Adarq.org

I really need to get better descriptions on film.  My day job is killing me right now but for the more esoteric exercises this is a must.  As far as your ade exercises your confused on. 

For the elevated split squat.  You have the front of your shoe on the box, like a bss.  I want your toe on the box.  Like put your entire foot on box flat like your going to jump off it and then jump forward so only your toe remains but you could still push off your back foot w your foot in exact same position it would be in to run (toe off).  The box your using might be a tad high for when you make this change.

Obviously this greatly decreases ROM and you won't get much depth.  That's ok.  What I'm looking for is at the top of the ROM back leg straight, pushing off tip toe. Forward leg straight hip pushing out.  This should be a very strong hip activator and stretch - far more than its a strength exercise.  How to know if your doing it right is to compare it to squats.  When we do barbell squats and track the bar we should feel "lightness" across the knees.  That is do some squats, rack bar, bend your knees, stand up tall and feel "lightness" across the joint cause of the lack of resistance.  This exercise should make you feel it across the hips.  Very rare to know what that feels like. 

One note is the bss foot position you have... Not a bad position for a multitude of stretches.  Before the squats I like tight athletes to go through a circuit of hip flexor and quad stretches with this foot position.   But I don't like the foot position during the exercise for an ade exercise.  Remember for ade stuff - if your unsure of how to do it and one way is much harder and more intense - it's probably the other. 

OK I think I understand better. Will try and film again next time.

About the pistols... Are you doing them on a slant board?  I can't tell.  The greater the slant the harder it is to get anywhere close to parallel.  I'm not worried about your depth.... But SLOW down.  Remember this is prehab.  This is a modified version for a healthy athlete of eccentric slant pistols.  The protocol for them is 3-4 seconds down with pause at bottom and then standing up with both feet.  I allow healthy athletes to do the concentric with one leg if it doesn't cause pain but we are not trying to blast quads daily w these.  Go down slowly, take note of knee and foot tracking, be stable, don't use momentum, feel stretch at bottom, and then go up.  This is a stretch and mobility exercise first and foremost.  You have your heavy squats, band squats, bounds, lifts, etc.  where you blast the training and go all out....    What makes this amount of volume in your program possible is the variation in intensity and tempo.

Sorry, I cut out the heel wedge I was using. I don't have a slant board yet but this allows me to get some heel elevation. Cool, got it. I filmed these again today and I think they're better:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDel8AtZ47c" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDel8AtZ47c</a>

As far as the jumps.  Nothing wrong w a walking approach but it doesn't look like your approach jumps work.  That's ok.  Cut them until they do.  So do drop step jumps.  Then do two step jumps and three step jumps.   If and only if those provide more height then move to 4/5 step jumps.  I think LBSS has mentioned this method as the "toddday" rule or method of earning your steps.  It's pretty important for movement efficiency.  The only exception I have made for athletes is testing extra steps in terms of pairs for athletes who put a lot of torque in the plant. 

What that means is an athlete might drop step 35".  (Left toe raises and right foot is swung into plant)

The I might allow athlete a two-step takeoff.  So left step, right step, take off.  Athlete might only jump 35.5" or less.  Technically that might suggest that we shouldn't add steps... However a RLR takeoff might result in 38" jump.  This is because athletes (especially track/jumper background) can be really uncomfortable starting with their right foot in front of left (or vice versa) and moving their left foot first...  So for those athletes the testable steps are basically drop-step, RLR, RLRLR, etc.  same principle applies though.***

Absolutely, right now my highest jump is either my SVJ or DSVJ...so I'm getting nothing out of extra steps/approaches. I just wanted to get everything on the board in terms of jump variety. Another aspect is that by the time I got to the full approach jumps I was pretty tired. I did get a few better 33-34'' RVJs when I was getting those measurements for you. But they still don't warrant extra steps so I'll commence the T0ddday method for the jumps session from now on.

Your not much of a one footed jumper I see!  Strange given your track background.  Again I wish I had video but I think you can make a lot of gains here by fixing your mechanics.  One drill I would like you to force your self to do is what I call the euro step take off.  Run toward hoop from top of key, force your penultimate step to land outside of key on right side and your left foot take off to be from not much farther forward but back inside the key.  I really would like to film this to explain but I find it does wonders for athletes who jump like you.

I know! I did used to be better in the SLRVJ (hit consistently 37'' for a time in 2012, the last time I was focused on improving RVJ). I was actually pretty embarrassed with my SLRVJ during this session. But to be fair I haven't really done that movement in awhile, even approximations on the track doing long jump work. Haven't done that in 4-5 months. So it's probably as low as it will get (I hope). I understand the euro step thing, I actually used to do that naturally a lot more (Raptor might remember telling me this ages ago): doing a long side step as a penultimate.

