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Jo-Lâm Vuong, Johanna Heil, Nina Breuer, Matthaios Theodoropoulos, Nicola Reiner Volk, Antonia Edel, Alexander Ferrauti

• This study examined the effects of combined change of direction (CoD) and plyometric training on sand in basketball players' jump, sprint, and CoD performances. In total, twenty-five male professional basketball players (age, 24.1 \(\pm\) 4.2 years; height, 192.5 \(\pm\) 8.0 cm; body mass, 92.6 \(\pm\) 11.6 kg) participated in a pre-season intervention study over seven weeks, where two teams completed an identical speed training protocol, either on sand or on a hard surface, while a third team served as the control. All participants followed their regular pre-season training, while the intervention groups additionally performed the training protocol twice weekly. A repeated-measures ANOVA (rANOVA) showed significant interaction effects on the countermovement jump (F = 14.90, \(\it p\) < 0.001), pivot–step–jump test (F = 8.09, \(\it p\) = 0.002), 10 m sprint time (ST) (F = 4.18, \(\it p\) = 0.050), and 20 m ST (F = 8.49, \(\it p\) = 0.002). Moreover, an rANOVA showed significant interaction effects for the CoD performance regarding total time (F = 5.70, \(\it p\) = 0.010) and average velocity prior to the CoD (F = 8.40, \(\it p\) = 0.002) and after the CoD (F = 3.89, \(\it p\) = 0.036). As such, the findings suggest that sand-based training elicits kinematic adaptations, increased muscle activation, and a shift towards concentric force development that all contribute to enhanced athletic capabilities.