Adarq.org

I wish to jump higher. What shall I do?

Iono if i were you i wouldn't quit playing basketball. At least don't quit playing organised basketball coz it's a skill so overall you'll be a better player by just spending a lot of hours practicing on top of all the stuff you doing atm to improve your athleticism. While your playing you can still look for better teams. I can understand quitting pick up ball though. With pickup sometimes you get people that can play but 90% of the time you're just playing with scrubs who aren't gonna help you improve your game. Just my 2 cents.

Iono if i were you i wouldn't quit playing basketball. At least don't quit playing organised basketball coz it's a skill so overall you'll be a better player by just spending a lot of hours practicing on top of all the stuff you doing atm to improve your athleticism. While your playing you can still look for better teams. I can understand quitting pick up ball though. With pickup sometimes you get people that can play but 90% of the time you're just playing with scrubs who aren't gonna help you improve your game. Just my 2 cents.

You're spot on about the pickup thing. Most of the time it's a waste of time, sometimes you get a rare game which is worth it but it happens so infrequently. It takes so much out of me because I end up playing for hours and hours, but it's very low quality work, that just accumulates fatigue and there is no benefit out of it since the level of play is so low. It used to be a social thing with my friends, but none of those guys come anymore, so i'm just playing with a bunch of random scrubs, as you said, and there is no reason to have it in my training now. No more pickup games.

And that's good advice about keeping up the skill while looking for a new team. Would be a smoother transition than trying to start from scratch later, definitely. Thanks!

Training
SQ 3x5 111kg
BP 10x69.5 (PR)
DL 3x130kg
RDL 8x 80,75kg
2km run in 20 mins @  6km/hr , 2 incline - covered

SQ was very hard and form was awful. BP I didn't have any idea what weights/reps/sets to do today, so casually worked up to a max of 95kg which I didn't try to get off my chest, i knew i was going to fail it. Should have gone with 92kg but it's all good. I haven't got any programming for friday bench. I'm just going to freestyle it? Might start playing with overhead presses too. Why not? Set a new 10RM on BP which is welcome within my new training philosophy that any progress is great, whether for reps or for weight. Interestingly when I failed the 95kg, i could wiggle under it easily, which means i've lost a fair bit of weight since the last time I got pinned down it was a big struggle crawling out. One day i'll get that 100kg close grip BP and i'll be happy, till then, keep adding reps and see where it takes me, so far it's working, i feel much better underneath the bar and my form is solid and progress with reps seems to be coming along nicely.

DL sucked. The weights are very light and fly up, but my form sucks, with horrible back position both at the start of the lift and putting the bar down. I don't know why I bother with this exercise. Am thinking now to make the RDL the main exercise and let DL be an assistance one. My RDLs look picture perfect compared to DL. That way i'll get the benefits of doing a hip hinge ex correctly from the RDL and I can probably start doing rack pulls then to still keep pulling heavy just with good form. Why not?

Oh and I did Chins before DL today which worked quite well, so keep doing that too.

No sprinting today because it has been raining and the grass will be wet.

Randomly decided to do aerobic work, feels good man. I should do this 3x a week on every training day. Why not? It's great.

Training
Sq 3x6 102.5
Basketball game - 40mins no subs
BP 3x6 77

Ok, i've decided if we are going to lose games every week, i'm going to go down swinging. There is no reason why i'm taking < 5 FGA a game, when i'm easily the best player on the team by far. Will play tonight as though it's my last game ever. Superstar mode enabled. brb getting our first win.

Didn't win But i did everything i could.. frustrating. we were within 6 points (amazing for us) towards the end, i got a steal in the last 30 sec, and quickly went up for a layup, got fouled, just missed the layup .. if i had hit it, and made the and1 wud have had a chance to take a 3 to tie the game. but alas it wasn't to be. turnovers killed us, stupid ones too, like being called for carrying the ball.. scrub level mistakes. it was discouraging to play solid defense, run back on o, and just watch us turn over the ball...

looks wise, had to practically beg for the ball .. i think i've pissed off our point guard cos he doesn't want to pass to me honestly what we're missing right now is a decent shooting guard. we need a guard who can score.. atm our one half ok guard is reluctant to play point, he just doesn't give a fuck about running the ball. i don't blame him, we don't have the best candidates for passes lol. but even when he does decide to pass, he takes a million seconds before deciding to pass, which pisses me off cos i like a fast paced style gane and don't like it when the defense has too long to figure out what's going on: just pass is quickly!!.. if you take too long, i dont even want the ball anymore lol. our other guard is a highly functioning retard.. he can barely get from one side of the court to the other without turning it over.. so sad ..

There was a point at half time when the scores were teh same. We have a quick chat at the break, and a team mates is saying 'good job guys, your position on D was perfect' and im thkning no shit, i've played my heart out,  blocked every single shot inside, helped out my team mate at the right wing, and boxed out for rebounds perfectly.. it wasn't an accidient! but what i really wanted to say was, you faggots need to pass me the ball more, how else do you think we will score? And of course you can't say that because it's impolite and greedy .. but it's also the truth lol!!!  im fairly sure i scored at least half of my teams points despite having too few shots :/

have started asking around if there any teams looking for players. i watched a game after us and someone told me they possibly needed an extra player. but although they are 10x better than my current team, i don't think i'd fit in there.. they are still a bit too shit, even though i'm not looking for a too polished team either. will keep looking! i just don't think people respond well to random guys approaching them to join their team. I asked one team which i like and who beat us a few weeks back if they needed a player. and he seemed receptive, said sometimes they need a sub, but when i asked him if he wanted my phone number he said, i'll just see you next week yeh? lol.. so he was just humouring me.

oh fuck in all my rambling dear diary above, i forgot to mention conditioning was much improved even playing the full game without sitting out. we don't stop much either since there were few foul calls and no time outs either. i'm ascribing it to the 5km i ran last week, so it's clearly helping with aerobic fitness. so this week i'm gonna try to run ~6km.

