Why barbell squats and box jumps are good for basketball players

I find it hard to believe that this post even needs to be written but it just goes to show how far behind we are in nearly everything. It’s extremely simple – if you don’t have strength, you can’t have power. In fitness, power = strength x speed. No strength, no power. No speed, no power. Now how difficult is it to understand that strength and speed need to be worked on as independent variables BEFORE you attempt power training? If I need flour and eggs to make a cake, can I just start with the cake without getting flour and eggs first? Doesn’t that just make common sense?

Well apparently not when discussing basketball players. Barbell squatting is the only way to progressively strength train athletes to get stronger in the legs for sports. No amount of leg press, leg extensions, etc. is going to do it because the movement pattern is different. No basketball player lays or sits down and then pushes something away with their legs. The squat is basically a jump with a weight on your back and you don’t leave the ground due to the resistance. But the pattern is virtually the same.

But the minute you suggest that someone interested in jumping high might want to squat a barbell for weight, you run into “but our basketball players are unique little snowflakes and we can’t break them” or “they have to save their energy for the games.” Apparently off-season training doesn’t exist. I wasn’t aware that basketball season was 12 months of the year.

Once a foundation of strength has been built, explosiveness can then be developed and that’s what box jumps are for. Now we’ve posted many clips of our gymgoers doing good box jumps but I don’t think most of the people watching those videos understand what they’re seeing — a box jump develops and displays leg power in the vertical plane.

When we show you our people doing big box jumps, that shows you we know how to develop leg power in our gymgoers. That power comes from barbell squatting not on a Smith machine but out of a real power rack, the one thing that apparently must never be done.

If you want a big jump, then work the movements that build a big jump.