Adarq.org

Reading this log is frustrating. I was so dedicated for years and years but completely a zealot which cost me dearly. People would give great advice and i'd not take it because of an unshaking zeal to stick to my core beliefs, whether or not it was justified, I lost out on easy gains. The main one was being a mediocre basketball player because I thought We Are Smart and Can Train better, obsessing over squats and not putting in the time to improve my conditioning in a specific way.

This last week was the first time I actually trained intentionally to become better at my sport. I could enter a paragraph but a picture will do far better than I could say in words:



I was wrong, running a 10k at constant speed, a week, does almost nothing to make me better at basketball. Yes it works my heart and lungs, yes it means i have an aerobic base but it doesn't reproduce the constant change of velocity (ie. change of speed or direction or both, ie. acceleration, ie, accelerating and deceleration)  entailed in a typical game. I would have accepted the logical reasoning but my mind was closed off and i never took conventional wisdom. So what you see in that photo, is me doing an hour long workout, running back and forth across a soccer field (parallel to the goal). To add insult to injury it was a zone 2 and i fit in some sprints as well - which is what the people tell you to do anyway. lol, so much more complete a session that i've ever done. Ok that was week 1, let me do this for 3 weeks then 6 and see how it translates to the game. I've never scored over 10 points, i suck but it's because of conditioning and bad confidence as a result of that.

Cool thing happened on sunday, i forced myself to do a sprint session. Not even planned or scheduled but I knew if I don't force the issue i'll just keep skipping sprints forever. SO i did it, and then having overcome that inertia decided I should sprint not just 1x a week but, let me sprint again tomorrow and thursday and ... yeah. lol. Figuring out yourself is half the battle.

I also did some jumps today and i was just maybe 2 inches short of the above goal which seems so out of reach. Sprinting man, it works. Also watch this space.

I posted this on insta but i'm going to write something here as well. I'd love to get back to dunking again. It's a far cry, now it's a max effort to touch/grab the rim. I feel very slow and sluggish and look even worse. Backsquat is non-existent. It's a new challenge for me to increase vertical without the usual tools (squats). The first port of action is to get to 85kg bw, that will probably the most effective way to achieve the goal. But in the meantime I can also add some exercises which get me along the way while i'm dropping 5kg. Low level plyos (small box) + and regular jump session is what i'm thinking so far.

Yeah, AGC you nailed it. The culprit was too much full court basketball. Since then i've stopped the sunday full court pickup and i'm starting to feel better. I squatted 90kg for a single yesterday (it felt like a max lol) - but compared to three weeks back when even the empty bar was too hard for 1 rep, i'm on my way back. Long term I just need to get back to my playing weight of 80-85kg and staying there. No more full court basketball except the weekly game on wednesday. Speaking of, today is the first one - which is exciting. Will update this post after the game.

Saturday ? bw
Bball training - shot around some, will be the last session on that court.

Wed - ? BW

Game day! Second game back, I was able to fill in again for the same team. Only catch, we only had 4 players. I'm not in shape so playing a full court game (which i could barely do even 10 years younger and 15kg lighter) without going to the bench was a huge challenge. But my training seems to be working! The itnervals ive been doing have already shown great promise. I handled it much better than expected. I logged this one with a HRM: Please give me your insights:



I never ever hit those peaks in my normal training. Like running a hard threshold run might have me maxing out around 190-200 - but 230 is wild. It goes to show that i have an aerobic base but it's not why i'm unfit for the sport - it .. must .. be anaerobic??

Game was good. I took a few shots (last game i only took one and airballed it and it was only because i wanted to force it to have that checkmark that i attempted a shot). made most of them. Got a block or two, a few rebounds. TOO MANY turnovers, turns out shooting around like I do once a week does nothing for making you connect well on passes with an actual player lol. So i will need to get more reps in for that.

Sunday - 91.6kg bw
Treadmill run - 8.5km - 51:20 @ 6:02/km

HR was way too high, not sure what exactly it was since I don't trust the watch measurement of 168bpm average but my HR strap battery died prior to the run. Next time go a bit longer, going to cap it at an hour though.