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I'm back at my PR of 120x5. The problem is - after I do my squats I'm just dead for days. I can't play ball well, I can't dunk well, I can't jump, tired etc. I'd like to be fresh and able to finally display my strength explosively.

For that to happen I'm thinking of ditching the squat workouts and stay with doing very low volumes every day. Like work up to 95% of my 1RM every day and that's it in terms of strength.

Basically like this every day:

30%x5
60%x3
80%x3
95%x1

And that's it^^^. Every day in the morning. This hopefully won't be tiring so I will be able to play/do plyos while providing enough volume over the week to maintain strength. Now obviously maybe this isn't the "right time" as far as strength is concerned since I just tied my PR in the squat but... I just want to play and enjoy playing.

I also found out that I'm much more reactive/elastic when I stop (high volume) squatting so...

Well because it's summer and I can't play ball or dunk because I squat. I can squat all winter long when I don't have a place to play, but right now it would be cool if I didn't have all that squat fatigue in my body and I could enjoy playing after squatting non-stop all winter long.

I feel your pain. I recently made huge gains when I stopped squatting and started working solely on explosiveness/jumping. But my high bar squat went down to where 315 x 1 was a real challenge. I've been focusing on the squat again with Smolov and can hit 335-355 most days (I warm up to a heavy single each session before the volume work), but my jump has lost a couple of inches. Still a few inches higher than it was a couple months ago, but not as high as it recently was and that's a little frustrating. And I seem to have lost all pop in my running jumps.

But that's the way it has to be. I focus on squats and lose some jumping ability. After a few weeks of that I focus on jumping and lose some squatting ability. And so and so as they both edge up over time and I get to the point where I just maintain both when it seems I've hit my peak.

It helps to have long-term plans. For example, I love competing in powerlifting, but working on the bench and deadlift and low bar version of the squat just doesn't comport with my jump goals right now. So I'm not putting any pressure on myself to enter a meet till next year. This is the summer of the high bar squat and vertical jump. It will be the fall of the broad jump and the sprint and possibly the low bar squat if I feel it helps. I'll worry about my bench and deadlift in the winter.

Breaking it up like this keeps me from worrying that I'm not benching anymore and losing strength on that lift...or when I'm benching and deadlifting that I'm not pushing up my vertical. If you want to play b-ball better while everyone is on the courts, I can definitely understand that. Just promise yourself you'll hit a Smolov-Feduleyev in the fall or winter and put ~100 lbs on your squat to the exclusion of all other goals.

In the end it's your personal decision and a matter of priorities. If the priority is increasing VJ asap, then it is certainly a counterproductive strategy to go to maintenance every time you tie a former PR .
If that is not your athletic goal anymore if it does not have that level of importance anymore then sure, go ahead and enjoy playing ball. Nothing wrong about that either.

It's like "inseason" for me at this point. So it doesn't make sense to go all out with squatting only to go to the park and suck hard at dunking and playing ball.

Don't you have to be relatively fit to play full court ball?, in terms of work capacity/conditioning?.

How does squatting increase work capacity/conditioning?, (to a good extent)?.

I know putting out a 10km+ distance average in a 90min soccer match (still play soccer), you need FAR more than a decent squat/strength-weight ratio. If I did no conditioning work, but had the squat of Andy Bolton, I would be legless after the game (well I would probably be legless at the end of the 1st half actually).

Does squatting alone set you up for full on agility fest?. OK, your not NBA standard, but those boys must put in tons of conditioning work to get through a full game?.

Shouldn't you actually be thinking way past just strength/squatting?.

I think I can work up to a 5RM but eliminate the additional volume sets without too much fatigue.

And yes, I meant squat every day but in very low volumes (one top set of half squats).

I have no idea. Maybe. Probably. Is one rep at ~95% that hard every day?

Quote from: Raptor on June 25, 2011, 03:18:19 pm

I have no idea. Maybe. Probably. Is one rep at ~95% that hard every day?

why don't you just do a daily max (no grinders)? much better imho!

Good idea^^^