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A trick I've found recently is to take big deep slow breaths in bed just before knocking out. Just seems to slow everything down and allow you to relax and cycle off the brain CPU.

I use 5lb little plates under the heels, makes the squat feel much more natural. I saw it on a Youtube vid about Arnold, he was using a 2x4. Just my .02

Thanks. My 2.5kg plates are 1" high. I used them yesterday to get my knees lower. Seemed to help. To get 1" i'd need to add 0.25" heel inserts to my new 0.75" heeled weightlifting shoes when they arrive in 10 days. But I was thinking about this, going from flats to 0.75" might be a good start. And I work hard on my ankle dorsiflexion and add a couple of degrees that way. So both things might help get my knees lower. Will it be enough? Maybe, maybe not, but it will be an improvement from the current situation.

So i'll stretch my ankles daily. Have read that it takes 2 minutes to cause tissue change. Could be some brosfit science but i'll try it anyway.

TLDR: more ankle ROM + WL heel wedge --> knees down and forward + more upright squat.

While experimenting trying to get the bar over midfoot I chanced upon doing bodyweight squats ON my toes (with heels off the ground maybe about 2-4"). In this way I can maintain a bar path over midfoot. And also it makes my knees point horizontally rather than at the sky (see pictures below). This suggests having a wedge under my heel might help a lot. But weighlifting shoes will only have a 0.75" heel. That might not be enough? I may need much more heel elevation than that to get horizontal  facing quads which will make my torso more upright. The best way to picture this is to look at Tommy Kono's graphic below.



Knees point ahead, the ideal position for an athletic squat, it means the brunt of the load is borne by the legs.

I use flat shoes to do the following squats. Pictured below is bar position at the bottom of both squats.



 As you can see the bar is over my toes instead of over midfoot. It's too far forward. What i'm trying to understand is WHY? It causes me all manner of problem manifesting in squatmorning my lifts with too much forward lean. I would like to be more upright.

In FS I sit down btw my legs, not thinking about bar path.

In BS I break first at knees to create space for my legs to fill so that my shins aren't vertical at the bottom of the squat. I don't have a problem with ankle mobility, as far as I know. So if it's a mobility issue preventing the bar being over midfoot id welcome suggestions as to what part of my body needs more moblity. I don't believe it's ankles because my knees are plenty forward I think.

All I want is a more upright torso. I think that would solve all my squat problems at once. Welcome any ideas or theories.

Yep, check out LBSS's thread and join us!

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Wanted to make a note that my glutes are sore for the first time. Not sure if it was kelly's screw feet in cue, or 4 rep FS set, or conditioning work. I don't think it's the last 2, cause I don't remember either of higher rep front squats nor running making my glutes sore. Running makes quads and hams sore, sure, but glutes i dont recall being sore. Perhaps kelly's cue is helping me recruit more glute out of the hole? It would reconcile with the strong bounce I was gettting.

Would like to explore the screw in cue more. Maybe for heavier backsquats and perhaps even front squats? The only downside as far as I can see is, it takes work away from quads. And. It costs me depth. The former I can live with, because I can add more weight to the bar and make up the work for quads. But depth does worry me, I dont want a huge amount of depth on BS but easy below parallel is a must. Maybe flexibility and WL shoes will solve that problem as well as giving more quad work? We'll see, more room to experiment there.

There's this Aussie website called hoops.com.au
Sometimes people on there are looking out for players for social teams. It's mainly a South Australian based site but there are some people from NSW and Victoria as well looking for players.

Signed up. I had a look around for a search thing but there isn't one. Will have to go thru the threads on a slow day!

For the most part you can't shoot/pass/rebound because your legs and whole body exhausted.... It's not usually specific lactate response in the upper body. 

A workout I like to make athletes do on the track is repeat 150m sprints with a 25 meter walk between sprints and then 10 pushups before each 150 starts.  If you can knock out 5 150's in this manner in a total time of less than 5 minutes.  Your in REALLY good shape upper and lower body.

