Adarq.org

I remember your explanation and I still don't know for sure how much is demanded aerobically and how much is anaerobically in a typical game.

The basketball numbers that I am using are 60/20/20 alactic, lactic, aerobic.  These are from a pretty classic SSC book and I believe the numbers were arrived at using college basketball players who played continuous full court basketball (a scrimmage) wearing monitors.  Play stopped for out of bounds, fouls, etc, BUT there were no time outs, no time on the bench, no quarter-time, etc, so if anything an actual game is less aerobically demanding.  Pick up basketball is probably even less at least here where players argue and re-check the ball constantly.   

I have my doubts, because i struggle to dunk in games even when it become effortless for me to dunk in practice. It could be like you explained that you need the right groove and runup and since in games you're not given what you want but rather have to work with the space available to you, i'm not able to hit my usual positions to do it properly? I can buy that in principle. But i was dunking routinely around the rim from all angles then. That's why i'm pinpointing my lack of aerobic fitness because that could be a possible weak point.

I get that you think that someone who dunks from all angles should perhaps struggle less to dunk in games.  Even if you don't buy my explanation, you are pinpointing it on something that cannot be the reason!   You also have small biceps... but why not pinpoint your lack of in-game dunking on your weak biceps?   Aerobic fitness is NOT the reason why you struggle to dunk in games!  You have to think about basic physiology.   Having a well conditioned aerobic energy system will allow you to do sub-max (FAR submax) work continuously.   A more fit aerobic system will be able to fuel a higher difficultly of work but nothing close to dunking.   You can argue about the aerobic/anaerobic %'s in basketball but if you use a sport where the numbers are more exact you can see just how poor the aerobic system as far as maximal effort.   No matter how fit you are the aerobic system kicks in at around 30s of sustained work.   Not surprisingly, sprint speed drops off precipitously after 30s.   Usain Bolt can run 300m in 30.9 seconds (an average of about 10.3 seconds per 100m).   His best 400m time is 45.5 seconds.    The time required to add that last 100m is 14 seconds!   Someone with less aerobic fitness might run with even worse ratios... say 15-16 seconds.  The GOAT at the 400m (Michael Johnson) could run his 400m only 13 seconds worse than his best 300m.   That's the aerobic system of the greatest long sprinter in history.... And his added time over 100m is what you would expect out of a high school girl.... 

The point is that the aerobic system is a low intensity system.   Having aerobic fitness will help you as a basketball player because you will be able to jog up and down the court without being the last one down.  But when you go to dunk you better have the ATP ready to fire those non-oxidatitive fibers.   That ATP is refilled during extremely low intensity periods, eg standing around on the court... possibly walking.   You can take the fittest man in the world and if you have him run two miles at a pace that challenged him and then ask him to jump as high as possible 10 steps before he crosses the line.... he will struggle as much as you.   

Even if you're right about basketball being mainly anaerobic, i think my aerobic ability is far below average to the point it will drastically affect my performance on the court.  I don't think i would do well in any meaningful test (eg the one LBSS suggested or the ones you have offered). I think you're perhaps under-estimating my lack of fitness. I'm prob one of the least fittest members of this site, including raptor who has chronic problems with fitness. For me it's been from an intentional neglect to focus on pushing my lifts up which are slowly coming around to where i'd like them. In the summer when I was lean, i dont know if i was actually fit, or it was just easier to move around being so light.

I'm not doubting that your in absolutely terrible shape!! ( Although I do call BS on you being 25% bodyfat - being able to dunk at 25% bf even at your height would be a major accomplishment ).   I'm also not arguing that your horrible aerobic fitness doesn't detract from your ability to play good team basketball.  If there is a long period in the game without a dead-ball and you find yourself quickly becoming the last one back on offense/defense because your walking while everyone else is jogging... Then your lack of aerobic fitness is hurting the team.   My argument is that your examples don't illustrate a lack of aerobic fitness (not being able to play good on-ball defense, not rising on your jump-shot and not being able to get in game dunks because all those examples suggest a lack of anaerobic conditioning, a lack of mechanical proficiency, and the unfortunate effect of specialization***.) 

However, despite the fact that aerobic fitness may be a weak point in your game.... I still don't suggest that use sustained cardio as the means to bring it up.   Sprint intervals CAN be useful for someone like you because they will provide a lot of bang for the buck as far as bodyfat goes AND there is something psychological about getting used to sprinting 60-100m repeatedly that makes a basketball court seem REALLY short.    However, I still recommend you improve the bulk of your fitness with more basketball specificity.   

