An Assessment of the Benefits of Off-Season Training Among Teenage Basketball Players

Abstract

The purpose of this research study was to establish the benefits of off-season training among teenage basketball players. The goal of every school basketball team is to achieve the best outcomes possible among its athletes; hence, the study intends to investigate the possible outcomes of off-season training on a junior level basketball team setting. In this regard, 40 youth participants aged between 14 and 18 years were selected from their respective school basketball teams to voluntarily take part in the off-season training program. For the sample, anthropometric measures such as weight or height were not taken into account. A quantitative research design was used in which 20 participants were assigned to the control group and 20 remaining participants were assigned to the test group. The focus was to establish the development of athletes’ rebounding, passing, scoring, and dribbling skills at the end of the off-season training. The descriptive statistics of the study entailing the mean, standard deviation, sample variance, skewness, and confidence interval indicated a significant improvement in the dribbling, scoring, passing, and rebounding skills in the test group, whereas there was a significant drop in the same skills observed in the control group. The correlation analysis in the pretest assessment had values of (r = 0.17), (r = 0.5), (r = -0.5), and (r = 0.28) and posttest assessment had values of (r = -0.76), (r = -0.58), (r = -0.47), and (r = -0.99) in dribbling, scoring, passing, and rebounding, respectively. Thus, this indicates that off-season training is a positive predictor of better performance among teenage basketball players.