Background:

Cha59 and a 2p2 lurker who is a friend of mine have both independently convinced me to change my current workout to include complex barbell lifts. This log is for that transition to SS-type stuff and also for me to do support things to help with the Rec basketball I play. For now, I'm not going to get into changing my nutrition significantly and I understand saying that is a red flag to smart posters but I'm okay with that for now.

I'm breaking this intro into two sections to hopefully make it easier to digest and give helpful feedback (which I would super appreciate!):

I'm 30 years old, 6'0", and weigh 167lbs. (up from 160 in the last 2 years, but down from 220 from 5 years ago). My goal is to stay at a somewhat similar weight but stronger, leaner (not necessarily super lean), and "meaner" on the court.

Lifting Background & Plan:

My weightlifting past is pretty much all dumbbell lifts for upper body and machine or dumbbell lifts for lower body. So that's going out the window now. If I'm going to spend my time I'd rather start making it more optimal and getting stronger to see what kind of difference it makes.

I am very concerned with my form when switching to complex barbell lifts so I'm only willing to do something new if someone who knows what he/she is doing is there to give me immediate feedback during my first routine. Thankfully, I had the chance to train with Cha59 last weekend (at his infamous home gym, which is even better than the pictures) and did squats, presses, and DLs.

Here is my current programming closely based on SS (I'm going to do dumbbell versions until I have more training with him for the other barbell lifts):

Squats each work day, alternate bench/press, alternate DL/rows/pullups

mon - off
tues - squat/press/DL
wed - cardio/drills
thur - squat/bench/rows
fri - cardio/drills
sat - squat/press/pullups
sun - bball

Here are the form videos and feedback already given (which I'm going to focus on in my next few sessions) in his Cha's excellent log:

Squat form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGv4u-WEhQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1U1W-e8HA

Press: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbukCQobizI

Deadlift: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqYI-6TGFJs


Here are my main questions at the start:

1) SHOES! I have wide feet so *have* to purchase shoes that come in widths. What is the important attributes of a good lifting shoe, that comes in widths?

2) Is my frequency good enough if I can more or less stick to it?

3) And if I'm not following SS exactly, should I adjust how much I increase my lifting weight every session?


Basketball Background & Plan:

So I have a lot less knowledge and plan about wtf to do for bball so help will be REALLY helpful (at least for lifting I can just call Cha on the batphone).

I can't even touch the rim and have shaky left-hand dribbling. I've never really tried to up my athleticism and due to not really starting at an early age or being heavily coached, my fundamentals are all self-taught basically.

The only organized bball I played was a camp after 8th grade (UC Berkeley's coach at the time Bozeman put it on). My friend and I were literally the 2 worst players there. Then I played freshman/soph team in HS (300 person HS which won maybe 3 varsity games those two years combined) and wasn't even *close* to getting on the JV team.

So my real basketball experience came in college where I played a lot of 3x3 intramural basketball (DIII school). I relied mainly on my skills of:

1) wanting to win the most (effort ldo)
2) being overly physical (no refs ldo)
3) surrounding myself with shooters (I couldn't shoot outside of about 5 feet ldo)

After college I got fat (220 lbs) playing poker & watching movies in my free time and then 3 years ago got my weight back down and played on a rec team in Orange County. My experience with it kind of sucked. We had 1 ballhog team leader who just yelled at us the whole game, only passed after he got super tired, and then yelled some more when we fumbled the ball out of bounds not expecting it.

A couple years of playing pickup basketball at 24 hour fitness and at a Korean church here in MN (ldo I know, and the court is carpeted, x2 ldo) and now I'm on a "real" 5x5 rec team (lowest division though).

We play a zone defense most of the time (which I had never played before) and I'm the 2nd shortest guy on the team (our other guys are all 6'1"-6'3")

My current skills:

1) playing smart (it's amazing how helpful just playing within one's abilities is)
2) rebounding (o-boards 4tw)
3) hustle (loose balls, tipping the ball, setting screens, etc.)
4) passing (both identifying a useful pass and making it)
5) solid mid-range shooter (but somewhat slow release and tentative)

I think I have tons of room for improvement in raw areas like my vertical, strength, dribbling (moving while dribbling), and ability to score in 5x5 situations (I'm too slow and indecisive).

I really don't know what to do for basketball training, up until now I just shoot around a bunch at spots on the court I rate to shoot from during a game.

Questions:

1) Wtf should I be doing besides just going around the gym shooting from where I rate to shoot from in a game?

I'll stick to answering the lifting questions.


1) Not a USAnian, but I seem to recall Rogue VS being decently wide? The most important attribute of any lifting shoe is a solid heel for support.

