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Remember when I wrote that long post regarding LBSS and his issues? And how I said he doesn't get too much run-up or tendon contributions, if any? Well, he's better than you. Look at his bounding. He's complaining about how much he sucks at bounding, yet to me, they are really looking good. Not world-class triple jumper bounds, but they aren't terrible at all.

For you to invest into more reactive stuff, where you get contributions from the tendons as well and where you fine-tune your CNS and muscles to respond to a prestretch by generating more power, and adapting to that, is for you to get athletic. You don't really see athletes squat all day long and then walking towards a spot and doing a weak jump, don't you?

So, you must decide what your "primary sport" is. Remember, we strength train to get stronger FOR jumping, not the other way around. Strength work is basically assistance work.

It won't hurt you to do 2-leg bounding focusing on speed, and basic plyo work (sprints, bounds, donkey ankle bounces (reactive work for the Achilles)).

At some point you're going to find some out of nowhere power that you didn't know you were capable of generating (especially at the level you're at right now) and really "get it". But you gotta put in the work. Yes, it will suck initially. You will be slow and it will be really depressing. It will be hard to imagine yourself getting better at it. But you gotta GO GET IT.

Does that mean you must give up strength work? Not at all. It's just that you need to limit strength work to un-fatiguing sets and leaving the gym fresh, so that you can actually do what you're training to get better at - jumping and actually moving around (running, sprinting, getting on a fast break, getting past your man etc).

For that reason, I personally plan on doing "Easy Strength" like Dan John was proposing. Squat everyday, but choose sets and reps depending on your feeling in that day. You can go with something like 2x5, 5x2, 3x3, or 6x1. When you feel really good, go for "sort of a max", meaning a heavy single but not a maximal single. Feeling tired? Go with 3x3 with your 5RM, or do an easy 1x10 with a very light weight.

This will keep you fresh. And being fresh is what allows you to both recover and adapt to the stimuli you present your body with (which is strength by squatting and strength expression (power) by jumping), and to do high quality plyo work (jumping, sprinting, bounding).

I'll write more about this soon on my website, and it will all make sense, hopefully.

From "Easy Strength":

The difference between exercising and training is having a point. Exercise is done to waste
energy—burn calories—or to “blow off steam,” excess mental and physical energy, and tension.
Training is done in order to improve something—strength, endurance, neuromuscular control, etc.
Exercise is a singular event with an immediate goal.
The success of training can only be judged by changes over time in performance. Exercise doesn’t
have a point beyond the immediate session—if you leave the gym a sweaty mess, it was a good
exercise session or “workout.” If you show up every day and breathe hard and get tired and sweaty,
you may consider yourself to be successful at exercise. By contrast, training can only be judged as a
success if it works—that is, if after an appropriate amount of time you can clearly show improved
capacity for physical work. You may show up every day and push and pull and grunt and sweat and
even limp to your car—but be terribly UNsuccessful at training, if over time you are not getting any
stronger, faster, leaner, more agile, better at your chosen sport, etc. . . .
Swinging a weight around with the express goal of becoming extremely fatigued is what I would
do if I had a lobotomy. With a frontal lobotomy destroying my ability to plan over the long term, I
would believe that the goal of exercise was achieving a certain specific response—I would search
for the immediate effect of exercise. I would forget that as biological organisms, we not only respond
in the short term to a stimulus but also adapt in the long term to the sum total of stimuli we are
presented with—so long as we are able to recover. The idea that anything that made me horrendously
fatigued, to the point of nausea, vomiting, dehydration, hyponatremia, and even rhabdomyolosis,
would constitute an effective—or “killer”—workout would appeal to my zombie-like, shortterm-
thinking mind. I would strive in my workouts for “failure,” or forcing my body to stop working.
Fascinated by the immediate effects of exercise and unable to plan, I would work at top voluntary
intensity every time I exercised, always attempting to maximally disrupt my body functions. I would
also be unable to follow a program, so I would change exercises constantly, attempting to “confuse”
my body and prevent it from “getting used to” my exercise sessions. I would change aimlessly,
regardless of whether the exercises were useful or dangerous, choosing them solely based on how
bad they made me feel. . . .
If you want pain, learn Muay Thai. If you
want to learn about failure, play golf. If you
want to vomit, drink syrup of ipecac. If you
want to become stronger and more fit,
train appropriately.

Dr. Mel Siff:

To me, the sign of a really excellent routine is one which places great demands on the athlete, yet
produces progressive long-term improvement without soreness, injury or the athlete ever feeling
thoroughly depleted. Any fool can create a program that is so demanding that it would virtually kill
the toughest marine or hardiest of elite athletes, but not any fool can create a tough program that
produces progress without unnecessary pain.

Professor Thomas Fahey, one of the top American sports scientists, wrote:

A few years ago, I did some experiments with the college basketball
team that involved them only doing single, doubles, and
triples for whole body lifts (cleans, snatches, overhead squats,
bench press, standing press, etc). They got very strong but had
plenty of energy for playing basketball. They were in and out of
the weight room in 20–30 minutes.

