Fitness and exercise tips to help you stay in shape for the basketabll season from

Carolino Monteiro, American Council on Exercise certified personal trainer

With the season having started for some and about to begin for others, it is necessary to stay healthy and injury-free when on the court. Whether you do five games or 35 games a year, basketball injuries can happen no matter how physically active you are.

As we prepare for the upcoming season, and as we work on the court throughout season, we can all benefit from staying active off the court. Staying active is the easiest and most basic way that we can prevent or at least reduce the probability of injury. It’s something we can all benefit from and something that can help us remain healthy. Here are some suggestions on how to stay active.

Walk and Run

Many times throughout a basketball game, you have to move and run in short quick bursts in order to get in the correct position to see the play and make a correct ruling. But it’s those very same short bursts that can be an injury waiting to happen if you are not in good physical condition and you haven’t properly stretched before the game.

Improve your overall conditioning as well as strengthen your leg and ankle muscles and tendons. And you should do so regularly, including off-days when you don’t have a game scheduled.

Suggestion: Get on the treadmill at your local gym and follow the format below and repeat until at least 10 minutes are completed. 1) Warm up -- 2 minutes; 2) Jog/Run -- 1 minute; 3) Walk/jog -- 1 minute.

Step Up

When running on the court, you are putting extra weight and pressure on your legs as you make those quick movements in order to get into position for each play.

Suggeston: Use the stair climber at the gym, walk the stairs at a local stadium, or even walk the stairs in your home. These are all good ways to strengthen your leg muscles. When walking the stairs, focus on your form and work your calf muscles. This has the dual benefit of strengthening your calf muscles and your knees.

Core Strength

Many people here the word “core” and think simply about making their stomach muscles tighter. But a strong core encompasses much more than that. During a basketball game, as you run up and down the court, your arms are swinging, your torsos are twisting and your legs are churning. Your core is the center of gravity that keeps every part of your body moving as you go up and down the court.

Suggestion: To help strengthen your arms and torso, try simple pushups. Pushups will not only engage the muscles in your lower and upper body but also engage the core muscles. Understandably, not all of us can still do floor pushups. So, one effective alternative is to lean on a table and push up from that table. That will do the job well until you have built up the strength to do “real” pushups.

Balance is another element of core strength that fades with age if we don’t actively engage those muscles. When making quick movements on the court, as we all have to do, we must be in good balance so that we don’t fall, and that we can prevent muscles injuries that could otherwise linger for months.

Suggestion: Try adding one-leg reaches to your routine to engage, stretch and strengthen these muscles. As you improve, sustain the reaches for longer periods of time and increase the distance of movement in your torso.

Last fall, a football official asked me what kind of stretches he could do to strengthen his hamstrings, because he had experienced hamstring tightness all year during the football season. I showed him a few hamstring stretches and told him to hydrate, but I knew that if he wasn’t training the muscle correctly, he would be more subject to possible injury. With five minutes to go in the 4th quarter of a tightly contested JV game, my fellow official pulled a hamstring muscle and had to sit out of the rest of the game because of it.

Conditioning the hamstring will not only help prevent injury but also improve the tendons and muscles surrounding the knee. Deadlift exercises will strengthen the hamstrings and knees while improving lower back and overall core strength.

As you implement all these exercises, focus more on form and time and less on weight. During the season, it is important to stay active to build muscular endurance. Incorporate these simple exercises in your current routine or, if you don’t have one, get started on a new routine. The season is starting, so now’s the time to stay active!