How to Build Your Own Basketball Workouts

How to Build Your Own Basketball Workouts

Learning how to build your own basketball workouts is the turning point of growth in your basketball career.

Knowing how to become your best self as a player can not happen without strategically structuring your own basketball workouts.

Our CTG Productivity Notebook is specifically designed for this portion of your basketball game. You can easily make these basketball workouts at home using this tool. Coming up with specific basketball workout drills takes time, but can certainly be done through the work of our notebook.

There are 5 steps in our CTG productivity notebook that will lead you to structure the perfect basketball workout tailored to YOUR game. Every basketball player should have different schedules. Understand that we are all are different, and should not be trying to copy one specific player or one specific basketball workout. 

Below is the 5 Step Process Used in CTG’s Productivity Notebook.

  1. Goals
  2. Plan
  3. Motivation
  4. SWOT
  5. Priorities

We will then go over 4 steps after we have completed the 5 above. These steps will help us complete the creation of the basketball workout itself. The 5 steps above must be done before we start any kind of creation.

4 Steps for the Creation of the Basketball Workouts

  1. Structure of Your Workout
  2. Analyzing Film
  3. Drills for Your Priorities
  4. Plan Throughout the Week

Step 1 in Process of CTG Productivity Notebook: Goals

Goals are a huge part of building your own basketball workout process.

Hence, why it is the first thing we do in our CTG Productivity Notebook.

Goals give us direction. It gives us an idea of what path we need to be going down.

Without goals, we get lost and have no real way of figuring out how to build our own workouts.

The goals we write down need to be step 1 of the process. These goals need to be tangible, meaning we can most certainly acquire them. “Getting better,” is not a goal. “Making varsity freshman year,” is certainly a tangible goal.

Once you have written down a goal, we now know a sense of what direction we need to be going in.

I would like everyone reading this to write down their end goal with basketball on a piece of paper, or their CTG Productivity Notebook

Where do you want your future self to be at the end of your basketball career?

Below is a picture of how my goals in my CTG Notebook have looked in the past (It can be individual or team oriented):

Goals for your basketball workouts

Step 2 in Process of CTG Productivity Notebook: Plan

We use the plan in the CTG Productivity Notebook to specify the amount of time you think you are willing to spend a week to get to your goal.

Obviously, if your goal is steeper than others, you are going to have to adjust your plan accordingly.

Whatever you do, don’t write an unrealistic time a week down for your plan. Write something down that is challenging, but something you can attain. Then slowly progress this plan over time.

The CTG Productivity Notebook is used to help organize yourself as a player and put all your thoughts on paper. We will go over how to make a real plan for basketball workouts later in this blog.

Below is a picture of how my plan in my CTG Notebook has looked in the past:

plan for your basketball workouts

 

Step 3 in Process of CTG Productivity Notebook: Motivation

Motivation is temporary. It is not something we can keep consistently over time. That is why it is extremely important to write down our motivation.

This reminds us of the WHY. Why we want to work so hard. What we are actually fighting for.

Motivation is amazing fuel to structure your best basketball workout.

Below is a picture of how my motivation in my CTG Notebook has looked in the past:

motivation for our basketball workouts

Step 4 in Process of CTG Productivity Notebook: SWOT

SWOT by definition on google is, “A strategic planning and strategic management technique used to help a person or organization identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to business competition or project planning. It is sometimes called situational assessment or situational analysis.”

The SWOT is definitely something that can be applied to building our own basketball workouts.

First, we must assess the strengths.

I would like you to write down three of your best strengths as a basketball player.

Try to be specific. Don’t just write, “Shooting.”

Second, we must assess the weakness.

This is an extremely important section. Basketball trainers can also be known as, “Weakness specialists.” The whole point of basketball trainers is to expose your weaknesses and create a better basketball player.

Write down three of your worst traits as a basketball player.

Third, we must assess the opportunities.

Opportunities are areas that you aren’t necessarily good or bad at, but it’s something you can acquire that would definitely elevate your game. What is something that you could add/ improve at on your game that would give you more time ON the court?

Here are a few good examples:

-conditioning

-screening a body

-sprinting in transition

Fourth, we must assess the threats.

Threats are something you have in your game that could definitely keep you OFF the court.

Here are a few examples:

-bad body language

-poor conditioning

-not cutting hard

Below is a picture of how my SWOT in my CTG Notebook has looked in the past:

SWOT for your basketball workouts

Step 5 in Process of CTG Productivity Notebook: Priorities

The whole purpose of creating the SWOT was for this essential section here: priorities.

