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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: December 10, 2018, 09:13:12 pm »
I used the belt real sparingly last summer. I was doing 20 sets of 5 of squats and i think one or two workouts (out of months of training) i used the belt for the last couple of sets - but for the majority of that high volume phase i did no belted squatting. I didn't even use knee sleeves. No gear at all. So it worked well. At the end of the summer i started using a belt for my recovery days and i was getting easy 10 rep sets with 120kg which i progressed up to 132.5kg. I did a set of 8 with 142.5kg too which was my PR. 6x147.5kg. And that put my est 1rm with the belt around 180kg. Though i only managed a 170kg belt squat and my beltless squat PR remained 160kg. So at the higher end of weights the game is different but nevertheless i was able to build a decent amount of surplus strength which the belt allowd me to exihibit. That's one way to use the belt, more in line with the thinking that you train hard without something and then add it at the end for something extra. But using a belt for a good amount of time during training - that's something ive never actually tried yet..
in terms of athleticism teh causality isn't so clearcut. I think it comes down to strength reserves. When i ended the high volume phase last summer i had enough reserve strength that i didn't need to use a belt in training to develop. However was that the most efficient way to acquire that athleticism? Kingfisher might never use a belt or do squats with a bounce but he has enough reserve to be able to do 2xbw squats for longish sets of several reps with a belt (if he ever used one). For him training with hard mode (paused, no belt etc) makes sense because he might not want to use 200kg+ weights every day in training. But if he was solely interested in athleticism it would be a different ball game.
in terms of athleticism teh causality isn't so clearcut. I think it comes down to strength reserves. When i ended the high volume phase last summer i had enough reserve strength that i didn't need to use a belt in training to develop. However was that the most efficient way to acquire that athleticism? Kingfisher might never use a belt or do squats with a bounce but he has enough reserve to be able to do 2xbw squats for longish sets of several reps with a belt (if he ever used one). For him training with hard mode (paused, no belt etc) makes sense because he might not want to use 200kg+ weights every day in training. But if he was solely interested in athleticism it would be a different ball game.


. Literally have never been fit in my whole life and i was seduced by the idea that just playing basketball was enough to 'build endurance' for basketball. Or running some intervals lol. Probably never played that much full court basketball in any case but even when i did regularly albeit infrequently (1-2x week) i would always redline very quickly into a competive game. I'm talking about seconds into the game, probably because my adrenaline gets jacked way up and my HR maxes out almost immediately. Never figured it out but the demands on conditioning are pretty high and i don't think just 'playing ball' is a good way to train for that conditioning. Which means to me, somehow, people who do play basketball regularly and do so in good condition for the sport must have developed the fitness in a way I missed out. Maybe it was high school training which probably involved a steady diet of suicides or long steady jogs etc etc which i never did because i didn't play basketball in school.