Adarq.org

@chris: yeah, i will work on the 1-2 thing.
@acole: it's not 34 when i'm hanging from the rim, more like 32.5 judging by where my finger felt bruised all weekend. 
@undoubtable: thanks man, bit frustrating to feel like i'm just below where i was a year ago after spinning my wheels for 12 months but at least i'm back on a court with some consistency.

Yeah, I have that problem too and I can do the 1-2 much better on outdoor courts.

LBSS, what's your vert at right now compared to your all time PR? And how's your strength now compared to then? Just curious.

about 1.5" lower than all-time PR. i could dunk a ball the size of the one in that video a year ago. strength...don't know how to answer that. i squatted within 10 pounds of my PR (350, PR is 360) on a random saturday in september, after not really working at it, so that's good. couldn't squat that much now but only because i haven't been squatting as much since i got back from my trip a few weeks ago. if i got back into it i'd be back at 350 soon. but i don't want to, it's a distraction. one of these days i'll squat 405, though. just not right now.

It actually looks good... I have two observations as well:

1) Do you always have this tendency to walk/stand around in a bent knee position? It looks to me from the way you walk around, stand etc that you prefer to take away some tension from your hamstrings/your hamstrings are tight/you prefer to walk around with some tension in your quads? Is any of this true?

2) If you pause at the moment of hip extension, especially with the ball in your hand, you don't go "all the way through" with it. You're better without the ball but looking at it it feels like there isn't a lot of hip HYPERextension ROM going on. I have the same problem.

So what does that mean? It means either the glutes don't fire properly in that particular movement and/or the hip flexors are tight. Have you ever been consistent doing hip thrusts and then stretching the hip flexors?

I think for both you and me, if we solve this hip hyperextension problem, because it's so glaring and obvious, it could make a ton of difference even at our current levels of strength. It messes MORE up than just the power output - it messes positioning, coordination, what the arms do when the legs do something etc etc etc. It's more than just power leakage.

1) good point, i don't know. i don't think so, but maybe. never thought about it before. will try to pay attention today.
2) i've gone through periods where i was very consistent stretching hip flexors. i don't tend to stretch or do much activation during morning workouts because time is so compressed, but i should get back into doing stretching and activation stuff when i'm not in the gym. i've fallen off the wagon.

not pretty.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYyitknG_Mc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYyitknG_Mc</a>

i was running errands in a rental car, a shitty white pontiac something or other from the late 90s/early 00s. it was holiday time, so the parking lot i pulled into was packed, full of cars waiting for people to pull out and tons of people milling around. i was driving about 2 miles an hour, as you do in a parking lot, when a young woman with dark brown hair walked as if to go in front of the car. i stopped and gestured for her to move, but she stopped and gestured for me to move, so i acknowledged her and took my foot off the brake. just as i did that she started walking, so i hit her and she fell over.

i jumped out of the car and said, "oh my god, i'm so sorry," although it was clearly her fault. she got up and flew into a complete rage, screaming at me about how i was worse than the nazis and all this shit. i wish i could remember her rant in more detail. but i tried to stay calm and offer her my insurance information and stuff and she wasn't having it. and my calm turned, internally, to fury at this fucking asshole who got herself hit by my car after a clear interaction and was now treating me like i'd invented aids. she wanted to go print something out inside one of the stores (a complaint about the incident?) so i waited by the car while everyone honked and stared. when she came back out she handed me this huge packet, at least a hundred pages, full of craaaazy stuff about the nazis and killing babies and chemical warfare. the implication was that i was in the same class as these people. i was enraged. but i got back in the car and drove on my way. not sure whether i did the errands or not.

a few minutes later i got to my grandmother's building, and she was coming down the stairs arm in arm with my girlfriend. they were both very nicely dressed and my grandmother looked about 15 years younger than she does in real life. she had a big smile on her face and came over to give me a kiss and ask how i was. and i took a deep breath and said, "well, okay, how are you grandma?"

that's all i remember.

