased power (explosiveness), and an overall improvement in game time performance.
How To Train To Optimize and Increase Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers
For basketball athletes strictly concerned with increasing performance, fast twitch muscle fibers should only be trained once a week. This is because the recovery rate of these muscle fiber types is very slow; and soreness can hinder performance both during practice and during games.
Significant improvement can be achieved with one set of 4-8 reps of high-intensity exercises (80-90% of 1 rep max) or one set to failure of 60-80% of one rep max.
Exercise Selection
Basketball athletes can use standard compound muscle group exercises like:
Standing overhead presses
Squats,
Deadlifts and
Bench presses.
The exercise does not need to be highly movement specific, but rather enable the athlete to produce progressively higher amounts of force.
Soreness from Repetitive Movement Patterns: Wearing Down of the Joint Tissues
Repetitive movement patterns which are done at low intensity do not trigger the same soreness mechanism that is characteristic of high intensity resistance training. This is how runners can go for long distances without experiencing sore muscles, but eventually experience chronic pain in the joint that persists even days or weeks after a long run.
Soreness from repetitive movements is an indication of damage or agitation in the connective tissue. We see a lot of this in athletes who have muscle imbalances. However, this can also occur in cases where the frequency of impact within the joint is high, even when there are no muscle imbalances. Some activities simply wear down the tissue.
You may have seen a basketball athlete land with their knees moving inward after a jump. This can cause uneven wear on the knee joint. Depending on the relative strength of the muscle connected to the pelvis, the wear can be worse on either the inside or outside of the knee.
Uneven tension can cause the patellar tendon to move outside the proper groove, and rub against the bone or soft tissue in the knee joint.
Over time, damage occurs to the tendon due to the improper path. This is called tendinopathy, and it can occur in any joint where tendons cross over a joint and/or slide over bone.
Solution: Targeted Mobility Exercises
In order to prevent or remedy this type of injury, basketball athletes should perform targeted mobility work for the joints affected by soreness.
Because mobility is the ability of the connective tissues to produce, maintain and resist force at any angle of the joint motion, lack of mobility could lead to movement compensations at the joint level. Sometimes these compensations are imperceptible. However, further damage triggers the neurological alarm: i.e. pain. You might be doing damage but not know it until the damage affects a nerve.
Fortunately the body has protective mechanisms, one of which is the ability to limit joint movement in order to prevent an injury. This is why mobility work is important. It is both a diagnostic tool, a remedy and a preventative measure.
How To Train For Mobility
Mobility work can be done at the same frequency as standard resistance training: 2-3 times a week with 3-5 sets of 10 at intensities ranging from 30-50% of 1 rep max.
The main difference between mobility training and standard resistance training is that mobility work must be done through the full range of motion of the joint at a slower tempo, especially at the eccentric portion of the movement.
For instance, a barbell squat can be done where the negative (lowering portion) of the movement stops when the knee is at 90 degrees.
However, when you lower the squat to the full flexion of the knees, hip and ankle (i.e. “ass to grass”), then this becomes a mobility exercise as well.
Consequently, most athletes will need to reduce the weight in order to go the extra few inches downward. The reduction in load makes up for the loss in ego by providing longevity to the joints.
Exercise Selection
For basketball players in particular, full range of motion versions of the following exercises provide significant improvements in performance:
Calf raises
Tibialis raises
Barbell squats
Bulgarian split squats
Pull ups
Barbell deadlifts
Conclusion
By incorporating these changes to your team’s basketball training program, you can improve performance, longevity and resilience of your players. You’ll be able to create a more specialized training regimen that focuses on specific skills and targeted strength training. This means less guesswork, time wasted and more time enjoying the sport.
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