It's raining and I'm bored so I thought I'd add a little more detail.
I haven't touched the weights since last September, but I plan to mess around in the driveway in the near future.
I've been working on my jumper at the local park a lot lately. I tweaked my foul shot form a bit and have had good results. Previously, I had been shooting flat footed. My results had been on the decline for years from the stripe. I decided to add some calf contraction a la the great Ray Allen. Now, I'm a little bit higher with my follow through, which makes for more swishes and less front rimming. I also have been doing some other drills, including a hard two dribble drive from the top of the key to both elbows, followed by a pull up jumper. I've been hitting that shot a lot lately, though I haven't had a chance to play any real ball yet this summer.
I hope to get a few shots in later today if this rain stops.
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I'm currently injury free and feeling great. My left knee does bother me sometimes. I dislocated it when I was 22 and it's never been 100% since. I have to wrap it up when I do high impact stuff like skiing. The warmth created by wrapping it up is all the difference imo. I don't wrap it for light impact stuff.
Also, my left glute medius was mostly seized for a period of ~7 years thanks to wearing a tool belt too much and golfing. The result was years of sciatica, a partially seized left lumbar, lots of tfl tension, and generally feeling like **** on my left side. Lots of massage, streching, and lifting made the difference here along with quitting golf and not wearing a tool belt anymore. It still seizes up sometimes, but it hasn't been a chronic problem muscle for me in the past few years.
Besides that, I'm 100%, whatever that means.
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I suppose my diet could be better. I don't eat many veggies. I'm on meds that make my cholesterol levels worse and my dad's side of the family has a long history of circulatory system and heart problems. On top of that, I'm a heavy smoker. I drink often. So it's safe to say that I'm quite unhealthy. Shrug.
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Here's an excerpt from my "Poker Goals n Challenges" thread with some rambling free of charge:
I haven't played any poker since my last update. Instead, I've been drinking lots of beer, eating lots of steak, working on my jumper, and generally having a great time.
A good friend of mine is coaching a summer league basketball team and she asked me to tag along one of these days. So tomorrow night I'm gonna help out at a practice with some of my favorite shooting and dribbling drills that I think can help improve scoring abilities. I have <2 years experience playing organized basketball, but I have tons of experience scoring on average defenders on the blacktop. This is my plan that I posted in the health and fitness forum's basketball thread:
Quote:
I'm lending a hand coaching 13 year old kids on Monday night. I'm pretty sure the coach is gonna let me take the guards aside so I can have them do some dribbling and shooting drills. I have very little experience with organized basketball, but lots of experience scoring on average playground opponents. I'm going to start with an emphasis on the triple threat, from which most scoring opportunities present themselves. Imo it's all about what the defender is giving you as the potential scorer. This means driving hard when the defender takes away the outside shot and pull up jumpers from ~10-15 feet when they take away the drive. Working on driving with both left and right hands is really important imo, so I'll probably have them do a lot of that.
For shooting, I'll have them start off with some foul shots to check form. Then we'll move it back to the top of the key with a big emphasis on getting the legs into the shot. I'd also like to see how they do with catching passes with a shooting grip and squaring up nicely before shooting. Footwork will be the emphasis as I don't really care if they make many of these shots.
Dribbling will be lots of figure eights getting as low as possible as I think this is the best drill for improving hand eye ball coordination. I'm thinking we should do this before they start to get tired because technical stuff is best improved with fresh muscles. So maybe immediately after the foul shots.
How does my plan sound?
Link to basketball thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/85...thread-562845/
In my eyes, there are a lot of similarities between poker and basketball. In both games, you gotta take what the defense is giving you. Of course, the execution of a plan is much easier in poker and you have lots of time to effect a strategy. In basketball, you gotta think quickly and act quickly. However, the exploitation of an opponent is the ultimate goal. Even great defenders must execute or be exploited on the court. Much like in poker, where even great opponents will have exploitable tendencies that we can exploit.
My favorite baseball player of all time, Greg Maddux, once said that he can spot the slightest changes in a batter's approach. If the batter crowded the plate in the slightest bit, Greg would spot it. He'd throw that knuckle curve right at the batter's face. Then, if the batter adjusted by backing off the plate even the slightest bit, Greg would paint the outside corner with a very modest fastball that flew at around 87 miles per hour. Some high school kids throw faster than that, but Greg was such a master of pitching that just a slight difference in speeds between his fastball and change up, combined with masterful control, made things very difficult for batters. So you might have the intellectual equivalent of a 100mph fastball, but without masterful control of that intellect, you're gonna end up leaving money on the table.
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I'm going to the practice tomorrow night as well.