WEIGHT: 172.5
SORENESS: hamstrings a little
ACHES/INJURIES: none
MENTAL STATE: pretty good, stressed about work but the gym chills me out

- warm up

- SVJ x 3,3; DSVJ x 3; one-step RVJ x 11; two-step RVJ x 10; SLRVJ x 10

- squat 245 x 5,5,5,5

- superset x 3
-- RDL 225 x 10
-- dip x 10

- pull up ladder x 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3
15-30s rest between sets

- decline sit up 30 x 10,10

- band pull apart x 20,10,10

- stretch

t0ddday i think you misread vag slightly. when he says "bounce" he means the kind of effortless reactivity that comes to people like raptor described in his last post: people who are light with "good" structure for jumping. gerald green is the prototype. dominique wilkins, dr. j, michael jordan, that ridiculously tall kid from bahrain who's really good at high jump. i don't think vag would ever say that you can't improve jumping through practice, or that practicing jumping isn't the most important thing you can do to improve your jump, especially if you're not getting lots of little jumps in and around playing a sport.

obvious point about the combines is obvious, but worth repeating. they are not comparable.

also, very true about sport-specific skill translating as quickness: i'm pretty quick playing ultimate frisbee because i know how to play. but i plod playing basketball because my poor handles mean i'm not confident with the ball. same with soccer. that's not to say there's not an innate component to quickness, just that movement efficiency is a skill that can be learned and improved dramatically with purposeful practice, which i think was your point.

Few things...

First I really like what Toddday said, that's a very sound way to make sure you aren't wasting energy being inefficient. 

Second, thanks LBSS but I don't think I'm overly gifted at all.

me neither.  i was just trying to think who on here actually jumps high right now while not looking sluggish doing it. also, ian, gp about rutgersdunker, guess i hadn't watched his dunk/jump vids in a while. whatever, it was a sidebar anyway.

And lastly I don't think agility has a direct correlation to 'springiness' or 'bounce'. It can certainly help if you're naturally like that as it points to some positive structural/neural tendencies that with training would help your vert but I know lots of guys that can stop on a dime or change direction instantly that can't fly. Tony Parker comes to mind or the professor or hot sauce. My friend I'm training with as well, he changes directions in an instant but his vert is 10-12" lower than mine.

i'd agree with this

Maybe that bouncy look is what you get from doing it (jumping) all the time. Ex: most NBA guys appear bouncier than a NFL guy but a quick glance at combine numbers shows that the vert for skill position football players blows away a ton of NBA guys verts. The basketball guys just have a more esthetically pleasing jump. Just my observatiosns of course.

exactly. the point is that "springy" is just an aesthetic judgment about how someone looks when they jump. but it says something about how they get up. an nfl guy is likely to be much more powerful than an nba player because he has to be stronger and heavier to play his sport at that level than the nba guy does. but that's not to say there aren't some nfl guys who aren't springy or nba guys who aren't powerful. it probably has a lot to do with body structure and biomechanics. you can affect the latter to a point but you can't make your legs longer.

no it's not based on jump height, although springy people tend to jump higher. kingfish jumps 40" but looks slow as fuck, he's just very powerful. same for chris hickson when he was around. dreyth, but less so. some people are naturally springy and others aren't, a lot is based on genetic things like body structure, tendon length, and so on. people like you and me have a lower ceiling than people like, uh, actually most of the gifted two-leg jumpers on here are gone (taylorhorton, rip, rutgersdunker). chris m and matt a come to mind, i guess. but none of those guys has the springs that taylorhorton had, or certainly that rutgersdunker has. that dude is an animal.

but we can definitely improve movement efficiency, grace, speed, and power. no doubt about it. adarq went from touching rim to dunking off one leg, which is truly awesome and frankly a big part of why i'm still going at this.

will just make it that much more satisfying when we finally do throw down.