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You know....I bet you'd see HUGE improvements in your game if you played/practiced 3-4x a week and lifted just enough to maintain your current strength levels.

I'm what most would call a 'natural' athlete and ball player but if I take a few weeks off I'm very out of sync for a few days, especially if I've been lifting.

I hadn't read your entire log but if your goal was to become a better player you're approaching this all wrong. Yea its good to be strong but at what expense to your skill level? Reading your log I've always thought you were a lifter who wanted to play decently not a player who wanted to get stronger. If your emphasis is basketball why is it relegated to always be second behind lifting?

deaf ears, brah. deaf ears.

True he trains hard. But, if you want to look athletic out there...you need skills. I can take a monster NFL WR who runs 4.4 40s and jumps 40 inches at 6'4 220lbs and he'll look helpless in a basketball court because even though hes a beast of an athlete it wont translate into this game. Basketball is predominantly a skill based sport, being a beast athlete will only help if you have the basic fundamental skill set to showcase that athleticism.

Bodyweight: 92.5kg/203.93lb



Yesterday was australia day, and i went to play outdoor ball at the beach with some friends and they had a bbq afterwards which turned out to be amazing. I didn't intend to eat anything off my diet but it's hard to resist. Anyway, i had a couple of slices of bread, and about half a dozen, maybe more pieces of meat. About a cup total of /iced tea/dr pepper/. Came home, slept, and today i woke up weighing 92.5kg (!), and that was after having a 400mL glass of water, which i usually don't have have before weighing. So i had an overnight scale movement. And it checks out with the tape measure around the waist too, getting real close to 38" now, any day i'll be in the 37"s. So i'm making ok progress on the scale side of things.

Btw this marks 10 days into the diet. i've been pretty compliant except for last night's bbq, which to be fair was just a lot of protein and some fat, i guess, and some carbs which i took while glyocogen depleted.

Hoping to have a good workout today although i didn't sleep enough so we'll see how it goes.

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I didn't train in the end. I decided it would have been just another shitty day in the gym. I woke up with a weak grip, so i knew my CNS wasn't up to snuff. Will try tomorrow.

Looks like i've taken a 10kg hit on my PRs while cutting. I really hope it's temporary and i can recover my PRs once i'm done, because i worked really hard to make these gains, and it will suck losing them. We'll see how it goes, i am pretty much glyocogen depleted right now as well, it's possible if i had done a carb refeed i could have lifted more today. I'm also finding my body behaving very oddly lately, a dark fog has descended inside my head. I feel as though if i were sleeping better it wouldn't be there, but the reason i'm not sleeping well (deep and unbrken) is because well i'm not feeling so good, catch 22. I'll adapt, it could just be a temporary phase of adapting to using mainly bodyfat for fuel.

I'm taking bets for what my bodyfat will be when i get under 90kg/200lb. Will post a pic when I cross the threshold for validation.

Mainly just restricting calories bro. I eat a clean healthy breakfast everyday, 2 slices of wholemeal bread, 3 eggs, 1 scoop whey in 300mL lowfat milk. At night I eat about a bowl of carbs (rice or bread), 1 scoop whey in 300mL milk again, and about a deck of cards worth of meat protein (usually chicken). I do that pretty much every day without change. On workout days i'll have a coke around workout though, just out of habit, i should probably swap that out with something healthier! Yes LBSS i should eat more veges haha, but i'm saving that trick up my sleeve for later when i start to get crazy hungry, i can put some fibre in my gut to feel fuller and trick my body.

Nice, good to see you're trying. IMO, you need to try to get faster and faster in the plant... that tension in the amortization phase will call your CNS to recruit more motor neurons to stop you from collapsing/change direction, and faster, and that means you won't have to voluntarily generate power as much as you do now. It also means the recruitment process (of a high % of motor neurons) begins much earlier (since the tension in the amortization phase is bigger due to the faster speed (m*a)) - which means you have more time to actually develop power.

