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I don't know if it's the /level/ of basketball or the style? Australian basketball is very physical! Look at the aussie players in the NBA who are reknown for their physical play .. Bogut and Dellavedova regularly make the top 5 lists for dirtiest players in the league. Who else am i forgetting, oh yeah, add in Steve Adam's and the other kiwis in the league into that mix and prob some others im now forgetting are regularly picked out for being very physical. Tbh i hate this style of play but you can complain about it or you can beat it. And Australian sportsmanship is alot about winning hte mindgame. Steve Waugh was one of the better captains of the Australian cricket team and he was famed for winning the game through intimidating and sledging not just skill and play.

I forgot to mention some other PRs: finally put BW over my head (push press) and also did a weighted dunk with a 20kg vest; among others im prob forgetting again. But yeah i was in a good place. Hope to return there and even surpass it!

The fact that i played so actual basketball was prob the biggest stumbling block. You can only do so much off the court (not including dunking and shoot around around alone). Next year i need to make sure im good enough to approach an existing, half decent team and want them to want me and play with them.

That's where the hard work now comes in .. movement efficiency, conditioning, skill work .. all of that has to happen now without fail, building it up gradually and early, so that come next summer i'll already be in shape and involved in a competitive league somewhere prior to going into the tournament.

I need to work on my ball handling .. build confidence with having the ball whether im dribbling it, passing or shooting i need to believe in myself to make good decisions and execute them. If you second guess youself in games, you cant expect others to believe in you (and give you the ball when you want it for example). So much work to do! But im gonna make sure these coming 12 months are filled with great growth as a basketball player not just someone who lifts and dunks once a while, and not much else!

I even bought a nice camera that does 1080p recording expecting to record my lifetimes highlight mix vid in anticipation of peaking at the tournament.. unfortunately i filled that leadup week with lots of walking around in a weighted vest .. lol. im such a spazz. rest would have done much more than last minute training ;(

tbh hip thrusts are soo easy to progress.. and it's taking so little time to get up to decent weights .. that i have nothing to lose to experiment with them and see whether or not they have any payoff to my athleticism. Contrast that with squats where ive been trying to get 2.0xbw since 2012 and never come close .. and it's not clear what payoff THAT will have/or has had/ in pursuit of it. It's frustrating but im closer to it in 2016 than ever before. Finally broke 1.8, and im sure 1.9 and 2.0 are not far once i get off the caloric deficit. Squats are so demanding on recovery .. it's not really possible to do much more than maintain (if that) when cutting. Contrast that with RDLs and hipthrusts and im setting 20kg prs each time i try (i mean i was, prob slowing down a bit now lol).

BW: 77.85kg / 171.63lb

These first ~6lb came off pretty quickly which is a relief. I'm guessing some of the weight i put on is muscle and most is fat?  Hopefully there is a decent amount of new muscle. I'm considering taking todday's advice of stopping somewhere in between where i am and where i was (171.5 and 163) and just getting strong for a while. Really tempting. But i know it's not the best idea because what will invariably happen is i'll start gaining weigth (and strength) and end up a chubby, stronger 180lb or something and then lose those gains when i cut back down to lower bodyfat Better to just do the cutting first and get it out of the way, i should think and maintain my bodyfat while gaining weight/strength later down the line.

sorry acole, here my reply:

I pretty much got in the best of my life 10 days ago. PR my squat ratio (1.8xbw), 2.5xbw hip thrusts, 8x180kg RDLs, low bodyfat etc, dieted down to a lean/strongish 74kg.  If i was only concerned wih jumping/dunking (ala LBSS) i would have taken a few days rest and filmed some dunks then but i didn't have that luxury. Instead  i had to prepare for and play a gruelling basketball competition and that messed me up athletically .. i prob did too much going into last week end then ended up eating my way to recovery, which didn't really do my bodycomp any favours. If i can get back to where i was 10 days ago bodycomp wise but with better lifts i'll be in even better shape and will be able to properly peak my athleticism which would mean taking some rest and raising calories to maintenance as opposed to a chronic caloric deficit.  May never get there though, it's too far from where i am at right now. I dont really wanna look any further back than 2016 though. Im more athletic now than i ever have been before which is remarkable considering im 32 and not getting any younger.. heh.

This summer I played minimal basketball going into the comp. Even less than 20 hours total over 3 months.  It wasn't ideal and my movement efficiency was quite low. I get that no matter how lean, fit and strong I am, that it cannot make up for a severe lack of movement efficiency. Even when I was playing bball regularly I was still lacking movement efficiency - I guess I didn't really work on it specifically except incidentally just by playing and since my style of play isn't efficient, I never really developed it from there.