The best argument I can give you for this is anecdotal...   The year after college I didn't run track at all but I did play a lot of basketball.... we played pickup ball 4-5 times a week and would play upwards of 8 games on a good day.  I was in amazing basketball shape and could dunk the ball off a drop step...  I still rarely dunked in games unless it was a put back or a truly clear fast-break because dunking in games is HARD... but I digress....    The point was that I was one of the fastest and fittest guys on a court shared by a lot of high-level basketball players.   Simply from playing basketball a lot and having an athletic background.   Years later I didn't have a good pickup basketball resource and got back into running and at the seasons end I was in pretty decent track shape and pretty good aerobic shape (I'm talking 50 second quarter mile, 2:10 in the 800m, and the ability to run a 5 min mile - levels that are probably above where you are shooting for).   However, when I played a game in a summer league my friend had organized I was gassed pretty quickly.  Sure, I was still doing better than the weekend warrior's who were in terrible shape.  But my basketball fitness wasn't anywhere near the level it was at when I actually played a lot of basketball.   Basketball fitness is really specific.  While I stand by the fact that it's primarily anaerobic it's also just simply unique.   There really is not substitute to playing basketball for you.... if you don't have a good resource to pickup or league basketball.... Then I would stick with the basketball drill I gave you AND others that you can make up.   They won't be as good as playing but they will be a close second.  Keep it simple and keep in measurable.   Another good one: how many times can you dunk in 2 minutes given that you have to dunk on alternating hoops?   That will help your in game dunks way more than any cardio...

I am glad you made this point because it's something i've noticed before. I find in traffic it's harder to dip down into a jump (even a quarter one) for a SVJ or RVJ off a few steps. I wonder if there is benefit in training partial exercises like heavy quarter squats to improve ones ability to jump with a less knee flexion. It would be more useful to me for dunking in games..

Sorry, like LBSS said... GPP man.  Full and quarter squats are GPP.  Neither is executed at anything near the speed of a jump and neither involves similar mechanics.    You have made some good strides in your athleticism and used squats... Don't go overboard now and think that you can weight lift yourself to gains in every reactive motion....    Your better off learning to dunk off different plants.   Better to analyze your jump and find out how to get better at in game dunks.   My problem with in-game dunks was always that my dunks were restricted to one footed dunks or put back dunks because although I jump well off two feet I use a left right plant which would be great if I am left handed (or could jump high enough to do a 360) but I am not.   

***One last point about specialization.   You should not underestimate the unfortunate lack of carry over that happens when you become a specialist.   You have put a lot of work into your squat...  If you take someone who hardly squats and he has similar bw to squat ratios... He will almost always be faster/stronger/etc.    Getting good at something unfortunately means it starts to provide less aid in similar movements.  You are now a specialized squatter and jumper.   So your 34 inch jump (or whatever your PR is) will translate to a lot less when you have to jump at an odd angle, weird plant , in traffic, or simply without the mental queuing that you have learned to do before you jump in practice... Your old 25 inch jump translated a lot better because you hadn't yet reached a level of specialization...   The guy who had trained his vertical from 15 to 25 inches probably saw your 25 inch jump and wondered why he couldn't use his 25 inch jump to rise up on his shot, block shots, etc.   It's an unfortunate thing that happens when we get really good at something..... but hey it's because you have finally gotten some athleticism !

Nice job on the squats...  Here are the fitness tests used to screen high level soccer referees which is certainly a more aerobic activity than basketball.


http://www.cnra.net/academy/fifa-high-intensity-fitness-test-fitness-interval-run-test/

Both tests are very general are (especially the second) a bit more aerobic than the needs of a basketball player would suggest, but still neither is sustained cardio.   Really holds true that unless your sport IS sustained cardio, fitness is primarily how well you recover during the breaks rather than how well you hold up during the intense periods.  Intervals rule the day.

End of RSR2 volume phase retrospective
In the first round of RSR, RSR1 I was doing beltless singles with 150-152.5kg with nice form and good bar speed. This time around, ive PR'd 155kg beltless but bar speed has been much slower even for warmups around 145kg. What happened? I am definitely much stronger now than I was then but i think i've figured out why.