2) It depends on what you mean by cardio/drills. If it's pretty high intensity and/or lasts a long time, you'll probably get burned out on this schedule. You'll need to eat a LOT at least. If cardio/drills is like 10-20 mins of metcons or the like, you're fine.

3) Looks close enough to SS to follow the advice given there. Switch to barbell versions ASAP, since DB squats/DLs and the like sound...well, not ideal. So there's that caveat.

Btw, imo you could easily put on another 10 lbs and still be ripped as hell. For comparison purposes, I'll prob be around 11ish % BF at 180 lbs, 6'0".

Good luck.

Good 1st log post imo.

Post more about what you're eating now imo. Be honest and wear your flame ******ant suit. You will get very good advice on diet here, and its not all going to be "GOMADZOMGWTF!!"

Read SM's log & follow his diet advice imo. 11% is really low BF%. I'd bet its a lot lower than yours is currently (we can check it next time you come up here if you're interested). Lots of others here are very lean AND HEALTHY as well. Open your mind & listen to them.

My suggestions as to specific lifts each day must have been confusing. I'll try to make it clearer later.

Those don't appear to come in widths. Solid heel support is a helpful start for me to look into. Hopefully using the shoes I have now is "fine" until I get to the bigger weights.

I don't really know what I mean yet. Not sure what metcons entails (even after googling) but yeah, 15-20 minutes of intense cardio /w breaks. Like running line drills? Whatever seem optimal/efficient from advice in here, .

I guess I should have mentioned more clearly, Since Cha went over squats/DLs/Press I'm doing barbells on those starting right now. It's the row and bench that I'll be doing dumbbells for another week or w/e.

Not concerned too much with being ripped but I would like to stay relatively light as it seems better for long-term health and basketball imo.

Thanks! Cha already warned me about you being helpful and knowledgeable .

I can be open to this. First I'd like to get into this new routine and come up with some sort of decent plan for basketball specific drills/cardio or w/e.

Yeah I'd be interested in BF% test, I'd guess I'm above 11% too as I don't really try to do anything specifically to cut it down but I probably could/should.

Thanks.

Allowing yourself to put on some muscle will help with lowering your BF%, but you need to eat more for that to happen. You wont get fat by eating some more protein while on a lifting program. That would only happen if you eat at a huge surplus. You'll need more calories (& protein) than you're eating now for the lifting to be effective. People here can help you figure out a good way to do that without getting fat. The recovery days will be a lot less painful if you eat more than you're eating now.

This is what I had in mind yugo:

Cha,

That's what I thought you had in mind for me, . I just didn't write it out very well in my post as I got rushed at the end of the day but knew if I didn't post it I'd likely go to the gym and not follow through at all.

Diet will be the next topic for discussion after I get into this new program, deal?

4/19 log

Ok, so I just went to the gym and did "B". I give myself a C- grade, only passing b/c I showed up and didn't not do squats, lol.

~20 mins rolling/stretching:

My gym has a foam roller!! It has 2 actually and the reason I've never seen them is they keep them behind the desk b/c ppl steal them and they are pricey (my gym also has literally 50 bosu things btw, not that those suck, but the ratio seems suspect imo).

I remembered how to do all the rolling Cha taught me but only remembered 6/10 of the mobility exercises, .

I did:
push-up plus (just the plus as that is enough for me at this point)
Dynamic blackburns
side lying hip abductions
walking spiderman
ankle mobs
light squats with a kettleball

I couldn't remember how to do the rest.

I remembered 2 out of the 3 activation exercises he taught me, , although a passing grade right?.

I then proceeded to do squats on the only squat rack in the gym. Someone was using it so I basically had to wait. Then I proceeded to spaz out and loaded up 100 lbs off the bat and did 5 squats (which was my work weight at Cha's). Not sure why I did this tbh. I can only imagine my form wasn't great as I was very distracted by ppl walking by and stuff. V strange. Like sitting down at your first live card game and spaz shoving J9o on the first hand.

Then I did warmups and tried 110 for my working weight but then went back to 100. So it went like this:

100x5x1
45x5x1
65x5x1
95x3x1
110x3x1 (the side of my right glute was really sore at the bottom and I figured I'd just do 100lbs)
100x5x3 (I'd like to think my knees were staying out and my heels weren't bouncing but I'm not sure)

I then saw someone on the Smith machine doing partial squats with bad form and felt not as embarrassed.

Then I did:

65x5x3 dumbbell bench press (is it 65 or 130 lbs? hopefully I'm doing barbells soon so it won't matter if I learn this)

70x5x3 dumbbell rows

Then I left the gym vowing to review all my notes for next time, bring a written out plan, my headphones, and execute the plan like Chris Paul.

