The Sugar Kane workout is specifically designed to target and improve your VO2 max. VO2 max stands for your maximum volume of oxygen consumption. It's a measurement of how efficiently your body can use oxygen during exercise.

Basketball, and other sports, requires many short bursts of intense activity (running, jumping, etc.) over a relatively long period of time (say, 20 min per half), meaning that if you can improve your VO2 max, or your ability to use oxygen, then you will have better endurance with less lactic acid build up AND stronger muscle contractions during games. Muscles don’t contract well, and they burn, when they start producing lactic acid.

Here's how the Sugar Kane workout could help:

High-Intensity Effort: The Sugarcane workout pushes you to near-maximal effort for short bursts, which is a key factor in improving VO2 max.
Interval Training: By alternating intense work periods with rest intervals, the workout allows your body to recover slightly but keeps it challenged, promoting adaptations that increase VO2 max.
Adapting Over Time: Performing the Sugar Kane workout regularly stresses your cardiovascular system, prompting it to become more efficient at oxygen delivery and utilization, ultimately raising your VO2 max.

For more, check out Dr. Huberman’s podcast here, with a workout summarized (and linked) below.

The Sugarcane Protocol

The format goes like this:

Step 1

Round1: Workout hard (i.e. at your absolute maximum) for 2 minutes and record distance covered. This could be running sideline-to-sideline or to half-court and back. Write down that number

Step 2

Rest 2 minutes.

Step 3

Round 2: You’re going to cover the same distance you did in Round 1, and this time, record the time it took you to do so. This will probably be more than 2 min, but push yourself.

Step 4

Rest 2 minutes.

Step 5

Round 3: You are now going to go for the time it took you in Round 2, and try to cover more distance than you achieved in Round 1. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. Set a timer for the time it took you to complete Round 2. Before the buzzer goes off, get in more line touches than Round 1.

Step 6

Lie on the floor and contemplate your life decisions and / or assess the emotional damage the workout did.

Why you need “Sugar Kane” cardiovascular training