In RSR1, I was using 120kg as the training weight for the first 3 weeks worksets and as my light day throughout the 6 weeks. Turns out this was manageable because it wasn't that challenging for my quads or posterior chain for that matter. This time around in RSR2 I used 130kg for training weight. I got thru it beltless but often noticed on light days my bar speed was slow. The reason is quite simple really. My quads have been taking a beating this round. Even light days are challenging for my quads but since they're too light to task my posterior chain, it has recovered better. Also my posterior chain has been worked a lot harder this time around, much more so than RSR1 and has gained a lot of newbie gains just from being worked hard for the first time.

I am hoping as I let volume fatigue dissipate in week 5 (only one hard workout, a 3x3x155kg), my legs will freshen up, and i'll be able to increase my bar speed out of the bottom. And this will allow me to set some new PRs for beltless and belted both.

For the next round, RSR3, where i will be using 140kg as my training weight, i'll probably find my leg strength improve considerably but i'll have to be very careful with light days since they're hard on recovery. Have to think of a way around this cause it will be a deal breaker. One obvious solution is to use a belt -- but that's pretty repulsive to me for a light day!

I'm starting to hate PRs. I like the idea of getting a PR, i just don't like the post-PR excitement high that ruins a good night of sleep. I hate PRs. I think i prefer to get an easier less meaningful PR that doesn't mean much than a milestone one because it's much easier to come down from psychologically. Think i'll work that into my training philsophy from now. I've already been doing it with front squats, i get the odd PR here and there but for the most part I just try to make a hard (submax) weight much easier over time. And eventually it becomes easy at which point my max has gone up too, without fussing. Still, it's seductive chasing milestones like 160-170-180kg etc. I guess once in a while it's ok.

Quote from: ian459 on January 03, 2014, 09:04:33 am

What does this mean? The more you train your vertical in a certain way, the less it translates in other types of vertical jumps?

kind of. the more you groove a certain pattern for any skill, the farther the gap between your proficiency using that pattern and using any other pattern. t0ddday talked about watching jesse williams, who is a world-champion high jumper, jump around on a basketball court. off two legs or off a normal run up of any kind he could dunk weakly at best. but if he takes his normal high jump approach and then does a rim jump he can pretty much hit his head on the rim. that pattern is just sooooo much more efficient for him than anything else.

it's not that getting better at something one way translates less to other ways, it just means the gap grows. another example: imagine you're a chef and you get really good at chopping vegetables with your right hand. you can do that emeril shit where he's just going nuts and looks like a machine. but your left hand is only as good at chopping as it ever was, or maybe it's a little bit better but it hasn't kept pace with your right. similar idea here.

LBSS is completely correct but I think while the chef chopping example is true; I don't know how much a chef would expect his left hand chopping to improve as a function of his right handed chopping improving.  Right and left sides are innervated pretty separately so in this case I don't think they carryover would ever be that strong, even for a novice chopper.   What's important here to realize is that even when movements are functional similar; or one seems almost in fact to be a more difficult version of another movement that the carryover still goes away. 

Something to consider might be the standing vertical vs running (two footed vertical).  The standing vertical seems basically to be a more difficult version of the running vertical... Thus, whatever you can standing vertical you can running vertical that + x.   For most people that's totally true.  A poor leaping but coordinated high-school basketball player might have a standing and running vertical jump of 23 and 29 inches while a better leaping teammate may be able to jump 29 inches standing and be able to jump 35 inches with an approach.    If the poor leaping teammate trains and improves his standing vertical to 29 inches he will likely also achieve a running vertical jump at least near his teammates 35 inch jump.    HOWEVER... say he really focuses getting in the weight-room and focuses really hard on getting that standing vertical jump higher and one day achieves a 35 inch standing vertical.    At this point his running vertical jump may be hardly higher than his standing vertical jump.   Some evidence may be visible (he might now perform his jump from much deeper squat which looks drastically different from his running vertical jump) but in reality the movement he is now performing is less similar to the running vertical jump both mechanically and on a neural level.

That is the failing of specialization.  It's an important to recognize this because you don't want to fall into the trap of being that athlete who get's the standing vertical jump to 35 inches and then compares himself to NBA players who also have listed 35'' verticals and then comes up with an incorrect reason for why he can't dunk like those players (no offense to entropy here) which derails his training.

