I have made the point in the past about how important grip strength is for basketball players.  Having witnessed on countless occassions a player coming down with a rebound only to have it ripped right from his hands is frustrating to watch.  This is one of the major reasons why I am a big advocate of using sandbags to strength train for basketball.  It is very difficult to find an easy spot to grip the bag so that forces your hands to get stronger or you will drop the bag.  Having strong hands is not only important for holding on to the basketball, but also for becoming a better ball handler.   Simply stated, the stronger your hands are the better you are going to be at handling the basketball because stronger hands will give you a better grip on the ball. 

Aside from training with sandbags, another great way to build stronger hands is to incorporate smaller medicine balls (4 or 6 pounds) into your basketball training workouts.  Playing catch with these size medicine balls will build grip strength because they are small enough to catch in your hand but large enough and heavy enough to make catching them difficult. 

Start by just tossing the medicine ball up and catching it with your elbow and forearm horizontal to the floor (like you would have your guard arm up while handling a basketball) and palm facing down and out.  This will challenge your hands to really grip the medicine ball as you catch it and force you to keep your guard arm up (anther common mistake that novice ball handlers make).  Do not catch the medicine ball under hand!  This is too easy and defeats the two main purposes of the drill: building grip stregnth and getting your guard arm up.  As you progress through this drill, the next step in this series would be to pound the basketball while executing the toss and catch with your opposite hand.  Once again, make sure that you are catching the ball with your arm up and palm facing out.  You could also have a partner toss you the medicine ball while you are dribbling the basketball.  This is a little more challenging since the medicine ball is now travelling a greater distance towards you for you to catch.  Finally, execute a change of direction move such as a crossover, a between the legs move, or a behind the back move while the medicine ball is in flight.   This will make the drill even more of a challenge because you now have to focus on the change of direction move as well as the medicine ball catch.  (These last two progressions that I mentioned are viewable in the video below).

If you have any other ideas on how to incorporate the smaller medicine balls into you basketball training workouts please let us now in the comments section.