Bro, you're getting stronger than me again

I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility.

I've decided that in my experience, I can do pretty well at strength maintenance if I diet pretty aggressively for a month, but nothing longer. So I kinda like the idea of eat and lift for 5 months (not gain too much weight, just enough to progress) and then diet for a month, rinse and repeat.

All with basketball in there somewhere of course.

Which reminds, me I went and practiced today.

I had to buy a new ball because I have nfi where mine disappeared to. I was out there for about 75 minutes, working on mostly just shooting and dribbling. I did:

50 free throws in 8:45

I shot like AIDS on the first half but found a good rhythm in the second half so avoided at +10 minute finish.

Def gonna try and get out at least once a week besides playing ball to get practice in, thats good.

I filmed myself dribbling for a few minutes and just kinda cut it down short. Just trying to dribble without looking while keeping it crisp. I'm still kinda inconsistent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W95jvVB9Fmc

You seem to be able to move laterally while dribbling quite well, I was a bit surprised - I assume I'm way worse at that.

One thing I did notice was that every time (I'm pretty sure every time) you dribbled forward you looked at the dribble before the layup. You can get away with that, but it's a sign to me that your ball handling while doing actual moves maybe needs work or you're still not that confident in it.

I'm also a bit jelly* - you looked pretty smooth given where I assumed your dribbling would be at.

*Not too jelly though, I doubt you have the old man moves I have, .

Hmmm didn't notice that, I'm sure it's a habit, I wonder if its necessary.

The good news is that I'm still brushing off the dust that accumulated from taking a month off, and it's a brand new ball that felt slightly different.

Def stuff to keep in mind

5/1 seems like an optimistic split, but I guess possible if you're eating in a very controlled manner. Say gaining around 1 lbs a month on avg. It's actually what I aim to do once this final (!!!) long cut is done.

I mean, I think it would be tougher without basketball but from feb-July I pretty much weighed exactly 190 putting zero effort into my diet. I mean, I basically done eat any sweet stuff, but I drink a lotta beer, pizza, burgers, Chinese etc.

But yeah 1 lb/month gain would be fine, I could even stand 2/month but would try to or anything

2/lbs month would prob lead to a 2 month dieting period, which might be just as fine if it makes you enjoy life more even if the extra kcals mainly come from crappy sources. We're not exactly Olympians here.

Yeah, it's hard for me to tell if you actually are looking at your dribble, or it's habit and/or "putting your head down" on the drive. But it "felt" like what people do who need to look at their dribble when making a fast move to the basket. In-game though, you should be looking at the rim/angle/defense/etc. if at all possible instead of looking down or at your dribble - unless your move is to put your head down and then still have time to look up....I think that's legitimate but it kinda seems you're head is going down to the point where you can't even peripherally sense what's happening around you.

The more I think about it, the more that has to be a huge leak in my game. I think it's a combination of putting my head down to look at my dribble and sort of like a weird running back/foot ball move or something. It's gotta be wrong.

Yeah I think that I've had to many balls swatted, not found good looks, and and just generally made way too many avoidable mistakes by doing that weird move. I hope its not a hard habit to break.

Thanks for the input,

Your turn for dribble video

It may or may not be a huge leak, but good to think about. I mean D-rise and Westbrook constantly just put their heads down and power to the rim....but, I mean, they also don't have to obv on a drive and can make sick dishes to others.

But I know you post a bunch about being dedicated to passing and making sick passes, so I assume your aim isn't to just be the guy who gets the ball, puts his head down, and chucks up a shot every time he touches the ball. On the other hand, if you have a lane to the rim, putting your head down and gettin' it done is probably the way to go.

Also, please realize this is coming from someone who has very little face-up game. Like every time I play 1v1 I end up having to revert back to back to the basket play almost exclusively...I can't really dribble around almost anyone out of nowhere....I can if I can throw a pump fake, or catch them off guard or whatever, but it's not like I'm the expert on faking out ppl with sick crossover dribbles and then getting to the rack, .

Alright I lifted today.

Squats: 225 for 5 sets of 5 reps

Just keeping up the maintenance

Bench 1RM Test: 205

Meh, not as much as I hoped. But adding 10 pounds to a 1RM is pretty cool I guess.

I'm gonna eat more, sleep more, and work harder and see if I can do better this week.

10 lbs over how long a time? And you're not still close-gripping your BP right? #distance coaching

3 weeks or so of smolov

Yeah back to normal bench

I think I shoulda tested it on friday or saturday

10 lbs for 3 weeks seems ok to me, depending on the diet. You might have gotten the same results from just following 5/3/1 or TM and eating tho, and increased your other lifts as well...

