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Man, he loves those dang hip thrusts!  UGH, me not so much.

Congrats on the meet bro!  Nice work!

Quote from: JC on April 16, 2011, 12:21:03 am

Explain how increasing your strength improves all of those things. You can't. I'm being 100% serious. You are never pushing someone with your hands in basketball, you are never pulling heavy things, you are never pushing heavy things. Think about it.

Being a "banger" has to do with mass, not strength.

I guess I just played in more physically competitive leagues and pick-up than you do. I've never played in a game where I wasn't shoved or shoved back. Do you not use your arms to help gain position for rebounding? Does strength not help you hold on the ball better? Does it not help you throw it further on a pass? Can it not help you block a shot from a strong finisher? Does it not allow you to steal a ball from a strong dribbler or out of persons arms? What about jump-ball situations where you're tied up? It sure helps you rip the ball out. What about dribbling? Stronger your arms, the faster you can push the ball away to the ground and the faster it will come back to you. All that is upper body. There is a reason that hs/college/pro players don't -only- work out their legs and core. Upper body strength is very important in the game of basketball.

Sure, you don't need the same amount of strength that football players or hockey players may need. And you don't have to be a bodybuilder. But getting to an above average strength level for your body/physique can only help you. In fact, I don't know of a single way that you can't get an athletic advantage in basketball by being stronger in the upper body. If you work out hard, and practice basketball while working out to get stronger, there's absolutely no reason it should hurt your game at all.

I really don't see how you can say it won't help -any- of those situations I listed. Your reasoning for just saying it won't is beyond me. I'm not trying to be argumentative or a douchebag or anything, I just don't see it.

I agree 100%!

Oh, OK. 

I think you're over thinking it a bit.  Can't go wrong with Bench and Pullups.  They hit every muscle group in the upper body.  OH press is a little more basketball specific because you don't use your chest that much while playing.  But you use the hell out of your tris and shoulders.  However, bench press hits those muscles as well.

I guess it comes down to what your body responds better too.  But if you're not comfortable/familiar with OH press, stick with bench press.  I don't think it will matter much.

I would suggest try to do basketball type moves with resistance.  Like, my Dad and I made this thing in my garage that worked pretty well.  It was a basketball inside of a sand bag, and the sand bag had a rope tied to it that went up through a pulley, then down to the ground where we could hang weights on it.  You could set the initial height of the ball by looping the rope around the weights.  Then jump up and grab the ball like a rebound and pull it down to your chest like coming down in traffic with the ball.  I think it worked great, and my hands and fingers got really strong.  I got used to grabbing the ball out of the air with force instead of just touching it.  

Another cool thing we made was to strengthen your forearms.  It's super easy to make too.  Just get a broom handle (or like piece of wood) tie a rope to it, then hang a milk jug off the other end.  With both hands, roll up the jug, then back down.  Add sand to the jug (or water) for more weight.  Don't need much weight either.  That is great for adding some range to your shot or having the strength to shoot off balance or after contact.

Something else that is great for shoulders and hand strength is do passing drills with a medicine ball.  Once you practice passing and catching a 10 lbs ball, a basketball feels like a nerf ball!  

All of those directly relate to a specific activity you might encounter during a game.

Cool vid.  Won't be hard for you to get back what you had I bet.  I think once you've done it, you know you can do it.

Realistic expectations are tricky cause it's hard to say how your body will respond.  Not everyone responds the same way to the same exercises.  If you really have never lifted before, you can expect pretty big strength gains early because your body will want to get to a certain level (where that is can be hard to determine beforehand).  So, just becoming comfortable with the movements and putting that additional stress will have you adding weight easy for a while.  I would say try and increase weight every workout (not week) until you can't anymore.  Just from judging my previous record, I lost about 18 lbs, and got my max 1/2 squat (to parallel) to 325 lbs currently and that added about 4 inches to my RVJ in about 3 months with hardly any plyos.  I'm trying to transition now into more of a plyo focused program to add some spring.  But I had lifted a lot in the past, and was coming off knee surgery, so there's no reason you couldn't do better.  I'm happy with 1 in or so a month personally.

As far as food goes, I can definitely relate to job getting in the way.  I travel a lot for work and it is damn near impossible to find vegetables on the road!  Even at most restaraunts, it's like fries, baked potato, potato salad, cole slaw (swimming in mayo), etc.  Anyhow, when you eat is not as crucial as people like to believe.  The main reason you always hear "don't eat late at night" is because people tend to over eat or eat junk late at night.  Rarely do you hear about people getting up for a midnight salad and some baked chicken!  So, as long as you are eating good food, it shouldn't matter that you have to eat at 11 pm.  There's also been a lot of interesting studies done on intermittent fasting and how it can be effective during training.  Might want to look into it.  I've fooled around with it, and I definitely lost weight and maintained my strength and activity level.

Good luck bro.

I've been doing these Mobility Workouts of the Day (MWODs) for a while and it makes a world of difference.  When I don't do them at night, I'm stiff, sore, and usually end up hurting myself (as is the case currently with my strained quad and now rolled ankle)!  Anyhow, this dude Kelly Starrett has some great ideas about how to mobilize muscle groups and joints for athletic pursuits.  His goal is to get you to peak performance for your next workout, not just some weird flexibility thing.  It's all performance based.  I also really like his upstream/downstream ideas, and the fact the whole body is related, so if your hamstrings are tight, you need to work the system, not just that muscle. 

Here's two vids I thought were very applicable to this crowd:

Recovering your jumping Calves
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYp1U8-c7h4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYp1U8-c7h4</a>

Recovering your low back after squats and box jumps
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUKhljDYOZM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUKhljDYOZM</a>

Even gave a shout out to the honey badger! 

Good stuff for old guys like me.  He has his own website that posts a new MWOD everyday, mainly focusing on previous Crossfit workouts or big ones coming up, but it has great variety. 

"That boy GOOD!"
Eddie Murphy - Coming to America