I'll work up to that. Had a look on google maps and the park is approx 150m wide from fence to fence. I'll have to figure out a way to do the walk (probably along the fence while resting) but shouldn't be a problem.

Right now I only do one training session per week to stay decently sharp and its always solo. Theres something about being out there alone and feeling like I'm improving when no one else is that feels good. That being said the key is to not let it get boring, always challenge yourself with varying drills, always practice for your game/gameplan, always 'overspeed' train and (again) don't get bored!

If you find your training boring switch it up because you'll lose focus and that's detrimental. Hoisting 1000 stationary jumpers will make you good at shooting spot up jumpers. Practice how you play. I try to keep my session at90 mins or less and train everything at once handles, moves and shot are each involved in every drill (sans warmups). I pick and choose my 'spots' that I normally get scoring opportunities and spend a majority of my time attacking those areas and spend a little time on other areas like post up scenarios just to round out my game.

Thats just what has worked for me but the few friends Ive trained have all noticed transformations in their games since training like this versus their 'normal' boring jack up a bunch of shots then work on handles then this type training.

I must admit that does sound pretty good and fun. I'll have to try it out.

for upper body endurance, try no-weight or very-light-DB overhead presses for SHITLOADS of reps. like do a set of 30, then rest 30s with your arms extended overhead, then do another set.

Will give that a go too.

I've always stuggled with this equation for fear of hindering my strength progress but as you have rightly said basketball is about more than dunks and jumps. Will be interesting to see how you work it in and how it affects your other training.

Same. I feel as though my strength is still priority #1 and it will remain so until i've reached my strength goals. Especially while dieting which imposes a recovery deficit. But once I have reached the strength goals (2xbw etc) i'll put strength on maintenance and focus mainly on basketball. It will be easier to train more widely when i've finished cutting because i'll be able to eat more food to help recovery (while maintaining bodyweight). In the meantime i'll work hard on general fitness and endurance. Can def do that while cutting, and it actually helps with fat loss as long as I don't get carried away. That's the challenge. I think last time I did minimal conditioning work, and just because my bodyweight was so light, I was able to fool myself into thinking I was fit. But i really wasn't, it was just easy to believe because it's effortless running as a light weight. I'm not making that mistake this time around, i've started while heavy, so gains in fitness will come steadily thru the next 6-7 months.

Also to answer your other question, I wish I lived in Melbourne and could take up your offer! That would have been perfect. That's where my team's from lol and I could attend their training sessions too but unfortunately I'm in the west coast.

Thanks guys!

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Bodyweight: 198.42lb / 90kg

Training
FS 3Fx129 (PR), 4x120 (PR)
BS 6x128 (PR), 7x120 (PR)
BP 8x83 (PR)
CU 3, 7
CND 5x100m (60% effort, 100m run, then walk back 100m and repeat)

Bodyweight: 90.7kg/ 199.96lb (So after the first day i'm under 200 already, that was certainly short lived lol)

FS notes:
Had no plan nor intention to do a 3rm today. But had a last minute desire to break my stall by sheer will power. Yeah I just don't have the leg strength, juice or endurance to do it right now. I was in two minds whether to give up on triples and just progress doubles. But decided against it. Instead repped out 120kg with the goal of 5 reps, I racked at 4, not because I was going to fail the 5th, I just wasn't sure if i'd get it, so i thought that's good enough for today. I guess i'll go for 5 next time. 120x5 is a pretty nice milestone.

BS notes:
The 6x128 was veeryy hard. On the 2nd set, I tried Kelly's screw feet into the ground cue. So not sure if it was just light for me but i was getting a nice strong bounce out of the bottom. Will explore it further, it's certainly intriguing and hey I got a PR as well so that was nice.

Conditioning notes:
First time running since summer. Feels good man. Started nice and easy, not risking any injuries, just gradual improvement, I have plenty of time til basketball starts so i'm gonna take my time but keep working on it bit by bit. I tried to focus on my technique because i'm going so slow I can actually keep a track of what my body is doing and try to make technique changes. Not that i have any idea what good technique is lol so I welcome any advice please!

