It appears that in every major basketball tournament, an appreciable number of players drop out because of injuries prior to the tournament and also during the tournament. It has gotten to the point where it is almost expected that you will find some players injured. Little, however, has been said about why these injuries occur.
There are two major reasons for the occurrence of injuries. One is improper technique (or execution of a skill that places excessive stress on the joint or joint structures) and the other is lack of sufficient strength or other physical quality. Strength in this regard is perhaps the most important as it relates to other physical qualities and is the main factor that can withstand the stresses involved in execution of a skill. If you have insufficient strength, the muscles, ligaments and tendons are not capable of withstanding the forces and thus become injured.
One would think that higher level basketball players would be able to execute the skills without causing injury. After all, they have been executing the same skills for many years and the skills are well-established. Also, many players now undergo strength and conditioning programs which should raise the level of strength and thus help prevent injury. But yet, injuries continue to occur.
The main reason may lie in the type of conditioning and strength training that is being done. Most programs rely on general strength training which is great for strengthening the muscles of the body but not the way they are used in execution of the sports skills. When you develop strength as it is displayed in execution of the different skills, the chances of injury are minimized greatly. Merely having strong muscles but not the way they are used in a sport can thus lead to injury.
In other words, exercises for strength must duplicate the same motor pathway in which they are displayed during execution of the skill. In addition, the exercise must entail the same type of muscular contraction as occurs in execution of the skill and the exercise must develop strength in the same range of motion as it is seen in execution of the skill. These are very important criteria and are the key to not only enhanced skill execution but also for the prevention of injury. By doing such specialized exercises, you also develop a much stronger muscular feel for the correct movement and you are better capable of executing it throughout the game.
Another factor that may be involved in the number of injuries that occur is lack of aerobic and anaerobic conditioning. If you watch many games during a tournament, you will see that the level of play exhibited in the last game is usually substantially different from that seen in the first. This indicates that the player does not have the physical ability to maintain his or her level of play. When fatigue sets in, execution of skills deteriorates and the chances of injury increase even more so.
The answer is not simply to do more conditioning, but to have specialized conditioning so that you develop the endurance of the physical abilities needed to be able to execute the skills in the same manner over the course of each game. This means that you must have not only aerobic endurance but also strength endurance, i.e., the ability to apply the same amount of force in each hit throughout the entire game. You must also have good anaerobic endurance so that you can exhibit bursts of speed and quickness throughout the game.
For years, basketball players have been involved in general conditioning to get in shape or they run to develop aerobic and anaerobic endurance. Today, with higher levels of play we must look more closely at the specifics of the game and execution of the skills. When we start duplicating the conditions seen during play, then the chances of injury will be diminished greatly.