V02 Max has no Relationship with Basketball Performance

High V02 Max which is an indicator of your Aerobic capacity is a common measure used when evaluating many different kinds of athletes participating in a variety of sports.  But what has been shown in many research studies is that a high V02 Max has no correlation to performance in anaerobic dominant sports like Basketball or Ice Hockey.  These sport require the ability to sprint repeatedly with short rest and even though endurance is important, anaerobic endurance is most important.

So what does this mean?  Long runs in the woods, as example 5km, are not very helpful in developing athletes that participate in anaerobic dominant sports.  Hopefully this is not earth shattering information for most of you.  Below is another research study that shows that V02 Max is a very poor indicator of performance in Basketball players.

For more information you can also see my posts on Scientific Basketball Training: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.

Other sports that this information is applicable to are:

• Handball
• Volley Ball
• Soccer
• Canadian Football (similar to American Football but better!)
• Water Polo
• Tennis

Be Well,

Mike Reid

Reference

Carlo Castagna,  Vincenzo Manzi,  Stefano D'Ottavio,  Giuseppe Annino,  Elvira Padua and David Bishop. 2007: Relation Between Maximal Aerobic Power and the Ability to Repeat Sprints in Young Basketball Players. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 1172–1176.