Adarq.org

Training
CGBP 5x78.5, 6x75, 6x72.5
WGBP 3x5x67.5
BS 2x110 (HBBS - PR? It's a new lift this HBBS so why not)
SQ 2x107.5 (PR), 1x110 (PR), 2x106, 2x2x100
BS 5x107.5 (HBBS PR), 5x105
5x30m sprints (best time 04:34 - PR!)
5 SVJs (best jump 30" - PR)

BP notes - I don't like to do a lot of BP on fridays, esp this grindy. But the reason I did it today was because I didn't bench on Monday. That's why. Next week I will do a set or two of BP in the AM and get out of the gym. WGBP looks considerably more "normal" than CGBP - but I made a decision a while ago to stick with CGBP as my main lift since I want to have healthy shoulders as a priority and i'm not build for benching obviously so progress at the cost of broken shoulders is a dead breaker. WGBP is still light, and I don't intend to push it too far - just keeping it there for assistance since I have no chest development to speak of.

BS (I)notes - I like high bar. I am sold now. I wish I had switched to it a LONG time ago but my stupid ego wanted the stupid LBBS milestones which were never going to happen because LBBS is the WRONG lift for my body type. I could probably have done another rep on top of 110x2 but I was "saving" myself for front squats, so yeah. I was suprised to set PRs today. It's only like the 2nd or 3rd workout of using HBBS but it's becoming very familar, very quickly!

SQ notes  - I used Lance's recommendation and aimed for 10 reps of above 90% of 1RM. Here is the problem, what is my 1RM? But I worked that into the workout after going for 3x107.5 and racking it after getting 2 reps, I knew my 1RM was around there, and the next set was 1x110 which I would say is/was my training max - and probably pretty much my 1RM. Using that I calculated 90% was above 99kg, and lance had said to do singles with >90% but I did doubles instead to save time. That's funny because it still took me waaaay too long to finish squatting. I should probably move around the squatting load so half of it is AM and the rest PM. or something. Work in progress.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRgw-YYUGJw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRgw-YYUGJw</a>
^1RM of 110kg - I was happy with this, it gave me a lot more confidence with the following sets knowing I could squat 110kg and anything lower than that would be do-able. Thanks lance for putting me on to singles and doubles.

BS (II)notes - Considered going for a third set but i wasn't sold on grinding myself into the ground with yet another set of squats, maybe 2 is enough. If i can progress with 2 sets why should I do more than that? I loved that I got 5x107.5 HBBS - my form was okay too. Looking forward to more squatting next week!

Then sprints, I wasn't happy with my starts on sprints. It just seemed i wasn't coming out strongly enough. Well finally had a breakthrough on my last sprint. I got my left knee down and used it to help push off the ground (usually only use my right leg). This made a difference, i came out blazing, and then I pushed hard as i could, and my time blew me away. Now keep in mind this was done after a whole load of squatting so i'm confident I can do a lot better if I work out a way to redistribute my friday squatting so i'm not too fatigued by the end of the PM session. That should help my sprints.

And yeah a PR on SVJ - i'll take it i guess. I'm still fat so hopefully I can improve a lot here. Wouldn't it be nice to have a 36 SVJ?

Oh and i've been diet compliant for 3 days now - will try to make that 10 days in a row so I can break into the 82s.

squat looked good man. 

Yeah, it looked at some point he lost tension in the hamstrings for just a split second but otherwise...

 

diet stuff
Been putting in the work this weekend. Fasted like 14 hours yesterday, might have been 16, I can't remember exactly, then did 1.1km fasted cardio on the TM. Counted my calories for the day and they were around 1600. And today I fasted 19 hours! But i was so hungry by the end, I forgot I was supposed to do fasted dreadmill werk. Still, I drove at a high level of concentration for about an hour, so maybe that burnt a lot of calories, haha. Gonna eat around 1600 today too. And i might go out and play some ball later but I couldn't go to my usual pickup game due to family stuff.

bodycomp
When I look in the mirror I think, yea a kilo of moobs, about 2kilo around the belly, and maybe a kilo around my lower back. But that mirror lies and flatters like a motherfucka. All it takes is taking the regular forthnightly progress photos to realise that. I've still got more back bacon than my local KFC. It's kind of depressing that guys who lift around my height are LEANER at 90kg/200lb bw than I am at 83/183lb. Still, im not panicking, lemme get down to 80kg and if I still have ways to go to 10% then I can throw my hands up and complain about the genetics i've been dealt with, until then, just gonna put my head down and put in the work.


vertical jump stuff
I need a goal for my vertical and think the top of the shooting square on a backboard might be a good one. I've been searching online and it seems the top of the square on a backboard is 136" above the ground. That means if my standing reach is 98" (w/o shoes) - I would need to jump ~36" to touch the top corner of the square. I'm guessing my two step vert is around 31" now, so I'd need to add 5" on top of that. But then I haven't been jumping much for the last 5 wks since I got my first dunks. I did last wk but it bothered my ankle which I thought was perfectly healed until then - footwear is a big factor, the wrong shoes hurt my ankle more often than not.  And sadly my new shoes are no good. The other thing is my SVJ is very close to my moving jump, so that probably means once ive done cutting/squatting, i need to add some vertical specific training. But i'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Man you have some long ass arms. What I can see is that your speed is not good in your jumps (the speed of executing the actual jump). It looks like you give a what, 40% of your max effort to do these jumps... pretty weird.

Maybe you should work with plyos and explosive stuff more in the near future as you get stronger is my point, and jump more often.

You should experiment jumping more relaxed instead of more tensed up like you're doing right now. Right now you're thinking "I want to give my all in this jump and jump as high as possible" but instead you're tensing up and jump lower - I know that because I used to do it too and I still am doing it.

Weirdly enough, you're more likely to tense up when you're more tired than when you're fresh, so it might give you some feedback on that too - if you tense up all the time you might be overtraining. The reason for that is that when you're tired CNS-wise you're weaker and in order to "get up there" you need to recruit more muscle (or you think you need to) and you tense up. This messes up everything.

So next time try to do some more relaxed jumping, especially while planting. You can really push at the end of the jump when you take off but as you plant, "be like water, friend" to quote Bruce Lee.

PS. Shaving will give you 2 more inches.

Thanks raptor. Do you think if you jump faster you can jump higher? I try to get as much power out of the jump thats why i jump slow, i could try speeding it up and see what difference it makes. Will try that next time.

Also, i was thinking recently that I shud do some hang cleans as an assitance ex to build some traps for highbar squats. might kill two stones with one bird that way, if i can improve explosiveness as well. does that sound like a good idea? i'll prob leave the fancier plyo, jump specific stuff for when i've finished cutting and then maxed out on my squats though.

Slow jumping is low jumping mate, I learned that way too late. Try a paused squat jump and really fast eccentric squat jump and see which one is higher for you.

Hang clean idea sounds good to me, when you're ready to do more explosive stuff you could transition to power cleans or full cleans and it wouldn't be too much of a jump for you technique-wise.

Good to see you're taking the common-sense approach of [cutting fat --> increase strength --> increase reactivity] to increase vert/athleticism. Intelligent training goes a long way.

Yeah you can also experiment with your head position.

I personally have this tendency to look at the ground when I jump off two feet and I suck so hard when I do it - I basically orient my chest down and jump forward and low.

When I actually look at the rim, which is very difficult to do for me when I jump off two feet, I get higher. Pretty much always.