Agility and Performance Among High School Basketball Players Following a Coach-Led Neuromuscular Training Program

The lane agility was performed according to previously published methods (Stojanović et al. 2019). The LAT was set up around the basketball court using small cones. Players started at the bottom left corner of the key underneath the basket and sprinted to the cone on the left corner of the free throw line. Players side shuffled to the right, across the free-throw line to the next cone (on the right corner of the free throw line) and then backpedaled towards the third cone at the baseline. Next, the players side-shuffled towards the original cone. Once the player's left foot went past the cone, they re-traced the same route back in the opposite direction. Time was recorded from the moment the player started the course at the bottom left key until the time that the player's entire body backpedaled across the same baseline cone.

Players completed a series of six single leg squats on each leg as instructed by sports medicine professionals. All of the squats were recorded on video. For each leg, three of the squats were completed facing towards the camera. The other three squats were completed facing towards the side so that the player's sagittal profile was recorded. The videos were analyzed and annotated with measurements to compute to a single score describing their movement quality as outlined in a previously published scoring criteria (Di Paolo et al. 2024). The overall score ranged from 0 to 8, with a higher score indicating a better performance.

Attendance was taken for each player for the duration of the season. Coaches categorized each day of the season as one of the following: "Practice," "Game," or "Off Day." Coaches also indicated if the team completed the neuromuscular training warm-up for the days in which they had practices or games. For each player, coaches took attendance every day and indicated one of the following for practices and games: "Present," "Absent - Excused," "Absent - Unexcused," "Absent - Injury." Injury was defined as the days in which the player was marked "Absent - Injury."