WEIGHT-TRAINING FOR ATHLETICS

Barbells and

Basketball

Is height the only physical attribute necessary to make a Basketball Star? Or are Strength and Muscular Coordination worth cultivation? Today's top coaches have found Weight-training valuable in building championship teams.

By HARRY PASCHALL

Paschall

RE BASKETBALL PLAYERS a race apart in college and high school athletics? Is it true that any muscleless goon over six-and-a-half feet tall is the answer to the basketball coach's prayers? What is the truth about the cage sport. . . are basketball players athletes . . . or should they be classed as freaks?

Let's face it, men. Unless they raise the baskets a couple of feet, basketball is the tall man's oyster. This fact has been the cause of countless headaches for coaches for many years, because there is a lot of truth in the widely accepted belief that these gangling, oversize kids are pretty slow and awkward. All that many have to recommend them is that extra foot of physical altitude.

Coaches have tried many ways to solve the problem of the unathletic giants. On many teams you will find at least three normal sized players who are in the game to supply speed and stamina and athletic know-how, and who act as feeders to the beanpoles, whose sole function is to go in for the baskets and to get the rebounds. But even this does not solve the real problem. These big boys are notoriously fragile, and are prone to injury. They have no arm and shoulder strength, and quite often they have difficulty in leaping a full foot straight up off the floor. The only solution to the problem is to make the long fellows more durable, more skillful, stronger and more athletic. To this end weighttraining has been employed by many coaches with startling results.

Take, for instance, the University of Iowa's teams of the last several years, which have been outstanding in Big Ten basketball. A typical result of weight-training is demonstrated in tests undergone by their center, 6' 7" Bill Logan, who added more than six inches to his straight-up jumping ability after using barbells and dumbells last season.

The average gain for the fourteen player squad was just short of three inches! It doesn't take much imagination to picture what this three-inch difference in jumping ability would mean in rebounds alone during a game. More important than the mere fact that weight-training has added three inches to the jumping power of a whole squad of basketball players is the improvement STRENGTH AND HEALTH

in all-round athletic ability this improved jumping implies. Any physical trainer will tell you that you can gauge athletic ability by a man's straight-up jumping power. Some track coaches separate their sprinters from distance men by this test. If a man can leap 24 inches straight-up, he is gifted with unusual speed and strength and muscular coordination. If you improve a man's jump by three inches, you have increased his athletic ability by at least 15%.

Even more important to the playing ability of the tall man is the increased strength and control he develops in the shoulder girdle through proper weight exercise. All coaches are aware of this weakness in the modern schoolboy. Many cannot do either chin-ups or push-ups! They are as weak in this region as an old lady whose most strenuous exercise is plying a pair of knitting needles. Weight-training is ideal to strengthen this weak link in the average boy's physique.

The old-fashioned coach may agree that added strength and jumping power are desirable, but he will ask, "when am I going to find time to give these boys physical training while I am trying to teach them the fine points of basketball?" The answer is that weight-training should be as much a part of the team's conditioning as actual practice at shooting baskets! And it should take place on the same day. Only ten or fifteen minutes are required to thoroughly work your players, and they will build strength and endurance by such training to play better during actual ball-handling practice.

Coach Frank O'Connor, of Iowa, made this significant statement in an article in the Athletic Journal . . . "we suggest that practicing a particular movement for an extended period may set up a neuro-muscular pattern which will interfere with the performance of another

pattern at a later date, such as that required in the performance of a skill in football or basketball. This interference is simply the result of long periods of practice with a very specific type of movement that is not easily changed. It would seem that a very simple remedy for this would be to have the player practice sports skills at the same time that he is doing his weight-training." O'Connor had his men practice weight-training right through the regular season. Result: a championship

team.

The Iowa weight-training program consisted of five exercises for the shoulder girdle, arms, hands, fingers. These movements included the two standard weighttraining exercises familiar to all barbell users, the two hands curl and the two hands press, plus the forward and lateral raise standing with dumbells for the deltoid muscles of the shoulders, and the wrist flexion dumbell exercise with the forearm resting upon a support (such as the knees, in a seated position).

Only two leg exercises were used, the heel-raise on a block for calves and ankles, and a walking squat for the thighs and hips. The arm movements were performed with weights which taxed the player's ability to do ten to twelve repetitions, and the leg exercises were used a dozen reps repeated two sets.

From our own experience in weight-training for athletics, we suggest that a simpler and better program might be arranged, although we certainly cannot quarrel with the results obtained at Iowa. We suggest, however, that more genuine power and speed might be acquired by adding the pull-up to chin to the arm program, and dropping the two dumbell raises in favor of alternate dumbell presses. The two-hands curl and two-hands press should be retained.

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(Continued on page 39)

PULL-UP

CURL

PRESS

ALT. PRESS

WRIST EX.

SQUAT

TOE RAISE

FLYING SPLIT

DECEMBER, 19.56