It is not every day that I offer technical details on how I achieve a photograph. Mostly because I do not think of myself as a technically perfect photographer and my goal is always to get the shot over getting it 100% in camera.
That being said however, I do shoot a lot of high speed action events in indoor arenas with less than ideal lighting. This dictates I own the right lenses and know my camera settings to achieve well lit images.
1/320, F/2.8, ISO 6400
First rule of thumb for action photography is fast aperture. 1/320 is not actually that fast, in fact it is low and slow. The ideal aperture is more like 1/1000 or 8000 even. However sometimes I personally like to get the motion blur into my images so I will go lower for that… the downside that means more of my images are not usable because of action blur.
Second rule for me is lowest F stop value available. This opens the lens wide up and lets in as much light as possible. In indoor arenas with less than ideal lighting you need all the light on offer to make it in the lens.
Lastly ISO, years ago high ISO meant super grainy images, now given advancements in editing technology there is a way to recover grainy photos. Higher ISO means better low light performance. Cameras have abilities to shoot high ISO so make use of it, you paid for that tech.
So while there is no true way to tell you the perfect camera settings as they will vary by the day, location, time, and available light. There are some tips and tricks to making low lit indoor arena images look much brighter than they actually are.