From: rsmith@strobe.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Russ Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college
Subject: Re: Bobby Hurley
Date: 17 Dec 92 19:18:07 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino CA, USA

In article <8100@news.duke.edu> trradrx@canctr.mc.duke.edu writes:
>Hmm...this is very interesting.  The question is, would cross-country training
>hurt a basketball player? I know that Philly's Simon Gratz high school 
>(where Rasheed Wallace goes) requires its hoops team to be on the cross-
>country team.  Apparently, Hurley over the summer ran through the normal 
>sprint drills, and afterwards had his own personal workout, including cross
>country stuff.  The man just never needs to take a breath.

It certainly will not hurt a basketball player, but the question is does it
help one? It is very similar to boxing, for as long as people can remember,
road work has been used to train for boxers(which is essentially cross country
running). When Mackie Shilstone trained Michael Spinks as he went from a 
lightheavy to heavyweight, he had him quit road work and instead did a
series of speed and quickness drills for 3 minutes at a time(the lenghth
of each round in boxing), and Spinks said he was amazed at the increase in
his stamina. I run 2-3 miles a night, but when I was playing pickup ball one
night a week , I would die after about 3 games. If I played twice a week,
after about a month I could play 4-5 games before I died.

In highschool I never ran longdistances, I ran sprints and liners and 
all other kinds of drills related to basketball. Basketball is not a
game where running miles is relevant, if you are jogging at that pace
on the basketball court, your coach is going to pull you pretty fast.

Alot of teams train with cross country work, it well keep you in good
shape, and keep the weight off, but doing sprints and quickness drills
is much better for you.

Hurley to me is amazing, the guy plays as hard as is humanly possible 
and plays 40 minutes a game and never seems to get tired, how anybody
can question his stamina is a mystery to me.
>This is exactly what Duke does.  It also provides a good cool-down session
>after a hard practice, but at the same time makes you still keep your mind
>on basketball.

I think this is becoming pretty common in most programs now, coaches are
getting a lot of feedback from trainers and conditioning experts and are
starting to realize that the best way to train is to simulate game 
conditions and skills and do them in practice for heavy reps.

My old highschool is now using Strength Shoes during practices, running
sprints instead of laps, shooting freethrows during scrimmages, and 
I even got them to start doing a series of stomach exercises I picked up
from a video because stomach muscles are so important and often overlooked.
I started most of this when I was playing and then added the stomach workouts
about 3 years ago when I was helping out coaching the frosh-soph team for
fun. Having played pickup with a lot of these guys, I know they are in
good shape( a lot better than I was which is probably why I blew out my
ankle and had to quit playing with them).


Of course they are also like 1-5 this year so what do I know (-:.



Russ Smith
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"Chapeau means hat, oeuf means egg, its as if those French have a different 
word for everything!" 
                                        Steve Martin
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Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college