Adarq.org

you get quality dialogue because you obviously care and put in really hard, dedicated work, and your whole process is out there for everyone to see and engage with.

^^^ This point exactly.  This is really the whole appealing thing about the community and what Adarq created.  I have been training/coaching/in the athletics community now for over 15 years but Adarqs training model was unique in that his big question and challenge as a coach was: "Can truly excellent coaching, training and science application take a low-level or mediocre athlete and turn him into a high performing athlete?".    His posts and his goal were more about the vertical jump and so his framework was always claim was always that truly great coaching could take himself from a 20inch to 40inch jump which would be more impressive than going from a 35 inch to 45 inch jump or something like that.   

The question I am more interested in involves track and field and it's one I am not certain I know the answer to.  I have made some gains in sprinting speed myself but the first time I stood up out of the blocks wearing distance spikes I ran 11.54 just on the athleticism I had developed from team sports... even at the peak of training my best races in perfect conditions were less than a 1 second improvement so I can't really say that I was ever a great sprinter...    The "great coaches" of the world get handed athletes who run 10.1 as high school kids and turn them into 9.9 runners which is equally unimpressive but also not shocking because their are of course limits to human performance.   I have trained some great athletes and some not-so-great athletes and like Adarq the question I want to answer is can you take a male athlete age 20-30 who has normal body movement and is say an "intramural level" athlete and put him on the track and watch him run say 13.5 seconds.   With proper training and coaching can I make that same athlete run 11.0 seconds?  11.5 seconds?   12.0 seconds?  I want to know the answer to that question...  Even moreso than the vertical jump their is this refrain that speed is not something that you build but something that you are born with.  Obviously, their is some truth to that.... but is speed more like height or body mass on the continuum of changeability.    I like to believe that 13.5 to 11.5 is possible for 80% of men.... Of course I don't really know and I probably believe it based more on faith than evidence.

Most times I engage in coaching or training with one of those poor athletes they tend to make silly excuses ("I'm just not fast-twitch like you are", "I'm more of a natural jogger", "I'm white", "I'm asian", etc.) or get just far too nerdy in their quest to get faster (RJ Nelson thought DB-hammer would make him run 9.9x, Selfialluh thinks he needs to worry about his frontside mechanics) or plain get distracted by something else (like real life - Mutumbo has to get a job!).   That last reason is why the question is hard to answer!  A 13.5 second 100m is not going to get anybody to support him to train... he will have to have a job and a life and those things may make the question of whether it's possible that IF he was trained like a high-performing athlete he would get significantly better!  But, it's still a question I want answered!

All that said that's why this msg board is great.  Track boards have far better athletes.  But this board has a unique number of athletes KF, Entropy, LBSS, etc who didn't start out elite.  But are able to balance out their life to train like semi-elite athletes and see just what they can achieve.  Of course we don't have a lot of guys with singular track goals which would make things more fun, but it's still enjoyable to be part of the quest for jumping or whatever.   The big problem I see currently with Entropy is "WHAT IS YOUR GOAL!!!".   You are only 6'3'' and were a fat horrible athlete and now you are catching oops in games!   That's ridiculous improvement.  Amazing.  BUT.... what's your goal now?  Is it to jump 38'' inches?   Run 12.0 in the 100m?   I wish you would get some type of explosive athletic goal and quest for it because this nebulous goal of being good at basketball is not that fun!  We know you can be good at basketball.... I went to a Lakers game the other day and Steve Nash is shorter than you, less athletic than you, 100 years old, suffering from 15 injuries to ever muscle, AND still put on a passing clinic and probably had a +/- of over 10 in about 18 minutes of game time...  Obviously, this is somewhat tongue in cheek, basketball is fun and if you want to excel at it keep it up... But the great dialogue you get is a reward for you amazing dedication to athletic requirements your willingness to be the oft-frustrated science experiment for scientists and trainers like myself... after all you named your journal chasing athleticism NOT chasing 20 pts and 10 rebounds a game.



 

Training
FBS 122.5
BS 1x130, 3x112.5, 3x107.5
WCU 5x95, 3x100, 2x105 (PR?)
BP 1x87.5
BBALL training ~ 2 hours - shooting, dunking, ball handling etc.

Squat notes:
Those damned sprints I ran on sunday really messed up my legs for lifting this week. i mean it's wednesday and i still haven't recovered. It was only like 8x60m or something stupid like that, and only reason i did them, was cause i wanted some unfit team mates to raise their conditioing so i thought i should also participate. The way to improve my conditioing isn't by running sprints though, it just inteferes too much with the rest of my training.

Basketball notes:
I did acoles challenge and matched his 11/12 effort. I was annoyed i couldn't better it though, but i'm not a great shooter right now. Hopefully as i devote more time to practice i'll become a good one. Haven't got much time, only 8 days left til the tournament. I'm so not ready haha.

I've got dunks on my phone. Anyone wanna see? It's nothing special but i wouldnt mind getting some feedback..

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Bodyweight woes. SO to start with i was dunking shit, and yes LBSS i was warm. it was just a max effort kind of hting, and i wasnt dunking so easily. And that persisted. But as i sweated and got light, dunks got easier and easier, til they were childs play. And this is with some 20-30mins breaks while watching games at the rec center, so it wasn't like i was super warm, just sitting there getting cold til i got a chance to dunk, waiting for the court to free up between halves, etc. I came home and weighed myself and i was 84kg (no clothes), which means that's my ideal playing bodyweight. So i should be waking up in the morning around 82.5kg - something i have been feeling intuitively for a while. No matter.

I wouldn't worry that much about it.

Post the vids mannnnnnn!

Bodyweight: 84.05kg / 185.3lb

So scale dropped out of the blue. Im not even trying to cut, just training a lot. Idk.

Training
Terrible session of basketball. Coach went a bit over board, kinda ruined the whole vibe. OH well.

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Got basketball training tonight. Going to push hard.

DIPHENHYDRAMINE, BABY!!!

Bodyweight: 82.6kg / 182.1lb



Wtf... how did i get so light, so quick, lol. I really need to get a good night of sleep one of these days.. im fucked. Have another game tmr night but hopefully i'll just play little minutes and get my rest on til friday. Btw i dont think i'll be lifting at all this whole week. I would have yesterday but i went to play a game instead.

Didn't win, i had a bad game, was on the bench for most of it, deservedly, probably. It was my 7th game for the week, 5th for the weekend. A lot to handle for a stressed out 30 year old without amazing fitness. Crazy. As I went thru the tournament, i got fitter as well, which was cool. I got leaner as well. Anyway im not going to dwell on it, all that time and effort put into training, didn't really get the return I would have liked. I just got overwhelmed by playing against top competition, my defense was ok but offense was horrible.

If i play again next year (big if), i'll just embrace what the universe has been pushing me towards, playing as PF. I need to put on a lot of weight though for that. But it makes sense, im just not athletic enough to be a great small forward. Oh and i really should have spent a lot of time developing a reliable 3 point shot if i was going to play SF, because it would have helped a lot. Still. Power forward. What does that mean, i hate playing in the post but i think that's where i belong, once i've filled out my frame some more.

Oh and fitness. So important. I wont ever neglect it again. I need to keep improving it slowly over time. Right now it's good. But it needs to be great..

And need more confidence in the post playing against good players. I can beast it in training against shorter or lighter guys who aren't trying that hard. But come tournament, you've got big strong 6'6" dude pushing back and I just mentally check out before completing the move.