Shakira Austin in Two-Piece Workout Gear "Ain't Giving it Back"

Shakira Austin plays in the WNBA, after being the fourth ranked player in the nation in the 2018 recruiting class and the second ranked forward. She is a member of the Washington Mystics. In April, Austin hit the court to practice. She shared some photos from the day on Instagram. In the post, she is seen shooting and dribbling. Austin captioned the post, "Once it's mine, I ain't giving it back." How does she stay so fit? Read on to see 5 ways Shakira Austin stays in shape and the photos that prove they work.

Basketball has a lot of health benefits. Fitness Advisory states, "The objective of a basketball game is to score as many points as you can by getting the ball through the hoop of the opposing team. So far that sounds pretty simple. But along the way you're burning calories and building skills – hand-eye coordination is just one. Catching rebounding missed shots is another skill that requires a great degree of full-body coordination, since you have to observe the ball and jump to grab it at the right moment. Dribbling, another basic basketball skill, allows you to train your motor skills. Once you've mastered hand-eye coordination, you'll no longer have to look at the ball while dribbling it."

Austin opened up about how basketball was affected by an injury to The Washington Post. She says that she doesn't want basketball to be her only source of happiness. "Honestly, if we would have a long day of rehab or, say, it was a funky game . . . I'll just go get a seafood boil," Austin said. "Something to just make me happy in that moment. I just figured out how to do more things like that. I'm like, okay, let me go get some crabs or something. Let me go outside, get some sunlight, and then I'll feel so refreshed the next day. I've been figuring more stuff out like that that could help me. Because when basketball is your only source of happiness, it can really send you into a really bad destruction."

Austin tells The Washington Post that she used her time injured to work on being a better team player. "This is the year where, yes, I've focused on a lot more things off the court. Personally, I focused on being a better pro, being a better teammate. How can I lead a team? These are all things I've been thinking about since I haven't been able to play."

Austin shared how she was keeping herself in good spirits while being injured to The Washington Post. "It's a little tough that I'm going through an injury while I'm trying to up my level of play," Austin said. "It's like, damn, you couldn't give me a year or something. But I think everything happens for a reason. God's timing is, he's really trying to push me right now to be the best me. And this is exactly what I need, apparently."

Austin loves to cook, and she talked about this in an interview with WUSA 9. "Cooking is something I love to do off the court, and I aspire to one day have my own restaurant," she said. "I'm big on nutrition, and big on wanting to eat healthy. I want to own my own restaurant and I want to have my own farm too, so we'll see."