The best sorts of basketball workouts are those that are functional, meaning that they not only improve your strength and endurance; they improve your technique.
For playing defense, staying down in stance is hard work. Defense can see you reacting quickly to changes in direction when guarding the basketball, sprinting the length of the court, getting your hand out in the lane to deny a pass and then quickly changing direction to stop a backdoor cut, and standing ready in the lane to close out to your player. And this all happens nearly every possession!
This workout can be done solo. You’ll need to use your imagination to envision 5 offensive players around a 3 point line. Use a chair on the 3 point line to mark your player. You will be in 3 positions for this drill:
1. On ball defense: down in stance, hands over the (imaginary) ball, ready for a steal.
2. Denial: One hand out in the passing lane to deny a pass
3. Split line: one foot either side of the middle of the court, right in the middle of the lane
Start in on ball defense at your chair. Imagine the basketball being passed around the 3 point line. For every pass, change position. The first pass could be to just to your right, in which case you would go into the denial stance. The next pass could be away from you again, which means you would sink back to the split line, ready to jump back out into denial or on ball defense if required.
Include skip passes (passes that go over a person in the offense) so that you’ll go from split line to on-ball, or denying on one side to denying on the other side. Be tough on yourself and imagine a fast-paced offense swinging the ball around quickly to find an open shot.
An offense lasts for around 30 seconds so your workout should go for 30 seconds. 15 seconds rest, then repeat. Do this 5 times to begin with, and build up to more as your strength and endurance increases.