This summer I played minimal basketball going into the comp. Even less than 20 hours total over 3 months. It wasn't ideal and my movement efficiency was quite low. I get that no matter how lean, fit and strong I am, that it cannot make up for a severe lack of movement efficiency. Even when I was playing bball regularly I was still lacking movement efficiency - I guess I didn't really work on it specifically except incidentally just by playing and since my style of play isn't efficient, I never really developed it from there.
Eating clean and training hard goes a long way. And if i start at 75kg/165lb that gives me plenty of room to grow, a decent strength & muscle base to build upon and plenty of time to achieve some lofty weightroom goals (140kg and 180kg respectively) while remaining relatively lean. There is no way I can squat over 150kg or bench over 100kg while weighing that light so it goes without saying i'll be gaining weight to achieve those goals. That's the point! I want to gain some muscle lol. About 5kg of it - and it will be functional muscle because i'll be using it to perform better.
I admit a bench goal doesn't help me play better basketball, only indirectly in that achieving it, i'll have a more muscular upper body and that will help my confidence and play in the post. Same with the squat goal, it's just a way of making sure i have decent power to weight ratio & muscle mass to fat mass ratio, no use weighing 200 if i can't squat 400 .. it's just a lot of dead weight. However apart from that it doesn't help my sport - just indirectly by giving me more muscle to produce force.
To be honest i have no plan on how to bench 140kg given i haven't repped over 100kg yet. But i'll have to make some significant changes to achieve it. I wont be using a close grip as ive always done, and i'll have to setup with a bigger arch and learn to use leg drive and all those tricks ppl use to bench more. But even with those changes it's still going to be a huge challenge. My hope is to fill out my upper body -- bigger chest, back, arms, triceps, shoulders, all of that will have to grow (which is what I want!). I want to become my version of Lebron .. that's how i envision playing next year's comp .. a lot more physical -- playing bigger and aggressive and now i've added your suggestion of movement efficiency to that -- i think i will be a much better basketball player all around. I think i'm giving up on the goal of windmills and so on -- that's never going to happen .. i'm ok with just doing effortless powerful dunks around the rim if it means i actually have a chance of doing them in-game than landing windmills at some super featherweight bw while being unable to do much on the court once there are 9 other players on the court :/
I'm not going to be cutting for 12 months!! I am 172.5 today .. hopefully i can get close enough to 165 by end of april and then it's just about maintaining bodweight and getting some basic milestones out of the way (2xbw squat being the main one) before eating more food to train towards 180kg BS and 140kg BP. That's actually going to be exciting -- being able to eat enough food to actually grow some muscle and get decently strong ..without getting fat. That will be new for me.
