Here is the story. My lifts are all over the place, i'm losing anywhere from 15kg to 40kg on my squats since january when I wrapped up RSR2. I'm finally adapted to playing basketball and come out well recovered the day after. Which is great news because this means I can keep improving my game skills gradually. My conditioning is still very poor, i'd put it at 2/10, and only because I feel I made the jump from 1/10 yesterday. Still really really fat, the more weight i lose, the fatter I think i am, which i think is a normal and unfortunate feature of cutting.
So in this situation where i'm struggling to keep my head over water, when i'm trying only to lose 10-15kg on my squats, i don't really have time to add in extra exercises which prob won't do anything for me right now because they'll eat into recovery for squats. Yes i know in theory you can do make it work, in practice i am already struggling and that's without even doing any extra work.
I really am quite stuck right now for ideas. I know there are a ton of ideas out there, but i have to reconcile that with my body and personal experience and i know most of the programs would never work for me.
I haven't even got a day to day plan for what to do in the gym. Kind of freestyling it based on mood and feel.. :/
My only advice is to stop worrying about the squats right now. It sounds like you've got a lot of work to do to get fit, fast and skilled for your bball comp. Something has to give if you're cutting. Unfortunately it just seems you struggle to make strength gains from bulking stick during the cut back down to weight. Which kind of makes you wonder if for you, that whole strategy is flawed. This is long-term thinking of course, but have you ever considered NOT bulking/cutting, just trying your hardest to get to an athletic bodyfat %, establishing baseline strength levels for the major lifts, then centering your training around speed and basketball skill development and periodically alternating between short-term power/RFD blocks WITHOUT drastic bodyweight changes?
From what I've seen all over the web and in real-life in my club (and mostly from what my coach has been telling me), developing high bar squat strength during the 'off-season' (or other similar heavy, 'slow' compound lifts) is great for developing sufficient musculature and a power base for the 'season'. The power base is continually utilised during training for your specific sport (sprints, basketball, volleyball, whatever) and more of an emphasis is placed on the increasing measures of power during the season (i.e. broad jumps, std triple jumps, bounds, shot tosses, verticals, power cleans and other oly lifts). HB squat strength of most of the guys in the club usually decreases during this time, simply because it's not done much and the neural connections for the particular movement are de-emphasised. The coach will attempt to ensure his athletes aren't dropping too much strength during the season by keep squats semi-high intensity but with lower volume to make sure the important stuff is done well. For example, atm he prescribes 1x10@10RM (75% load) after all power work is done. Other coaches might do higher intensity lower rep stuff but it works for him. Now, would it be good if squat numbers went up during the season as well? Of course! But it isn't realistic in highly trained athletes (even amateurs like us), and probably not crucial either.
He also subscribes to Charlie Francis and others in that athletes shouldn't need to gain excessive mass over their careers. His rule of thumb is body fat should be kept in single digits during on-season and it's OK if it goes to double digits during off-season, but never over 15% (depending on natural bf levels). In other words, if he saw how you have been training over the past few months he would probably have a heart attack
. Just food for thought.
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