Hi and welcome to Basketball Athletic Development. I’m based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and help basketball players take their athleticism to a higher level by providing In-person and Online coaching services.

Ever had the following questions?

What are the best exercises to do, how many reps and sets, how often should I train, what are the best recovery strategies, what about the nutrition, and which supplements to take? How to write a training plan that fits YOUR individual needs? How to modify it when it stops giving you results?

I had (and I still have. Learning is a never-ending journey ). The Internet has so much conflicting information. Coaches disagree with each other. For most players and basketball coaches, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the information and still have NO answers to their problems.

And that’s why got into this profession - to eliminate confusion and complexity and provide simple yet effective athletic preparation programs!

I take an all-around approach when dealing with athletic preparation and create INDIVIDUALIZED programs based on scientific findings and my personal and other coaches' practical experience. The exact programs I wanted to get when I was playing basketball.

Some of my qualifications and certificates

• MSc Strength & Conditioning

• BSc (Hons) Strength & Conditioning

• Level 1 Coach – England Basketball

• Level 1 in Coaching Weightlifting – British Weightlifting

• Certified Online Trainer (OTA1) – Online Trainer Academy

• Altis Essentials – Altis

• Safeguarding & Protecting Children in Sport – UK Coaching

How did I get into Strength & Conditioning?

Just like you, I love playing basketball and from the age of 9, I was ballin pretty much daily. Like most, I dreamed about playing it professionally. I even decided that I won’t play for the Charlotte Bobcats because they were sooo awful at the time. When I was 12, I got a pretty bad case of Osgood-Schlatter and knee pain became the daily norm for me. The injury was following me for several years with some better and bad periods. If you ever had any injury you know that pain makes everything less fun.

I visited a few doctors. Their advice? Don’t do activities that involve jumping and running (a.k.a. Don’t play basketball) and wait till you turn 18 since you will eventually “outgrow” Schlatter. Back then, it looked like terrible advice for a boy who wanted to play basketball.

Now, I KNOW that this was an absolutely shitty recommendation and Schlatter can be successfully managed, but back then I didn’t know any better. So, the only way was to suck it up and hope for a miraculous morning when I wake up and the pain is gone. The miracle didn’t come…

What did instead came – were the other injuries. A lower back pain, II grade ankle sprain, shin splints, and more knee pain. Most of these injuries were the consequences of the badly constructed physical preparation we had. Yet, I didn’t realize that back then.

See, our team lacked height, and I was playing as a PF/C against the guys who were two heads taller than me. To compensate for my lack of height, I needed to be more athletic. As our coach told me, I had to work extra and do more jumping and running. Yet all this was leading to more pain and less desire to train.

Then one day, I decided to give a shot to one thing, that our coach always was negative about. The thing that gave way more than I expected. I joined a gym and I got into strength training. That made wonders.

My knee pain has decreased a lot, my low back pain went bye-bye and my speed, vertical and on-court strength skyrocketed. I had an easier time boxing out, grabbing rebounds, running fast breaks, and the coolest thing of all, I was dunking the ball when I was in my early 15’s standing at ~180cm.

I quickly realized that just working harder is not the answer and that the current approach to the physical preparation for basketball was wrong and many ballers were suffering because of that. Just doing more jumps and running was not the answer.

I got hooked on learning more about strength & conditioning (S&C). I read as much as I could. Most of the info was confusing but it was interesting. Reading about human physiology and science was always my favorite. One of my favorite childhood books was a basic, short, and nicely illustrated, human physiology book.

I remember when I was 12, I said to my mom that I’m going to study coaching when I finish HS and that I’m going to be a basketball coach. I liked basketball, and read and watched a lot about different various drills, plays, and other nuances. But there was something that pulled me more into the science of S&C.

Eventually, I understood that I’m not going to play basketball at a PRO level. But at the same time, I realized that sports science and physical preparation would be quite interesting to do when I “grow-up”.

Combining my interests in the human body, science, sports preparation, and basketball, my career choice was all set…

Eivydas Navašinskas