sorry acole, here my reply:
I pretty much got in the best of my life 10 days ago. PR my squat ratio (1.8xbw), 2.5xbw hip thrusts, 8x180kg RDLs, low bodyfat etc, dieted down to a lean/strongish 74kg. If i was only concerned wih jumping/dunking (ala LBSS) i would have taken a few days rest and filmed some dunks then but i didn't have that luxury. Instead i had to prepare for and play a gruelling basketball competition and that messed me up athletically .. i prob did too much going into last week end then ended up eating my way to recovery, which didn't really do my bodycomp any favours. If i can get back to where i was 10 days ago bodycomp wise but with better lifts i'll be in even better shape and will be able to properly peak my athleticism which would mean taking some rest and raising calories to maintenance as opposed to a chronic caloric deficit. May never get there though, it's too far from where i am at right now. I dont really wanna look any further back than 2016 though. Im more athletic now than i ever have been before which is remarkable considering im 32 and not getting any younger.. heh.
Sure, I mean, there's no denying those are good numbers. I think you hit the nail on the head though when you talk about having <20hrs or less over the 3 months leading up to the comp, and how that was affected by your body recomping and being in caloric deficit. That's just....unfeasible if you actually want to be happy with your performance on the court. Thus, the body recomp has to be achievable and wrapped up early in your 'season'. Then the focus is firstly on practice/match play, with strength being secondary. I don't think I'm saying anything revolutionary there. No one would really expect, with 1h practice/week, you could compete at a high level in a skill-based activity like bball. I think you're getting that drilled into you enough though.
Seriously, fuck age. 32-35 could be your peak years! The stuff you hear about pro athletes peaking around 26-28 athletically and skills-wise is completely irrelevant to guys like us. They have been playing and training 2x a day for 10+ years and have nothing else going on apart from sleep-eat-train-PEDs. Now, there are definitely some changes in physiology from the age of 21 to 41 (T0ddday will know much more about this than me). Your 21 yo self vs 30 yo self will probably have more potential if you started at the same time, but the difference is overrated and no one has a time machine to do a repeated measures experiment anyway. What do you think contributes to normal guys falling off from athletic endeavours around 30? Fast twitch muscles atrophying, ligaments and tendons turning to jelly....or the fact that they accumulate preventable injuries, start working more, eating like shit and having kids. I think it's the latter but that's just me. Check this out:
Look at the 40yo triathlete's legs vs the 70yo's legs. They look identical. Compare that to the 70yo fatass in the middle. Ridiculous. I know it's a different sport but there are plenty of other examples. Dr Squat set a squat world record and probably had a 40'' SVJ in his mid-40s! And so on. Forget about the age thing. Train hard, maintain your body, eat well etc.
Btw acole: I always envy how easily you can work up to decent squat tonnage after a lay-off and you have perfect form, while it would take me the months just to add a few kilo to mine and still be way lighter than say 140kg which is what i'd consider the mimimum for anyone use uses the lift with very average form. I guess you're just gifted when it comes to the lift! It's awesome. I didn't know what htat was like until i started doing hip thrusts and worked up to decently heavy weights in a couple of weeks of doing them once weekly! If squats came as easily to me, i'd have a much easier time but i guess you get more out of lifts that are harder than those that are easier? Is it a strengths & weaknesses thing?
Thanks! I appreciate it. Even though I haven't squatted heavy in awhile I've been maintaining a 'squat-ready' state by staying mobile at night. This is a really good squat mobility sequence I do with inner tubes wrapped around my knees:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbozu0DPcYI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbozu0DPcYI</a>]]>But apart from that I think it's more to do with my leverages than anything else and previous years of muscle memory. I would rather have longer legs so I was a bit taller, even if it meant sacrificing leverage. Unfortunately Dr Naismith had to nail that damn peach basket at 10' just to spite 6 feet and under guys like me.
Hmm..again, your question is about getting 'more' out of a particular lift you're predisposed for as opposed to a bad lift. But what is this mysterious 'more' entity? Everything you do in the gym has to relate back in some way to your goals. If hip thrusting makes you more hip-dominant and that helps you stay low in the post and have a more explosive SVJ then that's great! But if it doesn't do much for you, you can get strong at it but it'll be a waste of time.