***last note.  I think for now you may want to keep weight vest on and even add additional weight for your rim jumps.  Two reasons.  Easier to learn approach mechanics for some people at slower speeds.  Also, I personally don't like your target touching achievement... This is somewhat psychological so if it doesn't bother you then you can ignore me but imo what I see is: your standing vertical allows you to touch the rim.   Your drop step... You can touch the rim.  Your 3 step can touch the rim.  Sure, you can touch more of the rim or something but imo that doesn't allow as much progress.  A vertec where you are constantly removing vanes and touching a measurably higher distance works.  Touching with two vs one hand is OK but not ideal in my mind.  Adding load so the rim is very difficult or out of reach without an approach is good too.  I have trained atheltes in aerobics rooms where the ceiling is only 10'1 and the athlete is over 6'.   We begin w standing vertical and a 20lb vest, finishing w 60-75 load and a running vertical of about 25". 

Finally... Those backboard touches.  You spend way too much time on the ground and go way too deep on rebound... Like I said before don't try to change this too much consciously but do the following... Switch to a one handed touch of hopefully a slightly higher object.  Work to get x touches in 10 seconds. 

OK understood. I would happily handcraft another vertec to donate to my gym if it was a feasible piece of equipment for them  . I'd much prefer it obviously but for now I only really have a rim/10' doorway. Not much I can do there. I'll do the jumps session with the weight vest on then, cutting the approach down for now as well. And do better on the backboard touches. Thanks for all that!

___________________

Modified Track#2:

I couldn't get to uni for the track today, just too busy but did manage this on the oval next to my gym. It's a very nice oval but I wasn't allowed to take a 4kg med ball from the gym to use unfortunately. But next time this'll be on the track with shed access. Had to guess the distances.

ADEs + 5 SVJs/DSVJs

Active warmup

3x6 DL jumps

***I forgot another thing for this session T0ddday: what are 'penultimate' jumps exactly?***

*weight vest off*

2x10 SL bounds

2x10 LRLR bounds to 20m sprint finish

1x stride to 30m then 20m sprint

2x60m

3x2x~150m on ~1min between/5min between sets, then 1x~150m cruise

Filmed a couple of things:

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

BW: 77kgs

Unfortunately my chondromalacia is flaring up again. I don't need to go and get another MRI because it feels exactly the same. It's been hovering around a bit in the last 6 weeks since aths season finished but I was staying on top of it. Played fairly easy on Monday but probably was too much to play after track the day before. Yesterday just did the ADEs, no weighted jumps. Today it's sore again.

Overall it's not the end of the world because apparently this type of cartilage wear generally can heal quite well, but I never really gave it the full 4-6 weeks rest from aggravating activity. I did this for my achilles tendinopathy (by not running extensively on it) and it cleared up fine. I should have done this for the knee as well so I was going into the new program 100%. From experience, I'm not confident at all that I can do another week of T0ddday's program without it getting worse. FUCK.

I'm really annoyed at myself for over-committing to things too easily. I shouldn't have agreed to play ball as it added extra knee stress I couldn't handle. I shouldn't have committed two years to doing the athletics training (which didn't end up doing much except give me overuse injuries) while I was committed to jumping. I could have got better results doing jump training (including sprints as secondary exercise) and competed better!

My thinking atm is to suspend the program for now and rest the knee leading up to my US trip, which is six weeks away. Just do rehab 3-4x/week at the gym to fix the knee tracking that has caused this and heat pack the shit out of it 3-4x/day. I've tried training through this before and it got me nowhere. T0ddday's program is the type of thing I need to do to make vertical gains, but I can't do this training with concerns about knee stability/wear long-term because realistically I need to train for the long-term to get ~40'' to dunk. Six weeks is not so long in the scheme of things. Hopefully it heals, then when I get back, my life is PhD student from 9-5 and jump training everything else. I will do aths/bball again when I've retired from jumping.

damn.. ;/ it's so much easier to give advice than to take it.. you know exactly what you need to do, but it's just so hard to suspend training when you're driven. (that's also the Story of my life).

IMHO you should probably listen to your gut & take some time off to heal it.. you're not going to "lose much" if you're rehabbing 3-4x/week, hitting upper/core 1-2x/wk.. and potentially (after a few weeks) hitting hamstrings/glutes via RDL's perhaps. You could bring up some weaknesses while avoiding plyo/squatting/deadlifting etc.