Tomorrow I'm dousing myself in fire as punishment. And then doing some cardio/bball if the court at the gym is free.

If you did squats with form close to what you did them at my place, that's probably better than 99% of the people in your gym.

I'm curious about the DB presses - that was two 65 lb dumbells, one in each hand? If so, thats heavier than I expected you to be able to do.

Nice work on the rows.

tl;dr

Yeah 65lb dumbbell presses sound pretty high for starting out...nice work.

Rule of thumb is warm up with the bar for each exercise. (but I dont do this with the DL)

yeah, warm up with the bar for your first set of squats & bench presses. You'll probably be ok warming up with 135 DLing. Make sure you do enough to get warm before moving up to your work set weight from now on.

Yeah, I still gotta learn them right though!

Yes, two 65 lbs dumbbells. My "old" routine was 45x10x1, 55x9x1, 65x6x1 or something like that. So I figured I'd go for it and try 65x5x3 once I had warmed up with some smaller dumbbells. I had to wait a while between set 2 and 3 though since I'm used to not waiting around much and set 2 I barely got the 5th one up.

Thanks. My form maybe breaks down on my left arm rows but I dno, it likely isn't too horrible. I've never tried 70 lb dumbbell rows before I don't think, always stopped at 65, lol.

Thanks! Hopefully that means barbell bench will progress solidly once I start.

Yeah, I'm going to definitely remember to do this for anything barbell I do in the foreseeable future until I'm v comfortable with barbell lifts. I think I was just so unused to doing anything with a rack I kind of blanked and just started doing random crap.

For DL yeah, I may add a bit of weight to begin with so it at least feels like a lift.

For the DL, if you stick a 45 lb plate on each side of the bar, that puts it at the right height.

Just quickly wanted to add that you can DL every session to start with. Novices can recover from DLs very quickly. Friend of mine who just started did this and got his DL up to 280 for a 5RM after a couple of months.

rogue do wins are pretty good for wide feet. I have wide feet and just got a half size bigger than I would ordinarily wear. Fit me perfect.

Are any of these weightlifting shoes available in retail stores to try on? It seems like Rogue just ships directly and I'd have to pay shipping (and then $8 each time after the first exchange) in order to try on multiple sizes and shoes to see if any fit well.

To be honest I don't know what it's like for other people with wide feet but I can't really just guess my size and cross my fingers ordering a shoe online, I'd estimate that would have a 20% success rate tops unless I was ordering something I actually tried on before and felt confident about.

4/20 log

Instead of getting baked I went to the gym and without any good plan for bball specific cardio/drills/whatever, I shot around at a brisk pace and then played some 2 on 3 (1 player was a kid) and won the first game and lost the 2nd. It was super helpful playing 2 on 3 as even though they sucked, it was crowded and I got a bit of experience trying to score in a crowd. I was frustrated as I really should have just been unstoppable but I missed quite a few close shots.

For now I have a feeling my non-lifting days will be "lame" like this until I concentrate on getting a real plan.

4/22 log

Well this went a lot smoother and better overall. Definitely proud of myself.

Foam rolling
Mobility warmup
activation

I did ALL of the things Cha taught me. I have to say my abductors suck and my glutes likely suck too as they definitely "work" a bit just from doing the warmup routine.

Squats:
45x5x1
65x5x1
85x3x1
105x5x3

I had my g/f watched me and saw some knee "cave" on my last set and that I wasn't going below parallel like I was in earlier sets - but I assume I was still doing them quite well. I had my ipod shuffle back (lost & found at the gym, they had it in their safe, lol) and felt much more competent & focused.

Press:
45x5x2
65x3x1
75x5x3

The last set I'm not sure my form was all that great as I barely got the last rep up completely, but I did get it all up and keep my head out of the way, .

DLs:
135x5x1
155x5x1
175x5x1

My gf said she thinks my lower back was "ok" during my 155 set from what I asked her to look for. I'm really not sure how good my form is on these but it feels pretty ok for now and I'm sure Cha will have some pointers the next time I workout with him.

Pullups:
neutral grip - 5x1
"curl" grip - 5x1
opposite grip - 4x1 (I did 5 technically but swung big on the 5th and hit the wall which I think helped propel me up, meh)

This weekend I may try to obtain a foam roller, leg sleeve thing for DLs, and a lacrosse ball.

nice - keep it up!

Tomorrow's probably not going to work for your next trip up here - probably too short of a notice for you anyway, and too good of a chance something will come up with my family. Next Saturday could work, but I'm not sure yet. I'll let you know.