Adding 10 lbs for 1rm is fine if you don't suck at benching like I do. I'll hit 225 after this cycle of smolov

Call me drunk but

I'll accept all bets up to 100 that I will

Alright, started my 2nd cycle of smolov jr for bench tonight. Looking forward to banging another cycle out. Here is what it looked like:

Bench: 140 for 6 sets of 6 reps (70%)

Laughably easy, hopefully that just means I'll be able to hit the heavy sets later on

Life is good, WIM

OK I forgot to update my log on saturday after benching, here is what I did:

Bench: 150 for 7 sets of 5 reps

Still really easy.

Now onto today. I think I've been dealing with some mania, I slept all of about 1 hour on saturday night. So unfortunately the notion of sleeping twice in between every workout (except the last 2) is not working this week. Bleh. Oh well, hopefully I'll make up the sleep later this week.

Here is what my workout looked like today:

Squat: 225 for 5 sets of 5 reps

Just banging out some maintenance squats, same as usual.

Bench: 160 for 8 sets of 4 reps

Week 1, workout C on the smolov jr bench program.

Now I'm officially trying to bring PLO to my work. Redding is pretty far behind the times, but I think I've rounded up enough interest in it. Ideally this is gonna be super profitable for me.

Anyway,

Life is good, WIM

Just a quick update from my workout today:

Bench: 170 for 10 sets of 3 reps

I'm pretty happy with how this felt, I'm really hoping to do the program as prescribed instead of 5 pounds less on every set the second two weeks. I'll see soon enough.

Now hopefully my buddy gets ahold of me for the basketball league tonight

Life is good, WIM

So I texted my buddy yesterday, asked if we were still gonna ball at 7. Hours pass and no word from him. I text him again at 6:30, he calls me and says he just turned his phone on he's suck in traffic like 4 hours away and won't make it. But they needs me to go and play in the 1st scrimmage.

As an inherent introvert, showing up to play basketball with the strong possibility of not knowing anyone doesn't sound that great. But wanting to play basketball, get some exercise and get the league going was enough to override my introvertedness.

So I showed up, looked around desperately hoping I would know someone... nope. I just kinda stood around not even really knowing where to go, trying to imagine which team I might be on of the groups standing around. So I went to the scorer's table they told me I was on team catalyst so I figured I would just go around asking everyone who team catalyst was until I found them. Luckily I got it right on my first try.

Unfortunately the guy in charge of our team was dealing with a back injury so not able to play, we had 4 players of the 8 listed on our team there to play. We picked up another player and warmed up. The game was 40 minutes long, two halves that were 20 minutes each.

My team looked good with the eyeball test, were were pretty tall, reasonably athletic looking, they knew how to play. However we had some pretty big problems. I was really rusty and struggled on both sides of the floor. Our big guy was having knee problems and although good he just could really beat anybody on offense or on D and couldn't move laterally. We also didn't really have a PG. The black dude ended up kinda doing it, and although he wasn't bad at it, he wasn't that great at it either.

We kept it pretty close during the 1st half, I think it was like 38-41 going into half time. But not having any subs really sucked in the end. The other team played really good defense, and our team wasn't good at communicating so i kept getting confused on who my defensive assignment was because everyone kept switching with all the subs they had.

I forgot to check the final score but it was close to a 20 point loss, like 80-60. They shot hot fire behind the arc at the end so that was kind of annoying. Everytime we worked hard for a basket, they would dribble down and chuck up a 3 and make em over and over. Just annoying.

So hopefully I'll get back into shape here pretty soon and get back into a rhythm and be a contributor. As it is right now... no so much.

Anyway, life is good, WIM

I realized I didn't update my workout log on thurs or saturday.

Here is what I did thursday:

Bench: 150 for 6 sets of 6 reps (70% +10 pounds)

Laughably easy still

Here is what I did on saturday:

Bench: 160 for 7 sets of 5 reps (75% +10 pounds)

Was happy with the lack of difficulty here.

Now I'm working out, will update when I'm done

Alright, I worked out today, at least I remembered to update my log. Just a standard monday workout:

Squat: 225 for 5 sets of 5 reps

This is the best this has felt in a long time, probably because I've been eating like crazy. And my form felt better than usual.

Bench: 170 for 8 sets of 4 reps (80% +10 pounds)

Glad how easy this was. I actually couldn't remember if I did 8 or 9 sets, either way it felt good.

On the basketball note -

I'm super frustrated because apparently this league thing wants to go on monday nights, and I spent the entire month of September working on a project that now involves my commitment on monday nights. Seriously it's so tilting to have 2 different commitments that only want to go at the same time. Argh. So I'm going to try my ultra hardest to do both, but I doubt it will work.

Other than that,

Life is good, WIM

I hope you get to play in the bball league...and that it is more fun than the one I was in.

I'm trying to find guys currently to play in a 3x3 league that goes during the winter - I have no idea how good/bad it is but 3x3 is fun!

Also - where is the monthly update in the LC thread? Everyone loves the JF recap, it's essential for the performance of the upcoming month!

Jf, What programming are you following these days?

Right now I'm just squatting 5x5 on mondays while doing the smolov jr bench.

And trying to play basketball a couple times a week