Once you're on your way back, just progress a bit slower.. You don't want to be worrying about your knee when doing bounds and such, becomes too much of an inhibitor. ;/

pc man!

damn.. ;/ it's so much easier to give advice than to take it.. you know exactly what you need to do, but it's just so hard to suspend training when you're driven. (that's also the Story of my life).

IMHO you should probably listen to your gut & take some time off to heal it.. you're not going to "lose much" if you're rehabbing 3-4x/week, hitting upper/core 1-2x/wk.. and potentially (after a few weeks) hitting hamstrings/glutes via RDL's perhaps. You could bring up some weaknesses while avoiding plyo/squatting/deadlifting etc.

Once you're on your way back, just progress a bit slower.. You don't want to be worrying about your knee when doing bounds and such, becomes too much of an inhibitor. ;/

pc man!

Thanks man! I think I'm pretty much gonna do exactly what you outlined. I'm lucky that I know what the problem is at least and it should resolve itself in a few weeks. Could be worse. I'm mostly just annoyed that I suck and have regressed but can't train to fix it. And the training I want to do now has been compromised by bad decisions in the last block of training.

You tell me? My back is really bad for the last 6 months... I can't "afford" to miss time training, especially since that keeps me somewhat mentally stable, doing it, thinking about it, planning it etc.

Personally, maybe I should just focus on eating right instead of training. Maybe acole can focus on something similar.

Yeah I think I said something similar in Coges' log awhile back but I am just incredibly bored/frustrated when I don't have training to focus on.  I guess we're all like that.

Well, there has to be a solution. Maybe you can do strictly hip dominant work like very heavy kettlebell swings? They would pretty much target everything: power, strength (due to the constant time under tension), fitness, posterior chain activation, you name it, while also taking away focus from your knees and programming you to be more hip dominant. Sounds like the perfect idea.

Yeah for sure, I'm big on KB swings. I think I just have to avoid loading the knee heavily under flexion for a little bit so they'd fit the bill.

How we train through injuries or forced layoffs is really what separates the men from the boys.  It's also what separates the pros from the amateurs...

I have to warn you this that is 100% do as I say not what I do advice... But that doesn't make it any less valid...   Not since college did I really have the athletic team of trainers and coaches around me to be productive while injured... That environment is probably more valuable during Injury than any other time...

In a collegiate or professional environment when you are hurt you still have to show up for practice, your still there, still in the zone, getting a taste of it and itching to get back and being reminded of it.  Your still going to conditioning only now you get to focus on your weaknesses and come back better...

In every other environment I have been in my injuries are made 10x worse than they need to be... Injuries mean no training... So no reason to get up early... So no reason not to go out w friends... No reason not to go to Vegas... No reason not to eat like shit because your not in a training mindset so what's the point of eating well... So you come back with the trifecta of bad change - heavier, weaker and less mobile.... And the cycle repeats and few times and then your old and retired...

After my last catastrophic injury I promised I wouldn't be like this... Haven't really been challenged but I did an ok job dealing w my jumpers knee and training myself through it...

Really if you can master this you have the key to longevity in sport... What every great masters athlete has is a commitment to sport away from sport... Gotta take 3 months off of training cause your wife had a kid and you literally have no time... Ok but then during those 3 months eat less than you do in training because tdee is lowered... 99% of us will eat more in that situation...

It's hard as hell but you can do it... I don't know the nature of your injury and I'm not an orthopedist but for most cartilage injury you can train through it with the following modifications:

1) first thing that is out is all track on track surfaces - however hill running can be resumed soon.
2) high intensity bounding is out but you might be able to do stuff legged ankling. 
3) jumping is out for a bit but if you buy a crash mat you can quickly return to vertical jumping.

Almost the rest of your training can continue.  The AED stuff can become truly ED.  You can master mobility and strength.  You can turn this into a blessing if you want. It won't be as fun but it's totally possible.  Can't say I will blame u if you don't but you can decide how u want to let this effect you.