Their are countless head-shaking examples where people become so good at something that it pretty much boggles your mind how it does not carryover better to a similar activity.  One example for which there are hard numbers if the 400m hurdles.  The rule of thumb is that your time should be 400m time + 5 seconds unless your not coordinated at hurdling.   This makes sense because the 400m hurdles is pretty much a harder version of an open 4... It's 400m PLUS 10 3 foot barriers in the way.   What's shocking is that for the very best 400m hurdlers they can only run a bit more than a second faster in the 400m open race than when jumping over 10 hurdles.  If you talk to some of the athletes they will tell you that the 400m hurdles feels easier because the rhythm and step count allows them to relax and get into a zone which allows them to perform while the 400m open is chaotic and never "feels" right.

These examples serve to help us as trainers or athletes to enforce two principles into our training:

1) Calculators and Tables are not predictive for an individuals performance but rather a useful tool to suggest how to focus training.   For example if some table says that if you can squat X then you can jump Y inches.... This is not useful at predicting how high you will jump when you squat X (and you should not count those chickens before they hatch!).   What it is useful for is to help you design your training --- The table should be looked at for your current ability!   If you can already squat X but have a vertical jump greater than Y.... Then squatting might be a helpful tool at this point.  If you can squat X and jump much less than Y, then you are probably pretty decent at squatting and thus you are practicing a movement that is pretty different than your vertical jump.   The question that short sprinters ask is "how fast does my 60m need to be to be sub 10?" and of course there is no good answer...  However, if your running in the range of 6.5 and don't run sub 10.... you should probably focus work on your lactic anaerobic system...

2) When we program our strength training and axillary work we should focus on generally similar movements rather than movements which we think mirror the movement but have resistance.  We must remember that having even moderate*** resistance means the movement no longer is the same.  This seems counter intuitive at first.... shouldn't we at least try to get our movements similar???   The reason we shouldn't is two-fold.  Consider a high jumper who can either perform squats or heavy single leg bosu ball quarter squats.   The single leg quarter squat looks a lot more like his movement....  However, it's a lot slower.  Mechanically he now he has to train the complicated and similar movements of the high jump AND the strange squat which will slow down how fast he can get better at the only movement that matters (the high jump).  Additionally, while the single leg squat may currently seem similar as he increases his skill in the high jump he may now alter his form to increase hamstring recruitment.... Had he been squatting those larger hamstring muscles which now have a lot of motor units to innervate would have come in handy... Only he doesn't have them because he concentrated on sports specific movement.   Weight training should not be movement specific but muscle specific.  High jumping involves the legs so it makes sense to use exercises which best target the legs.

***Exceptions here... While we don't want to try to emulate sports specific movements with large or moderate resistance... This is not the case if added resistance is minor.   A high jumper may improve by performing jumps with a diving belt ( a 5-7 pound resistance ) for example as it will provide an greater load while not altering the movement to any degree.

For me, if I jump off one leg WITH the ball in hand I get much higher than doing anything else. That includes jumping off one leg WITHOUT the ball and jumping off one leg with the ball in both hands... there's a BIG difference.

Why? Because I have always tried to dunk off one with one hand, thousands of times. And I'm the best at doing that.

As always thanks to Raptor for providing a pathological example which illustrates the point better than any of the examples I posted! 

Thanks to T0ddday for making an interesting log to read! A lot of good stuff there. I definitely understand this subject far better now and have got a lot of ideas for how to improve my training towards attaining athleticism. From conditioning to movement and jumping, it's been enlightening to read.

My summary

• 60m sprints make 25m basketball court seem small and easy
• intervals of layups or dunks coast to coast for conditioning or 3 to 3 etc
• practising jumping with L-R plant (which i never do) compared to R-L plant (do 100% off the time!) while dunking with L hand or both but never with R
• keep doing everything else more or less the same

Game time dunking, raptor..

My favoured approach is R of the rim with a R-L plant while dunking with the L hand. I do the same thing from the L side too but not as comfortably. Would a L-R plant from the L side be more ideal? And I guess with the R hand would even be better. But I can't hold the ball as well with my R hand. Guess i could stand to work on my grip regardless.

Btw does anyone do windmills, what is good technique for it? Not for me, i'm asking for a friend who has 10% bodyfat..

Also this video is amazing. Watch STAT finish around the rim, it doesn't matter if there is 5 ppl around him, he'll dunk it anyway. that would prob be one way to dominate bullshit FIBA zone defenses. Wish i was a bit taller, wish i was a baller etc

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mBPFK5yqU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mBPFK5yqU</a>

and PR on 100pg log & 30k views ...