What do you guys think of 17’s. Where you run across the basketball court 17 times, like in suicides and have to do it under a certain time.
We used to do that sort of thing in HS. They were called 16 60’s. Basically ran the width of the court 16 times in a minute. Its a pretty good workout. If you are training for bball I think it will def help in improve your overall fitness while at the same time having the element of direction change.
Hehehe, anyone who switched from basketball to track loved that drill when playing basketball I guess (especially since you would kick everyone elses a-- at it 
). For basketball I think it was a very good drill, in particular since functional areas related to running are rarely specifically worked, it improved fitness in many functional areas at the same time (speed, cardiovascular resistance/recovery if it was repeated many times, etc). Much better exercise then suicides IMO for a basketball player, the suicides induce a much higher CNS stress for less work in an untrained (in running capabilities) individual then the court width sprints (17’s, 16 60’s however you want to call it) because of the much longer distances covered. That’s at least what I think now that I train for track when I look back at those drills. Now that I think of it, basketball coaches are so ignorant about overall fitness. In hindsight not a single one of all the coaches I had knew anything apart from basketball … knowledge that would have really helped the team. A coach that knows how to correctly strength train and train his team for running would have such an advantage, a coach that can’t do this will never approach more then 80% of his teams ability … just to throw out a figure, I’m not sure what exact % I’d give to fitness compared to teamwork and basketball specific abilities (proper shooting and passing mechanics, proper defense and rebounding technique, etc.). OK, I’ll stop here before I get carried away anymore … it’s the first time I think about this since I’ve begun training for track.