Adarq.org

In the winter? You're in Australia or what?

Do some depth jumps in the gym or ankle jumps, jump squats, very low volumes. 2x10 or so. Before squatting. It will also fire up the CNS a bit so they might benefit the squats if the volume is low enough.

Also KB swings work well to warm you up and potentiate that posterior chain.

three things:

- the point about attribution is a fair one but i think you're using it as an excuse to avoid trying something new because it makes you nervous. you're a whole-hog kind of guy. so maybe go whole-hog on sprinting and jumping for a while. (more on this below.)
- the treadmill is not going to make you "more athletic," certainly not in 10 minute bursts. the only way that'd be the case is if you were grotesquely obese and out of shape, in which case any physical activity would make you more athletic. set the bar low enough...
- no idea what aussie winters are like -- as an american i always just imagine them being beautiful and sunny and everyone says "mate" a lot and drinks fosters on the beach with hot women in white bikinis everywhere, but that can't possibly be accurate -- but where i live it is a crappy time to be doing stuff like sprints that require you to be outside or in some kind of proper facility. so not wanting to do bounds and sprints and whatnot now is fair enough. winter is a good time for GPP. but when it gets nice out again, consider a real-live speed block. raptor is right, you're slow as fuck. getting faster can only benefit you.

for much more on AREG, check out mike tuscherer. also, this kid izzy, who's using tuscherer's AREG method for power lifting at powerliftingtowin.com.

Its not how it works though in practice when you're taking steroids. I don't know much about steroids but I do know the training is completely different from naturals. You do less intensity and more rep sets, pump work, like bodybuilding when juicing. It leads to more muscle growth that way, that's what i've read, have no direct experience obviously. I do know that I need a lot more volume and intensity to make gains. A lot of these guys don't tell you the full story of what supplements they had their guys on.

What are you talking about?  I don't get how you can slam raptor for quoting Internet wisdom and then come back with this is how steroids work because this is what I've read.  Nothing of the sort is true about steroids.  Additionally the magic enhanced recovery myth is greatly exaggerated as well.  Internet wisdom about steroids basically falls into two camps. 

Those people who like my old coach are bitter that they didn't make it past trials and are convinced that it's because everyone else was on steroids but them...  They propagate the myth that steroids drastically change the athlete, that an athlete on steroids is nothing like a natural athlete, that an athlete on steroids has to train differently and lift in a different manner than other athletes.  This rhetoric makes steroids seem especially out of place in competition because not only do they give an athlete an advantage in competition but they force him to change even the way he trains which really ruins that idea of sport/competition. 

On the other hand you have steroid users whose goal it is to justify steroids.  They repeat the mantra that steroids "just allow you to train harder".  They claim that steroids allow you to recover faster so you can train harder; this makes it seem as if they aren't cheating but rather using a tool that allows them to outwork their competition. 

In reality neither one of these camps provides any useful information.  The recovery thing is BS.  Do any of you train with females?   If steroids had such a drastic affect on recovery then females (who have 100x less androgens) would be sore for weeks after a workout.   This isn't the case however.  In reality steroids don't provide the athlete with magical recovery.  They don't change the way you lift and they have very little affect on training.  At many D1 programs all across the country men and women train with the same speed coach.   If anything the volumes might be reduced slightly for the higher-androgen faster men.   Steroids will allow you to put on more muscle which indirectly leads to more strength.  They allow you to do it without massive caloric surpluses that will also increase fat.  That's about it. 

Todday you're right, it's internet wisdom for better or worse. Also if you take anabolics and don't lift, you still gain significant FFM and lose FM. Add weight training to it and you improve gains. It's not a stretch to say training specifically for hypertrophy maximises gains of mass when juicing, hence the BB style training popularised by users.

My argument in light of the above paragraph was just that if you're juicing then it doesn't really matter so much how you train because the effects of the supplements will take place regardless. It's not that you have to train differently when juicing, it's that you don't have to train the same as a natural. If you're natural though you need to train better/harder/whatever you want to call it/ to make gains.

Coges, im really really skeptical of what these guys say/claim regarding reactivity. I don't believe it. IF i was to quantify my belief in it, i'd say maybe they're 2-3% correct. Unless I see proof i'm not going to change my mind, there is a lot of bs info in training, including jump training and otherwise on the internet. My default stance is that it's bs unless i become convinced otherwise. I will be try it out myself at some point, but right now i dont want to waste my time experimenting with something i don't think will be effective. Later on, when i've exhausted gains from squats, i'll give other things a try. But i haven't done that yet. Not really. Until i get back to squatting near 180kg while weighing a lean 85kg, i don't have any reason to try other stuff which will probably do close to nothing. My bias is my bias, i don't make excuses for it, that's how i see it.

You might want to read this:
http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/reactiveability.html

You might want to focus on this part:

Don't Screw Up Your Natural Reactive Function

One way we screw up reactive function is by inactivity. This is illustrated by comparing the technical running ability of the typical 16 yr old Playstation freak to that of a kid on the playground. As we get older we become less and less active and "play less". Playgrounds and furniture are used in pursuit of the opposite sex instead of playtime. This process isn't helped any by the huge growth spurt that occurs during adolescence - a time when most start to become less active and when they really need to become more active.

Another way we can detract from our reactive functions is by engaging in too much of a good thing regarding strength training without regard to function. I know I've preached about the importance of strength but now I need to qualify a couple of things here. Strength training is capable of doing some very magnificent things when it comes to improving the level of force we can take in and put out in our movements, but, used haphazardly and without attention to function, it is also capable of changing our movements from what naturally should be a reflexive dominant movement into a muscular dominant movement with the result of this being inefficient movement and injuries.

Come on man, you know much better than that:

im really really skeptical of what these guys say/claim regarding reactivity. I don't believe it. IF i was to quantify my belief in it, i'd say maybe they're 2-3% correct. Unless I see proof i'm not going to change my mind, there is a lot of bs info in training, including jump training and otherwise on the internet.

It may make a small difference (say 2-5%) but that's about it. That's not a good return of investment. I know i'll get more out of squats than any of that plyomumbojumpo. It's an icing to the cake, something you do when you've tapped out from squatting. IMHO.

I've tried that stuff before. Vag had me doing drop jumps. I did sprints. Regularly, 2-3x a week. For almost a year. What effect did they have? Probably nothing. But im annoyed because I can't prove that. It probably just kept me from training better and getting stronger. So that's why i dont want to muddle the waters now. So in future i can definitively say, see, i did this stupid gimmicky stuff and it didn't really make a difference.