“Across the semester you have attended multiple courses, including expert advice from specialists in their field. Identify a course that you found useful and relevant, include major concepts raised and discuss how it will impact your future.”
- Across this semester, I found our Yoga course very useful and relevant. Throughout this course, I learned a range of yoga positions that allowed me to increase my flexibility, mobility, strength, and balance. One example was the pose ‘downward dog.’ Although this pose does not seem like much, the course taught me how influential of a stretch it is. It not only allows for my calves and hamstrings to stretch, but it also loosens my upper body and my forearms due to those body parts holding a lot of my weight. Another pose we learned was the hamstring stretch. Although the hamstring stretch is a pretty well-known stretch, we were taught an evolved version of it. In this stretch, you not only move your legs but also your arms. You stretch your body out when balancing on one leg, and it allows for a stretch that loosens more of your muscles.
- In terms of impacting my future, this course had two main areas that it targeted. The first being my physical performance. Due to the improvements in flexibility and balance, it will translate into better on-court performance. It will increase my agility and acceleration while maintaining a defensive stance, improve my balance and footwork, and also increase my range of motion in terms of how fast I can move my entire body. The second improvement was my longevity in my games. Through the improvements in my flexibility and range of motion, it has decreased my likelihood of injury. This will increase the time I can play this sport, and will benefit me throughout my whole basketball career.
“Identify and discuss an important skill that you have developed in this unit, and how you have implemented this into your basketball games.”
- During this unit, a key skill that I have developed is my passing. Through numerous hours of training during this course, I have been able to develop a great understanding of the aspect of passing into space, rather than directly to an individual player. By passing into space, it provides a significant offensive advantage, as the defence has a much lower chance of intercepting it. Additionally, if I passed to my teammate normally, their defender will still be guarding them, offering no strategic advantage to our team. However, because I have learnt how to pass into space, it allows me to deliver the ball to my teammate, in a scenario where more likely or not their defender has fallen behind and is not guarding them, giving my team a substantial advantage in scoring.
- Developing this skill has tremendously improved my game play. Often times during my Trials, Training’s, and Domestic Games, I have been focusing on passing into space which has allowed for me to complete great passes, often leaving my team with a wide-open look at a shot. I have been using this skill both in half-court and full court situations. When in the half court, I often receive the ball at the top of the key, and due to me passing into space, my teammates who are cutting towards the basket often receive easy lay-ups due to the way I pass. In full court situations on fast-breaks, this skill has also been very influential. When in transition, I often through long range passes into spaces where I know my teammates can get to. This allows for my team to get easy fast break points, and beat the defense almost every time.
- Understanding how to pass into space also developed numerous other skills in my game play. Firstly, my court vision has tremendously increased. Previously when I had possession of the ball, I would only look at where my teammates were and when I could make a pass to them. Now when I have possession, not only am I looking at my teammates, but also their positioning, movement, and where the space is that I can pass to. It has elevated my game sense substantially and has deepened my knowledge for this game. As well as this, it has helped my positioning. When I am playing off-ball, I always look where the space is. This allows for me to understand where passes may come to, and where I need to go if my teammate decides to pass into space.
- Overall, this course has greatly improved my passing and court vision when playing on-ball, and significantly improved my spacing and positioning when playing off-ball.
Basketball Training Program
- “Your task is to design a 6 week program for a healthier self. This program should be specific, achievable, and relevant to your needs.”