Adarq.org

Training
FSB 1x130, 0Fx135
BS 2x2x132.5
BBS 2x3x137.5, 1x142.5, 1x150, 0Fx160
CR 2x15x205 (PR)
BBALL ~ 90 minutes

Why don't you start doing 4-6 weeks of explosive work? Depth jumps, jump squats, KB swings, hang cleans, hang snatches, speed squats, explosive box squats, box jumps, broad jumps, bounds, plyos of all sorts and jumps to the rim.

To me, you're already pretty strong and maybe it's a good time to get into such a cycle right now because, again - that's what you seem to lack the most.

Because i'm still cutting, limited recovery resources. I have another 5kg of bodyfat to lose yet. I do plan on doing it though, just as soon as i'm below 85kg, i'll let the remaining fat loss come from conditioning alone. Hopefully it won't take to long because i'm running out of time. I agree with you my reactivity deficit is far greater than my strength one.

For the record, i am under 91kg now, just barely, have seem to have hit a wall. Hoping to wake up a kilo or two lighter in the next coming days, that would get me back on track.

That's a really good point bro. I've just never been strong enough to do anything more than just basic lifts. Maybe some day. Sigh. I hate myself lol.

Training
WCU 1x112 (PR)
WCr 2x20
LR 8, 10, 10x105kg (PR)

Notes:
My triceps were so torched by the time i was done with that lifetime chinup pr, that I couldn't do my volume sets afterwards lol. So that sucks. I kind of keep finding myself doing 4 training sessions per week which is not ideal. I just don't know where to put some of these lifts without making any oneday too long/difficult to recover from/. I will do a seperate post on this actually.

Here is the story. My lifts are all over the place, i'm losing anywhere from 15kg to 40kg on my squats since january when I wrapped up RSR2. I'm finally adapted to playing basketball and come out well recovered the day after. Which is great news because this means I can keep improving my game skills gradually. My conditioning is still very poor, i'd put it at 2/10, and only because I feel I made the jump from 1/10 yesterday. Still really really fat, the more weight i lose, the fatter I think i am, which i think is a normal and unfortunate feature of cutting.

So in this situation where i'm struggling to keep my head over water, when i'm trying only to lose 10-15kg on my squats, i don't really have time to add in extra exercises which prob won't do anything for me right now because they'll eat into recovery for squats. Yes i know in theory you can do make it work, in practice i am already struggling and that's without even doing any extra work.

I really am quite stuck right now for ideas. I know there are a ton of ideas out there, but i have to reconcile that with my body and personal experience and i know most of the programs would never work for me.

I haven't even got a day to day plan for what to do in the gym. Kind of freestyling it based on mood and feel.. :/

My only advice is to stop worrying about the squats right now. It sounds like you've got a lot of work to do to get fit, fast and skilled for your bball comp. Something has to give if you're cutting. Unfortunately it just seems you struggle to make strength gains from bulking stick during the cut back down to weight. Which kind of makes you wonder if for you, that whole strategy is flawed. This is long-term thinking of course, but have you ever considered NOT bulking/cutting, just trying your hardest to get to an athletic bodyfat %, establishing baseline strength levels for the major lifts, then centering your training around speed and basketball skill development and periodically alternating between short-term power/RFD blocks WITHOUT drastic bodyweight changes?

From what I've seen all over the web and in real-life in my club (and mostly from what my coach has been telling me), developing high bar squat strength during the 'off-season' (or other similar heavy, 'slow' compound lifts) is great for developing sufficient musculature and a power base for the 'season'. The power base is continually utilised during training for your specific sport (sprints, basketball, volleyball, whatever) and more of an emphasis is placed on the increasing measures of power during the season (i.e. broad jumps, std triple jumps, bounds, shot tosses, verticals, power cleans and other oly lifts). HB squat strength of most of the guys in the club usually decreases during this time, simply because it's not done much and the neural connections for the particular movement are de-emphasised. The coach will attempt to ensure his athletes aren't dropping too much strength during the season by keep squats semi-high intensity but with lower volume to make sure the important stuff is done well. For example, atm he prescribes 1x10@10RM (75% load) after all power work is done. Other coaches might do higher intensity lower rep stuff but it works for him. Now, would it be good if squat numbers went up during the season as well? Of course! But it isn't realistic in highly trained athletes (even amateurs like us), and probably not crucial either.

He also subscribes to Charlie Francis and others in that athletes shouldn't need to gain excessive mass over their careers. His rule of thumb is body fat should be kept in single digits during on-season and it's OK if it goes to double digits during off-season, but never over 15% (depending on natural bf levels). In other words, if he saw how you have been training over the past few months he would probably have a heart attack  . Just food for thought.

I def can't argue with doing more RFD work. I know I need that badly. But, i'm going to defend the bulk. I had to gain enough mass to make myself a better lifter. It was at the point i hit around 95kg bodyweight at the end of RSR1 and during RSR2 i didn't gain any weight but my lifts really took off. It was because i had enough mass then to really push my lifts up. It's quite possible if i had started a 3rd cycle of RSR then, instead of cutting, i would have maintained my bodyweight and put my lifts up into respectable territory, 165kg beltless, 180kg belted, 150kg front squat, etc.  And that would have been awesome, but i really needed to get the cut started.

So I did, even though i wasn't strong enough for my purposes to be cutting. Ideally my belted would be around 190kg, my beltless 170kg, and front squat 155-160kg or so. At which point I could just maintain my worksets and maxes while cutting, which is easier than what I actually ended up attempting which was to put 10kg on my lifts. But that didn't work out at all. Instead i've gotten weaker, a lot. But merely maintaining my lifts at end of RSR2 would not have been that great anyway which is why I tried to do more than that.

Right now at 90kg, i could probably maintain my bodyweight, and get back to my previous PRs, but to exceed them i'd have to gain a kilo or two. That wouldn't really win me anything though, considering i'm too heavy to do anything awesome with the strength. So i'll keep cutting, i'll be under 15% soon, and hopefully when i cross  under 85kg, ideally 83kg or so, i'll be close enough to 10% (maybe as high as 12-13%) to stop actively cutting and start to eat more food and do a lot more training. I'd be working hard initially to get my lifts up though. But while maintaining my bodyweight.

Yes but subjecting yourself to RFD work still counts as muscle damage and that muscle must be repaired and grows, so even with a lower time under tension doing explosive work - you can still get very strong. It won't be displayed in the gym, it will be displayed on the actual field.

And if you're an athlete and not a powerlifter, then that's what you should care about.

I know people in the track and field camp that barely squat with too much volume or intensity, yet if you take them out of their never ending plyometric world of bounding and hurdle jumping and long jumping and sprinting and put them in the gym for a few weeks they will start to display amazing strength due to all that plyo work that they have been doing.

It works the other way around too - if strength (squat) work can improve jumping, then jumping and sprinting and bounding can improve the squat. Why? Because they both improve strength. It's just that one does it faster and is less specific while the other does it "slower" but is more specific.