Thanks mate I appreciate the insights. One thing I have to make crystal clear though is that I REALLY really do understand what it's like to train through shit. I think like most people who have trained for years consistently I have probably forgotten more niggles and annoying shit than I remember. Especially the last two years, ramping up training to 5-6 days a week, it was impossible to not pick up little things, but you can't stop for any one issue. Off the top of my head:

-shin splints when I first started--these got really bad, almost stopped me
-piriformis pain when doing overspeed harness sprints - excruciating to touch my toes afterwards
-L anterior delt pain from too much bench - fucking hurt to sleep on
-plantar fascia strain/tear - had to stop for a few weeks but was back on it for start of the first winter season - probably took a year to clear up
-stuffed R big toe joint from DL bounds - just taped it up
-tib-fib joint - this is an absolute bitch and flared up periodically (mostly when reintroducing acceleration in spikes)

Excluding the plantar fascia strain (which just stopped me doing two 200s at the end of season, suffered through it for shotput, hammer etc), for all the other stuff I might have missed one session that I can remember. Even in the end of last season, I was intermittently suffering from the mystery knee pain (revealed to be chondromalacia) and achilles tendinopathy for 3-4 months before they really compounded and started to impede my performance. I got a reputation as a bit of an iron-man because almost everyone went down before the end of the season and I was the last one on the track doing speed endurance, and mostly it was manageable. But I ran through a lot of shit! I never take a night off from SMR/self-massage/compression. No joke. I was doing it drunk when I got home from NYE. I'm honestly like that whether I'm in a group or by myself.

I guess I'm just trying to emphasise how much I want to be the best athlete I can be before the window closes. I don't need any extra motivation from being in a group. I can train solo just as well. I've been able to manage doing a PhD at the same time and having a partner and it hasn't been impossible to manage the time to do it. Even when I have a kid in a couple of years (probably) and I'm getting intermittent sleep, I'll work it out.

The only thing that worries me about knees is that if I really fuck up either knee, I'm done. I have no leeway at all with this shit. I know you can get other things that could stop you but IMO the most likely is some sort of cartilage or ligament tear and that would make it bloody hard for me. That's why I'm just thinking a little more cautiously, especially since this is a recurring thing.

I am itching already to start again sans basketball (hopefully can get a sub for the last 4-5 games before I leave anyway so nbd). Going to a myo tomorrow who is excellent and is also a track athlete who will hopefully sort me out again. Then hopefully I can do what you spelled out there, which sounds good. I'll continue with the daily prehab stuff and get back to it. Thanks for the advice!

O shit waddup! Been slack updating again. Just crazy in the lab atm. Knee is definitely improving. For the last two weeks I have been doing the gym sessions as written and ADEs every day. The only difference being that for the 5x5 squat I've just been doing regular squats with 100kg, not box. This is to strengthen my weak adductors/inner thigh muscles, which I'm hypothesising have a role in the knee tracking issue/patella discomfort/cartilage stress on my left side. This is pretty vague but I do seem to recall over the last 6-9 months that this issue seemed to disappear when my squat was strong. For instance, I had completely forgotten about it over Easter when I had built my deep squat back up again. Could be completely off-base but...it could be just stress on my medial patella from overactive TFLs on the lateral side and weak adductors on the medial side. Maybe the way I squat helps balance it out.

I haven't started track work or had another jumps session yet. I have been meaning to get to the track but it's just a bit trickier than going to the gym as I only have time at lunch and just have had no chance in the last two weeks. But it's clearing up now so I'll try and get down there to see what I can do.

Quote from: acole14 on June 02, 2016, 10:51:03 pm

O shit waddup! Been slack updating again. Just crazy in the lab atm. Knee is definitely improving. For the last two weeks I have been doing the gym sessions as written and ADEs every day. The only difference being that for the 5x5 squat I've just been doing regular squats with 100kg, not box. This is to strengthen my weak adductors/inner thigh muscles, which I'm hypothesising have a role in the knee tracking issue/patella discomfort/cartilage stress on my left side. This is pretty vague but I do seem to recall over the last 6-9 months that this issue seemed to disappear when my squat was strong. For instance, I had completely forgotten about it over Easter when I had built my deep squat back up again. Could be completely off-base but...it could be just stress on my medial patella from overactive TFLs on the lateral side and weak adductors on the medial side. Maybe the way I squat helps balance it out.

I haven't started track work or had another jumps session yet. I have been meaning to get to the track but it's just a bit trickier than going to the gym as I only have time at lunch and just have had no chance in the last two weeks. But it's clearing up now so I'll try and get down there to see what I can do.

nice! glad to hear the knee is progressing man.

when you do start back track work or jumps, progress back into it sloooow.. don't rush into any plyo/bounding/etc. sounds like you're on the right track.

also it does make some sense about the free squat theory..

pc

Thanks mate! Yeah it will definitely be gradual, not to mention it's winter here now so the track is perpetually wet and slippery.

Sorry to hear! Hopefully with time and smart training the injuries will subside and the body will recuperate.