Eating clean and training hard goes a long way. And if i start at 75kg/165lb that gives me plenty of room to grow, a decent strength & muscle base to build upon and plenty of time to achieve some lofty weightroom goals (140kg and 180kg respectively) while remaining relatively lean. There is no way I can squat over 150kg or bench over 100kg while weighing that light so it goes without saying i'll be gaining weight to achieve those goals. That's the point! I want to gain some muscle lol. About 5kg of it - and it will be functional muscle because i'll be using it to perform better.

I admit a bench goal doesn't help me play better basketball, only indirectly in that achieving it, i'll have a more muscular upper body and that will help my confidence and play in the post. Same with the squat goal, it's just a way of making sure i have decent power to weight ratio & muscle mass to fat mass ratio, no use weighing 200 if i can't squat 400 .. it's just a lot of dead weight. However apart from that it doesn't help my sport - just indirectly by giving me more muscle to produce force.

To be honest i have no plan on how to bench 140kg given i haven't repped over 100kg yet. But i'll have to make some significant changes to achieve it. I wont be using a close grip as ive always done, and i'll have to setup with a bigger arch and learn to use leg drive and all those tricks ppl use to bench more. But even with those changes it's still going to be a huge challenge. My hope is to fill out my upper body -- bigger chest, back, arms, triceps, shoulders, all of that will have to grow (which is what I want!). I want to become my version of Lebron .. that's how i envision playing next year's comp .. a lot more physical -- playing bigger and aggressive and now i've added your suggestion of movement efficiency to that -- i think i will be a much better basketball player all around. I think i'm giving up on the goal of windmills and so on -- that's never going to happen .. i'm ok with just doing effortless powerful dunks around the rim if it means i actually have a chance of doing them in-game than landing windmills at some super featherweight bw while being unable to do much on the court once there are 9 other players on the court :/

I'm not going to be cutting for 12 months!! I am 172.5 today .. hopefully i can get close enough to 165 by end of april and then it's just about maintaining bodweight and getting some basic milestones out of the way (2xbw squat being the main one) before eating more food to train towards 180kg BS and 140kg BP. That's actually going to be exciting -- being able to eat enough food to actually grow some muscle and get decently strong ..without getting fat. That will be new for me.

This is where you need coaching....  it would require evaluating you ro see your faulty movement patterns and correct them....  in the meantime you could master bound variations and drop your 60m sprint.  Guys who run the 60m faster rsrely have poor movement efficiency

I can get started on those now and keep working on them for the next 12 months. Which variations do you think would benefit me? 60m sprints idk about, how would i even measure improvements .. i imagine any improvements I measure will be mired by measurement errors? just doing them and trusting im getting better over time?

Your dedication is 10/10 but your planning of training and movement is 1/10.

Look at your goals...  You plan to hang around 160 for 4 months and then in 6 months get to 200lbs...  40 pounds of muscle in 6 months???  Are you kidding?

I dont know if it's unrealistic but i expect i can gain a couple of kilos of lean mass just by eating more food and carbs. Otherwise i'll aim for 1-1.5kg/month .. so 6-9kg in 6 months? It wont be all muscle even if i try to do it right but i dont mind dieting off a couple of kilos in the end .. though hopefully i wont have to .. haha.

BW: 80.5kg/177.5lb
TDEE: 2950 kcal
Activity: 14.2k steps

Nailed day 1 well. As long as I stay under 2000kcal/day i shud be done in 8 weeks..

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Game was good. We lost but it was the top team and ours was/is the bottom one, so all things considered, it was ok. I had a good practice session after the game because there was a free court. Put up a bunch of jumpers.  Worked on my post moves. Dunked. Shot free throws.

Oh man wearing lowtops (kobe mentality I) is such a difference. Shot feels better and i can jump really well too. According to reviews this shoe takes some time to break in but i was happy with them new. These shoes are so much better than my last couple of pairs..all hightops. this will improve my game. Now im thinking i shud invest in a pair of highend low bball shoes (eg kobe XI elite) .. just to see if there is an even dramatic difference .. but maybe later down the line.

Need to add some more dunks to my armoury. im happy with how easily im getting up and how powerfully im throwing down.. esp at my current higher bodyweight.. which is countintuitive. I guess im not super reactive so for me this is about how strong i am and being a bit heavier helps if it means im stronger? When ive completed the transition into my lebron self, i'll prob find this to be even more true. More muscle + more strength + low bodyfat  +heavy bw == unstoppable beast??