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I purchased Jack Woodrups Vertical Mastery recently. I ran the self tests as prescribed and it spat out the attached program. Basically all plyos and not one weight in sight. I have a couple of questions about it and hoping to get some solid advice.

* I do this for beach volleyball. Sand kills the stretch reflex. Is there enough benefit for me in the suggested plyo only 8 week block? Will it train movement coordination and rate of force development enough to help me?

* Because I play on sand I don't want to lose raw strength in the legs by not lifting heavy for 8 weeks. Should I worry about that? Can I add pin squats or something or am I just stuffing my progress by altering things?

Basically I think the software is great and would address my shortcomings on a hard surface for sure. But I don't want to bust my arse getting better on hard stand if it does nothing for my sport. If its ok I wouldn't mind Jack replying here too

Last night I was reaching over my weight tree and dragged a 5kg plate off by accident. It landed right on my left big toe where the nail joins on (I had only slip on shoes on). God damn it hurt! Not broken because I could still bend it ok, before the swelling anyway.

Bled like a mofo all night and I slept on the couch with my leg elevated. Its only a small opening but I think because its on the nail bed and the swelling is so bad the blood couldn't clot up. This morning its swollen as hell. And it fuckin hurts to even lower my leg due to the rush of blood to the toe. I can walk on it kind of but its painful and I worry about starting the bleeding again if I put too much pressure on it.

What can I do for it? I'm keeping it elevated, resting (duh) and took a few anti-inflammatories. Apart from ice, which I've avoided due to pain so far, what else could I do? I have a high threshold for pain generally but this sucks bad. And I have competition on Sunday!

Pic is about 2 minutes after it happened. Toe is about twice the size now

Talking anderson squats, pin squats, pause squats, floor presses, oh press off pins etc. Lifts where the weight is moved from dead stop. Would it be beneficial to use these as main strength lifts? Pro/ con?

The way I see it is that floor pulls are already like this and nobody questions their benefit as primary strength movements. Why would a pin squat not be the same? Sure you'd move less plates than a full squat but only because its mechanically less favourable. Does that mean you're recruiting less muscle or shortchanging your development...... dunno?

I appreciate you wouldn't be training the stretch shorten reflex under load. Whether this matters when you train same through plyos I don't know.

If nothing else a dead stop lift off pins would seem an honest test of strength to me. You can't cheat or bounce. What does everyone else think?

Anyone used hip belt squats before? Real squats rule of course but I'm always looking for functional (not leg press) ways to overload the legs.

I have long mofo legs which make back squats pc dominant no matter how high the bar is. My quads are pretty weak compared to my hams and glutes. Its particularly annoying cause my VMOs need more work to minimise my tendonitis issues.

I front squat and BSS regularly but these don't allow the same balls out linear progression as a big back squat due to the difficulty of stabilising the weight. Wondering if BSS and front squat as primaries with hip belt squats as a secondary might be a good approach?

Any thoughts? I lift at home and building a couple of platforms ain't a thing.... I'm handy like bob the builder mang 

I bought a trap bar about 3 months ago. I spent a month before that agonising about whether it was a good idea, reading every forum post about trap bars I could etc. There's no gyms anywhere near me that have one so I couldn't try before buying.

At first I didn't like it much. Used it once and put it in the corner to collect dust. More recently though I've grown to really like it...... because;

* I can do a heap of concentric only lifting with it after squats or front squats. I use it every session now to beef out volume without trashing my nervous system
* I can do concentric only lifts without learning oly lifts or having a platform and bumpers (I'm learning them... just slow)
* I can get into a pretty upright position by pushing knees out, ass down and get decent leg volume after my back is stuffed from squats
* I can flip the bar over and get more ROM, just above paralell squat depth
* I can just drop the thing on grass
* I can also use it for more hip dominant pulls by standing back in the diamond a bit
* Its good for shrugs etc as well
* I have a few complete novices who come to use my home gym and even they can do compounds on it

I won't ever use it as my primary lift.... but its the best secondary out there for me 

That is all

Hey, please tell me if I'm being reasonably clever and economical with my training strategy or setting myself up for poor results.

I'm just winding up a bulking phase. I've added 20kg to my squat and 30kg to my deadlift but got up to a hefty 92kg in the process (though I was biggish to start with). I accepted the weight gain and kept it under some control using the Anabolic Diet.

The next 3 - 4 months I intend to cut fat. I do not believe I can make material strength gains on a calorie defecit. More power to those who say they can... I've tried before. But what I intend to do is pick a reactive focused program from the Vertical Jump Bible, which will be 2 days per week focused on plyos and speed work for 16 weeks. There's enough heavy lifting in there to maintain the strength I've built too, but not progress it very far.

I'm also going to join a new oly gym in my neighbourhood to learn the oly lifts (1 night a week). This will not only compliment the speed development but its a good time to be learning new lifts with an empty bar. I'll be ready to bulk again just as I get the lifts nailed.

So is it ok to be doing speed and plyo work on a calorie defecit? Seemed to me this work was all about training myself to recruit things fast and jump coordination. If its largely neuro-muscular in nature I should make vert gains while on a defecit, both from improvements in reactive and explosive ability and the drop in body weight.... yeah?

Hope that makes sense!