How to Prepare for Basketball Tryouts

For an eager basketball player who lacks organized experience, tryouts can be an intimidating, anxious, foreboding experience before he or she ever sets foot on the court. With many other athletes vying for a limited number of positions, with the associated competitive and peer pressures, and with the personal wrestling over priorities and drive, tryouts can be a pivotal moment in life altogether. The best method is to not worry, gain focus, and prepare accordingly. Towards that end, there are a few critical things you can do to best prepare for basketball tryouts.

Work Out

Maybe being tall is enough with your friends, but on the court, against organized teams and real competition, the others players will also have height. Stature alone is not an asset unless it is backed by muscle: Stronger players compensate for their shortness by more effectively jumping, boxing out, defending, and driving against weaker opponents. Yet being too big is, of course, a detriment in reducing speed, endurance, and overall effectiveness. Work out, build muscle, and shed fear in order to become an impressive machine of athletic prominence.

Practice

Skill-building can occur away from the court and with nobody around, as long as you have a basketball. Fancy training techniques and video guides are definitely not necessary. Need to practice your passing? Find a wall, and try hitting a very specific spot, over and over, from different distances using different types of passes. Need to practice rebounding? Chuck underhanded shots from the free throw line and dash toward the rim, see if you can start to tell where the ball is going to bounce before it hits the rim. Need to practice shooting? Pick eight different spots on the driveway and take a hundred shots from each one. The key to practice, throughout all sports and other pursuits, is mastering the repetitive motions until they become an instinctual part of your muscle memory, available for instant recall later.

Play

This may seem like a no-brainer, but still deserves emphasis: Play basketball. Play games every day, whether alone, or one-on-one, or three people playing 21, or two-on-two, or any other number for teams. Play driveway games, streetball, half-court and true hardwood full-court matches. Play against your friends, against neighborhood players, against strangers on the street, against gym rats and athletic club members. Play, play, play!

The greatest in the game were not born great. Instead, they earned their greatness, through hours of hard work and gallons of sweat. Like most other endeavors in life, if you work hard enough, it will pay off, and basketball tryouts are no exception.