Passing isn't the only way to get the ball in your hands, you can also grab the rebound and keep it.   If i'm on a team and I don't feel like I'm getting enough touches  I focus on getting the rebound.  If the pace is too slow for your liking get the defensive rebound and push the ball yourself.  You may need to work on your handle, if you do the drills here the prescribed # of times every day for a week you should have more than sufficient handle for pushing the ball. Bottomline, if they're not giving you the opportunities you deserve create your own opportunities and show them why they're better off with the ball in your hands.

On defense we play 2-3 zone and i'm back on the wing, so when I've got the rebound 9/10 players on the court are already infront of me, so when pushing up i'd still be behind a bunch of them. If i push hard I can usually get past a lot of them, and my handles are ok for dribbling past most smaller guys who gamble for the steal, especially when they think i'm going to be uncordinated for my size. But i realise now that I take the foot of the pedal just past 1/2 court and allow the chance someone will steal it from behind. The reason why I do that is I don't want to be greedy, and I want to let some of my team mates catch up, and hopefully i can get an assist. But if I made up my mind to go all the way, I think I would score more often than not. Especially considering if we let them setup their usual zone defense before we attack, we're never going to get past the top 3 defenders. We don't have the perimeter shooting and our guards can't get the ball past them. But I get what you mean. I should just push it hard all the way to the rim if i've pulled down a board, that's not selfish. I'd definitely try that next game, and in the meantime i'll work on my handles with the video. Thank you for showing me a different way of looking at things, appreciate it.

I know you're easing back into things after an injury but I'd still focus on picking up the speed of your runs as opposed to worrying about distance.  7km/hr is very slow especially for someone who prefers an uptempo game.  To give an idea of what that would require, the really fit guys on my team who can run up and down the court all day train intervals in the 13k-20k/hr range for 20-30min. 

Healing my ankle is kind of my priority right now. I know when I do sprints, it puts a lot of stress on my ankle and I think it sets back healing. I'd love to be sprinting regularly. Once i'm healthy i will change priority to sprinting. I've never sprinted until this year and it's terribly exciting for me each time I set a new PR - but i have to be patient and not push too hard right now. The same goes for jumping. Plyometric stuff is very hard on the ankle and i feel it afterwards. In the meantime i'm happy with gently pushing my squat up and spending some time building up aerobic endurance. I have never done running before so i've probably missed out on the benefits of aerobic work (health benefits like low resting heart rate etc). I also find that running on the treadmill for distance/time is fairly gentle on my ankle compared to sprinting.

I also realise my times are quite slow for now, but it's early days, considering today was just the 3rd time running kms. Maybe it wont help me at all and i'm just wasting time, but i'm happy to experiment. If after a few weeks I realise it's not doing anything for my athletisicm then i'll back off the longer runs. You are right that 7km/hr is slow but it's kind of the aerobic sweet spot for me atm, it's the pace where I can run but not go anerobic and get lactic acid buildup. It's not supposed to mimic game conditions like your team mates who can do  impressive 13-20km/hr intervals (sounds like a good goal for me to work up to though) . i'm using the guidelines from the HIIT myth ebook (link below) which try to keep the heart rate down so you're in teh aerobic zone. I don't have a heart rate monitor but i'm going by feel for now. Probably shouldn't even be as high as 7km/hr to be honest. I tried 8km/hr today and after 5 minutes I knew there was no way i was gonna run 25minutes at that pace.

Anyway, good luck w/the team and keep up the hard work.

Thank you and I appreciate you stopping by!


http://anthonymychal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TheMythofHIIT.pdf

Made some bad decisions today. There was a team training session planned, and I had to choose between lifting and going to training. Got there and realised it was a mistake because there were only 4 of us there, and they were playing 4v4 half court pickup games with some random guys. I wish I hadn't bothered driving there cos it took me 40mins and i missed my gym session for it. Didn't end up doing anything meaningful, i was hoping to run some plays but it was pointless with the low turnout. I said fuck it im here now and jumped into playing pickup. I was rested/fresh I felt amazingly athletic. I was hitting 8/10 of my shots, even nailed 3/4 of my 3point attempts and scoring a will, droving inside at will finishing off the glass or hitting a jumper. Got to say, if you play pickup the right way, it's actually a good way to practice different things. I tried posting up for instance, which i'd been inspired to having watched Lebron's play.

But oveall i'm regretting it now because i'd rather have squatted. Won't beat myself up too much, I made the wrong choice, it happens. Knees were complaining from running on the treadmill. Have to make some adjustments, i need my knees man and i've never had problems with them, so I don't want to mess that up now by doing some dumbshit choices. I think running on grass is best.

Can you bail on that team?

There is only one team mate i'd feel bad letting down. Him, because he's actually making an effort and improving himself each week. He's come a long way from the start of the season and I know he actually gives a fuck, shows up to training and listens. The rest? Not really.

I know you're shopping around for teams more at your level but it sounds like those guys are really bringing you down. I'm sure you enjoy the organized play, counted points, refs calling fouls, shit like that...But is it really worth it? With your knees acting up the amount of time you can ball hard is reduced and I think you would benefit more from doing some solo drills.

Wondering the same thing - if it's worth the frustration. I like your idea better, to go underground for a few months and come back as a lean, mean, athletic machine and kick some ass. Seriously, just concentrate on getting my bodycomp right and improving skills and athleticism. Then i'd only be worrying about things I CAN CONTROL and not a team that's a source of frustration and disappointment.