When you come at a slow speed, maybe counter-intuitively, you won't demand a strong stretch response from the CNS and therefore you won't get a lot of recruitment in the amortization phase (just what's needed at that slow speed) - so you will need to voluntarily recruit a lot of motor neurons in the concentric phase only. And obviously the concentric phase only is less time to generate power than the eccentric+concentric phases together. So you have to be really good CNS-wise to do it.

But this can only be achieved by training in this manner... trying to get faster and faster in the plant, as soon as you have your steps right (your movement efficiency becomes better and better) - time to increase the speed in the plant.

Chris, LBSS, i realise now when i took a wider stance, i was more on my heels if that's possible, which gave rise to that stapled into the ground feeling of being slow to react to the offense. Think of the powerlifter who sits back into the squat with a wide stance. But since we want to be able to move easily, I should have got on my toes with the wider stance. Pehaps that will help make it more athletic? I'll test it out next time i play in a couple of days.

Quote from: ChrisM on January 26, 2014, 08:16:51 pm

True he trains hard. But, if you want to look athletic out there...you need skills. I can take a monster NFL WR who runs 4.4 40s and jumps 40 inches at 6'4 220lbs and he'll look helpless in a basketball court because even though hes a beast of an athlete it wont translate into this game. Basketball is predominantly a skill based sport, being a beast athlete will only help if you have the basic fundamental skill set to showcase that athleticism.

that works but takes so much time (which really is the fun part IMO)..

if you want to look the part for BBall without doing the needed endless skill work:

- build monster calves, forearms, shoulders and back using compound movements.

- forget about traps, chest.

you will still suck at Bball offensively, but being very strong really helps with rebounding / boxouts. i play like rodman on the court. i may not match skilled players defensively too but i will wear people down until they don't bother fighting for spots anymore. 

Chris is right, i have this gap btw where my mind wants my body to go, and what my body does. It's long enough that, say for loose ball near me, i can't reach for and snatch it out before the nearest opponent, even though i had a better position. I have that lag. And as i play more, that lag gets smaller and smaller. I can def see the truth of what he says.

But what KF says is so true. I just wish I had been training my calves and arms all along! My standing barbell calf raise is coming along nicely, i'm up to 205kg next week. Will work up to about 220kg which is as far I think i can go til there is no space left on the bar.  These are already paying off, not so much in size (lol) but being able to pop off my toes quickly, good for rebounding or launching vertically in general.

re forearms, i'm doing chins now, regularly, mostly for abs (lol) but they're also strengthening my forearms esp at my heavy bodyweight. I should keep working them. My forearms aren't as big as they've been in the past when i did more arm work. Also ab roll outs do something for my arms too. curls do a much better job for forearms though, i just can't seem to do them consistently. i should.

re delts, and i'm coninced strong explosive shoulders help a lot in bball in all facets. my interest is esp for shooting stroke quality when fatigue sets in. should start doing presses again lol, just to work up to a bodyweight press and maintain it.

Yea, that should make a large difference. Playing on the balls of your feet allows for much quicker reactions. A few keys to a good defensive stance:

-Feet should be shoulder width (maybe slightly wider depending on how you feel).
-Play in the balls of your feet.
-Back straight, head up. Some find it helpful if there feet are pointed slightly outward it helps maintain balance in this position btw.
-SHUFFLE your feet don't slide! This, IMO, is a major point of defense that is taught all wrong. Shuffling in small lateral steps allows you to change directions quicker (feet spend more time on the floor at speed), you don't run the risk of getting your feet tangled, and you can make smaller adjustments in position.

As for the 'lag', that's probably instinct. The more you play the more natural your reactions (and therefore shorter time frame) become. Nothing beats playing but some coaches say visualizing game situations helps if you ccan't play. FWIW I notice a difference in my reactions when I play once a week vs 3-4x a week.

KF is right about being strong though, I had my first experience with a (much) larger opponent basically giving up because he thought he would post me up last week. After realizing he literally couldn't move me....he stopped trying. Awesome feeling.