Also what can I do for upper body endurance? It occured to me that running was find for conditioning lower body. But in basketball your upper body needs to be well conditioned too otherwise you can't shoot/pass/rebound/etc well either when exhausted?

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Programming notes:
On mondays i'll do squat volume: 5 reps of FS and 6-8 reps of BS. Weds i'll go for the heavy triple on FS. And friday will be heavy BS day (new 3RM). Think that will give me a nice bit of variety and momentum going forward as well devoting one day to each important aspect of squatting. It just came to me organically  while working out so i'm rather pleased about it since I was a little lost for programming.

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Good start to the first training session of the cut. PRs across the board! Long may it last.

Read back thru my log, saw some interesting bits, a lot of cyclical realisations which seem to recur more or less regularly. What's that saying about learning from the mistakes of others instead of repeating them? something like that. I need to learn from my experiences better.

1.  What i've seen I have this recurring wish to improve my PC strength (for whatever reason). Partly a greener pastures thing and I keep coming back to, or continuing on with, training quads because they've served me well so far. But I dont know if they have or if that was just an artefact of losing a lot of bodyfat? Hard to say.

2. I also trained suboptimally. In feb when I dieted down to sub 75kg, I had been mainly sets of 5 rep front squats. Why?! I should have been doing doubles and triples, it's not like i was going to gain mass while in the middle of a big cut. That was dumb. I probably would have got more out of front squats if I had been doing low reps. As i've learnt now, there is such a big difference between 5 reps and 3 reps and 1s in FS. It doesn't follow the 1Rm calculator at all. I think my 1RM is 10-15kg more than my 3RM FS rather than 7.5kg the calculator predicts. Each extra rep is a lot harder than it should be. I don't have a problem with higher rep frontsquats, they surely have a place too.  But if your dieting, it's not appropriate unless it's for rehab or as a very distant assistance exercise for something else. But since it was a main lift for me, I should have been doing lots of sets of low reps instead. That's the first thing.  So right now for instance i'm stubbornly clinging to my triples though i've stalled (for 3 front squat sessions). But perhaps I should embrace doubles so long as I can progress them? 

2. I should hedge my bets. Perhaps with HBBS and FS i've got sufficient coverage for glutes, hams and back. But just in case it's ok to do other exercises (RDLs, hip thrusts, BSSs etc) even though I don't want to, it can't hurt to make a passing effort to do them with slow but regular progress. Bodybuilders routinely do a dozen exercises per session, there is no reason why I can't do one or two of these per week.

3. I'm way overfocusing on strength. I dont care about dunking, i'm not in it for the dunks or huge jumps. I wanted to be a good basketball player, which in my mind includes having excellent athleticism, true. But at this stage my skill deficit is much greater than my strength and power one. I need a lot more movement work specific to playing than I do with spending time in the gym. But. I don't like to give up on what I started, and i'm so close now to getting that minimal gold standard of 2xbw squats (FS and HBBS -- the latter for reps), that i will see it thru. I just need to slowly add back sports specific work so i'm ready for game time (~6-7 months from now).

4. As always i've neglected conditioning, it always seems to fall on the wayside. I know why it happens, sore legs don't help when you're focusing on pushing up squats. But whether I like it or not, it's just as important if not more important to have a big strong motor than raw power. I can play great defense. Or I can play great offense, but not both, because my conditioning didn't permit it last time.

5. A big one is speed. I haven't been working on getting myself faster. jumping faster. accelerating. Plyometrics. I could wait forever til i'm ready, but maybe that'll never happen and i should have started sooner and got some benefit rather than waiting for a day that isn't coming.

Have you thought about doing the depth jumps from a higher box?

GCT looks pretty long there already for that box, a higher box will not help imho until he gets his GCT down.

/ I'm not an expert I just started reading 'shanksy & yessis.