I find that the track is the best place to develop the “general” high intensity demands of most sports. The problem with just doing track work is that you don’t get any high intensity technical work done there. With my sport, lacrosse, I find that a good time to get HI technical work in is right after a speed session at the track. Whether it be quickness drills(jab steps & first step quickness) with a ball or shooting, I normally keep the volume down and quality up.
I find that alot of technical skills can be improved through LI means due to the fact that muscle memory and hand-eye coordination play a huge role. These two factors don’t require a high intensity component to be improved on and therefore they can be worked on everyday.
For your sport, can you really sprint near 100% while dribbiling a basketball? Not likely… I’d say most running on a basketball court with a ball is done submaximally. Also, I’d say jump shots are more hand-eye than anything else. I believe these technical skills can be improved alot on LI days and high repetitions of shooting and dribbiling could be valuable on these days. I would still include some elements with a ball on your HI days after your your sprints, such as driving to the hoop with the ball, quickness with the ball, jumps and HI movements to get shots off. All these will be of value because you are working at a higher intensities but they shouldn’t be the general means for high intensity work because you are already getting this from track work. Many skills can be developed at lower intensities and these skills will be useful in game situations.
I have tried doing HI movements with a ball for my sport as the “ONLY MEANS” of HI work and it doesn’t work. I became slower and my performance decreased. Track work with spikes is essential because it allows you to work at your maximum capacity and really hit the CNS hard. Any other technical aspects should be addressed in addition to track work and placed on the appropriate days that allow for adequate recovery.
I agree. I feel I get such a potentiation effect from sprints on the track when I get on the court, that it would be unwise to not use them. The problem is mainly logistics for me as bball requires a court or at least a surface to dribble on. It is next to impossible (for me anyways) to hit the track, court, and weight room all in the same day without wasting tons of time driving/dealing with traffic and not to mention wasting gas money!
Another thing to consider, like you say, one is not going to sprint as fast as they can while dribbling. Nor can they jump as high as they can while shooting a jump shot. Another thing to think about is say, one does these activities in a HI manner, and uses full recovery (say 30-60 seconds between 1 move/jump and 2-5 minutes between a set of say 5 of these).
Now, all of this took a certain amount of time, in which they possibly are not even improving their general explosiveness as much as they could be. In that same time, they could have been doing more volume of the LI skill work. (One can easily shoot 5-6 easy jumpers or free throws in 30 seconds as opposed to 1-2 HI jumpers or explosive sequences). And as you say, hand eye coordination is key, and this type of planning would yield 3x the skill volume, albeit at lower intensity. I think after it’s all said and done, this would still yield a net increase in performance.
Not to mention there are 5 players and 1 ball! So, training only HI with a ball would be like training for 1/5 of the input on offense and 0/5 input on defense! Such a small part of the game to spend so much time on.
Most bballers do not reach their full technical potential anyways and it is the gym rats who spend hours shooting easy free throws, and close in shots while maintaining good form and quality, who are the elite technicians. This is as opposed to playing AAU ball every day in the summer at high intensity. Yes it’s high intensity skill work, but definitely not quality volume.