Pavel Tsatsouline:

Steve Baccari is a stickler for perfect form, and he discovered that
none of his fighters could do 5 perfect deadlift reps. Doubles hit the
spot. Some fighters with perfect technique are allowed to do triples.
Interestingly, 2 is the most preferred rep choice of the Russian
National Weightlifting Team.
Two or three is a great rep range to emphasize in an Easy Strength
program. Four or five is where neural training and muscle building meet, which means you could end up
with some hypertrophy. This is out of the question in sports like boxing.
Singles, doubles, and triples are pure nerve force training. Singles, however, are very demanding on the
nervous system. Do a few, but don’t abuse them. Dan John lifts ten times in two weeks. Only two of
these workouts are singles and only one comes close to his max.
Hence, doubles and triples rule when it comes to Easy Strength with zero mass gain. But if your sport
does not punish muscle gain, don’t be afraid to train with fives more often. Regardless, go easy on the singles.

Soviet weightlifting champion and authority Robert Roman demonstrated that recovery is rapid and
soreness is minimal after low-rep, low-set heavy lifting. Just what the doctor ordered for an athlete.
High-rep training can be painfully ineffective and inefficient in building absolute strength. A friend of Dan’s
undertook a valiant effort of pushing his deadlift to 405 x 20. When he tested his 1 RM, he got—425.
Strength and power gains are superior with heavy low-rep training. Dyachkov had two groups of athletes
squat. One repped out to failure with 70% 1 RM, and the other did low reps with near-max
weights. When it was all said and done, the high-rep group improved their squat by 13.7 kilograms and
the low-rep group gained twice as much: 26.,3 kilograms. The standing vertical jump was measured, as
well. The “reppers” improved by 8.7 centimeters and the “near-maxers” by 13.3 centimeters.

Training
FBS 3x120, 1x130, 0Fx133.5
BS 1x135, 1Fx137.5, 3Fx130, 5x122.5, 7x120
BP 4x82.5, 5x80
CRLZ 8x42.5(PR), 8x40

Squat notes:
Another bad day for squats smh. I didn't get any goals done, just more failures.

The FS warmup triple with 120kg was the exception but still, it's only 120kg which i could probably have repped for 5 back when i was stronger so it's not even that special. Hell my 3 rep PR is close to 130kg so why would i be excited about 120kg anyways.

on BS, still can't double 137.5kg. Which means my 2RM is prob only 135kg or so which where i've been stuck since last week. Misloaded 125kg as 2.5kg on one side only, so as a result it was effectively only 122.5kg which is disappointing that i only did 5 reps. Rookie mistake. Next time perhaps. Need to get myself unstuck.

Quote from: Brent kimmy

I used to do this, back when I still scoured t-nation for useful articles, thought Dan John was more than a high school PE teacher

^ lol

relax raptor, that overtraining, HIIT nonsense is bs. Naturals have to work hard and lift heavy/hard to make progress. You read too much nonsense from people who like selling their easier sounding pussy training bs off as wisdom

Not at all. Naturals can't afford to work as hard as people taking steroids, or as genetically gifted people. Why? Because they lack the recovery abilities of those people. If there's anything that steroids or good genetics does, then it's great recovery, among other things.

So a hard gainer actually needs to work less in order to maximize recovery.

The fact that you list endless failed attempts does nothing but to prove your continuous road towards overtraining and ultimately, failure and even health risk.

Yes but you need more volume for what? Is strength your current focus, dissing everything aside? Because yes, a higher volume, assuming you recover well enough, is better for strength gains, as is a higher exposure (frequency). But the question is - do you recover well enough for you to progress? If doing more work was the answer, then we'd all be squatting 8 hours/day 7 days a week and be the best athletes in the world.

It's the recovery where you grow, but you already know that.

And your display of failed attempts can mean one of two things: overtraining or just poor judgement on choosing your weights. And even if it is "just poor judgement", that will eventually lead to overtraining. You staying under a maximal weight (or even heavier) bar very often and failing will eat a ton out of your CNS and your recovery abilities. If you don't deload soon, bad stuff will happen.

Yes, but if that's your plan, don't MAX out... "kinda max out". Go 95%. Don't go full 100%.

Go for a daily max. Work up in weight set to set in your warm-ups until you get to a weight that is heavy, but not grinding. If you do this, you won't blow up your CNS, you'll give your body the time it needs to adapt (and to adapt to an actual lift instead to adapt to failure) AND you will be able to repeat this more often (more good exposure = more adaptation) while still being fresh enough to do other stuff.

That's the point I'm trying to make. If you really want to max out literally, do it every once in a while. Train submaximally, but say every month or so max out and see where you are and how you've adapted. Then back off significantly after that max out day, doing easy stuff for a while (say, for 3 days after your max-out day use 80, 85 and 90% on your max single instead of that 95%).

Well, good luck, we'll see how this goes.

But my understanding is that you're focused 100% on strength work right now, with no basketball, plyo or any explosive work whatsoever.

And when and if you get strong, you're going to come back to power work and see your strength numbers drop once again, and get you depressed once again.

You need a way to maintain your power and movement efficiency in a strength block, and a way to maintain your strength in a power/plyo/dunk block.