Thanks! Once I'm a couple weeks in hopefully I'll have more video and actual Qs for the rest of the forum.

Yeah, np, I assumed tomorrow wasn't a good day. Next Sat should work for me either way!

4/23 log

I did a full mobility warmup with foam rolling and activation stuff. And then did intervals (somewhat light but I was just dripping afterwards) on a bike as the gym was in use by the Easter Bunny.

I can now more or less remember all the things to do without looking at the printout Cha gave me, so that's kinda cool. My legs definitely feel different than before I started foam rolling but it's still too early to tell how big of an improvement it's going to make. I still have bruising (I've always bruised easily fyi no matter my diet) but I think knots are getting worked out and I'll be in much better overall shape in terms of sore/"stiff" in a couple of months.

Tomorrow the gym isn't open so I guess my next weights day is Monday. A bit slow going here at the beginning but I'm in no real hurry for anything.

4/24 log

Ate a bunch of ham and cheesy potatoes (and salad and fruit salad). And then had to sit for a few hours reading but then was gtg to take my bike out with my g/f.

We rode for ~1 hour. It was my 2nd bike ride since I was a kid. Pretty fun imo. I can see why billions of people ride bikes, :P. I'm not quite good enough to really go on autopilot and just enjoy the scenery though, meh.

4/25 log

Now I'm like a pro. A pro who likely doesn't have perfect form and isn't very strong, .

Foam rolling - 10 mins.
mid+upper back
lats
side of legs
quads

Mobility warmup - did all of the things and barely had to look at my sheet. The abductor things still make me sore (or I was already a bit sore there). Super weak imo.

Activation - not sure my quad stretch is as good as the one Cha showed me but there's no good place to do it his way at my gym. Still, seems to get stretched out solidly.

Squats: (I worked in with this guy who was doing squats. He had bands attached to the barbell and would go down not all the way and then "bounce" back up onto his toes for a couple of reps. Then he did a bunch of other springy stuff - perhaps for his vertical? I dno. He did a lot more weight than me, )

45x5x1
65x5x1
95x5x1
115x5x3

My knee cave was seemingly better and the outside of my butt was much less sore which I think helped a lot. Squats seem pretty complex so often I will concentrate on one thing (like depth) and then my knees will cave. Bah!

Bench (with dumbbells for now still):
25x5x1
35x5x1
45x3x1
55x2x1
65x5x2 (I didn't think going up to 70 was gonna work for 5 reps.)
65x6x1

DLs:
135x5x1
155x5x1
185x5x1

I tried DLs a month ago after reading a lot of Starting Strength but without Cha's supervision and strained my lower back somewhat. And it's still not "perfect" imo. So I think I can keep going up in weight on this but I'm not really sure about my form and such. My g/f says my lower back is definitely better than in my videos earlier in this thread so that is a good sign.

Next time I'm at Cha's I'm sure I'll have him pay special attention to my DL lower back form.

Pullups:
neutral grip - 5x1
"curl" grip - 5x1
opposite grip - 4x1 (this are so hard, not fair!)

Overall I'm pleased with the workout and looking forward to the next one!

Nice job.

When you do the supine (glute) bridges, try to push your knees out at the top. That will make the glutes fire better and that will help when you squat.

You wanna come up here this Saturday? A little later in the day is good for me, like late afternoon or early evening. I'm not a morning person and definitely feel stronger later.

Thanks!

Hmm, push my knees out like to the left and right, respectively? I haven't been doing it but will try it tomorrow.

Saturday would work fine, I'll email you about it.

4/26 log

Did foam rolling for back/lats/thighs/quads - 10 mins

25-30 mins - Elliptical machine and recumbent bike while reading a book. I set it to intervals but it definitely wasn't all that difficult. I was dripping sweat everywhere, so that makes it seem hardcore, .

I also bought a lacrosse ball which I'll try out today during warmup on my pecs and calves.

I also ordered a nice foam roller and chalk online. And some Oh Yeah! bars, lol.

Later today will be m

Interesting log. I actually started lifting for hoops as well. I was 6'3, 185 at the time, and being asked to guard some 6'5+, 220 plus guys in the post in a hyper competitive rec league. After a few months of SS, I'd gained significant size and strength and was incredibly happy with the results on both ends of the floor. I found I could finish with more contact on the offensive end, as well as lean in people in the post instead of getting pushed off my spot - but I could also body up defensively and didn't have too much loss of quickness.

Unfortunately then I bustoed my ACL and haven't played since =(.

While everyone on here who's seen my power cleans will tell you they still suck, I'd highly recommend learning them as they seem the most applicable to hoops of all the BB exercises.

Nice job and keep it up!