Have you ever heard of a 6’1″, 160 lb former Valdosta State player named Ben Bates? Chances are, if you aren’t from his hometown of Jennings, FL, you probably haven’t.Ben decided when he was a sophomore in high school that he really wanted to be a good high school basketball player. He set a goal to improve his vertical jump drastically among other goals to improve himself as a player. He went to the local sporting goods store and bought some ankle weights. Ben told his dad that he was going to wear the ankle weights everyday for 4 years until he was a sophomore in college. Ben dedicated himself to wearing those ankle weights everyday from sun up until he laid his head on his pillow at night.
He wore them to school. He wore them to Church. He wore them on dates. He wore them everywhere he went.
365 days x 4 years = 1460 straight days he wore those weights!
Fast forward to his sophomore year in college in 1967, playing for us at Valdosta State. Warming up before a big game vs. Jacksonville, Ben asked the manager to have an extra ball ready for him when he came back around in the lay-up line.
Ben put the extra ball in his left hand and the other ball in his right hand and flew through the air and dunked them both! The place went crazy. In all my years of coaching I had never seen someone perform that feat!
Remember: 6’1”, 160. 1967.
Ben was a key player for our squad that year that went 27-8 and won our league. His incredible dedication to improving himself physically correlated to reaching his goal of having a great vertical leap. That physical quality gave him the physical tools he needed to be a great rebounder and scorer.
How many players have you seen with that kind of dedication? How good do you want to be? What goals have you set for yourself? Are you willing to do the work necessary to achieve those goals? Ben Bates was. Today he is a highly successful real estate agent. (He no longer wears the ankle weights!)
Don’t think the ankle weight idea is for you? There are other ways to increase your vertical. Adding vertical jump pieces to your other workouts will go a long way towards helping you achieve your goals. You can work on your vertical at the same time you work on other skills to maximize your time. An example of this is shown below in the Hurdle Shots Drill from our “Play of the Day” Archive.
- Guards – Place hurdles about 3 ft apart, jump forward and then laterally over hurdles into 3 pt shot, 5x each way.
- Bigs — Jump forward over hurdles, execute post move. 5x each side.