Don’t look now, but basketball season has finally arrived. Are you short of breath after a couple times up and down the court? Are you bigger, faster, stronger than the player next to you? Have you harnessed your body’s athletic capabilities to the fullest? If you’ve been working with Joe Tofferi, the new director of strength and performance at Shoreline Sport and Spine, you are prepared for everything the season may hold.

“[The workouts] are specifically designed for basketball,” Tofferi said. “A lot of people workout, but not a lot of people workout to play basketball. So our primary goal in our workouts is to make them better basketball players.”

The aspects of conditioning change every day with Tofferi. Running, footwork, cutting, defensive slides, plyometrics and strength-related drills are the main focuses daily.

“I think we’ve been practicing the type of movements we are going to do on the floor, so hopefully we will be better at moving in a basketball way,” boys varsity basketball coach Steve Hewitt said.

Senior Bailey TeBeau thinks the training will help the teams shift to the next gear during the season.

“The workouts build up our endurance and Joe pushes us to go to our next level,” Tebeu said.

“We do different workouts working on basketball specific [movements].”

Athletes perform a different workout every day, though the warm up is always the same. They start with a jump matrix consisting of different jumps, along with squats, dynamic stretches and lunges.

Tofferi believes that high school athletes should be provided the same resources as higher level athletics.

“What we have been trying to do is make it almost like a college atmosphere,” Tofferi said. “[We want to] give the kids resources like the colleges or NBA players would have. Strength and conditioning year round, physical therapy year round, athletic training year round, sport specific training year round.”

Tofferi graduated from Western Michigan University with a degree in exercise science and was the strength and conditioning coach as a grad assistant. He is a certified physical therapist and was most recently the strength and conditioning coach at the University of Detroit for seven years before coming to Grand Haven.

Tofferi has already made a positive impact on the programs.

“ He loves basketball,” Hewitt said. “That’s his background.”