Priorities are taking a list of things and narrowing them down to the most important aspects.

Many people fall into the trap of having too many priorities. This makes it easy to get overwhelmed, making it hard to figure out where to start.

The best analogy I have for priorities is this: “If you were to chase two rabbits at the same time, how many would you catch?”

The answer? ZERO!

Using the SWOT, come up with the three biggest priorities that you want to improve in your basketball game.

Then, later on in this blog, we will discuss how these 3 items are the MAIN source that you should be structuring your basketball workout focuses around.

Below is a picture of how my priorities in my CTG Notebook have looked in the past:

priorities for your basketball workout

Step 1 in the Creation of Your Basketball Workouts: Structure of the Workout

At CTG, for the average basketball player, we like to structure our workouts like this:

-First 5 Minutes: Warm Up

-Next 10 Min: Ball Handling/ Footwork

-Next 10 Min: Finishing

-Next 30 Min: Shooting

-Next 5 Min: Game/ Competition

-Workout length: 1 hour

Now, this is for the AVERAGE player. Like I talked about above, we want to make workouts specific to YOU. That means we need to scroll up and take a look at our priorities.

Using your priorities above, adjust the above structure accordingly. If improving your handles is not a priority for you as a basketball player, then spend less time working on it. This can be applied vice versa to whatever skills need to be tailored to you.

We like to have our workouts last for about an hour. This creates a maximum explosion workout. When we let workouts last too long, we can have diminishing returns, building bad habits.

Step 2 in the Creation of Your Basketball Workouts: Analyzing Film

Analyzing film is a crucial piece on the structure of your basketball workout.

We must find out where we are catching the ball the most, and where we are getting our shots.

Once we know where we are getting the ball in games, the next step is to implement drills at those specific areas.

If you’re never catching the ball in the short corner, why are you spending any time there? If you’re never taking any spot up mid range jumpers, why are you taking these shots in all of your shooting workouts?

It is very important that we collaborate hard work AND smart work.

Step 3 in the Creation of Your Basketball Workouts: Drills for Your Priorities

Now that we know the genral structure and where we are getting out shots, we have to find drills to fill all of these roles.

Make a list of all the drills you can possibly think of for the priorities you made through your SWOT analysis.

Make sure you always have access to this list, because before each day, you will pull from this list and put it into the structured workout that you created in step 1.

Have at least 25 drills for each major category that you structured your basketball workout around in step 1 of the creation process.

Step 4 in the Creation of Your Basketball Workouts: Plan Throughout the Week

Now that we know how to put all the pieces together, you have to plan your basketball workouts throughout the week.

We have to make sure that we do NOT have high-intensity workouts multiple days in a row. That is why we have to plan our workouts weekly.

Make sure you make a structured basketball workout that is high and low intensity. This way, we can balance them throughout the week.

High vs Low Intensity Workouts

High intensity workout: Lots of running/ force being put into the ground, leading to less explosion the following day.

Low intensity workout: Lots of stationary work, letting our body recover from previous high intensity workouts earlier in the week.

For the average player, I recommend alternating between high and low-intensity workouts throughout the week.

I also always like to take Sundays completely off. Having one complete rest day mentally and physically is a smart thing to plan for throughout your week.

Recap

5 Step Process Used in CTG’s Productivity Notebook.

  1. Goals
  2. Plan
  3. Motivation
  4. SWOT
  5. Priorities

4 Steps for the Creation of the Basketball Workouts

  1. Structure of Your Workout
  2. Analyzing Film
  3. Drills for Your Priorities
  4. Plan Throughout the Week

Make sure you check out our other blog on how to become an elite shooter, the most important skill in basketball: 5 Steps to Perfect Shooting Form in Basketball. 

We also have another blog on how to become a lockdown on-ball defender: 5 Steps to Become a Lockdown On Ball Defender for Basketball Defense

I also strongly encourage you to check out our basketball training podcast: Off the Court. This can be found on ALL listening platforms! The podcast has over 5,000 downloads. It is also the #1 basketball podcast in Argentina according to PodStatus.

Lastly, we have a completely free ebook: How to Unlock the Mental Side of the Game. Mental is to physical as 4 is to 1. It’s extremely important that we do not overlook this for our basketball game.

-Coach Jack