Do you purposefully keep the belt that high? I've read about keeping the belt that high for deadlifts somewhere, but I forgot where. Maybe it was in a video by babyslayer or something.
1) Do quick consecutive jumps without too much muscle contribution (explosive muscle isometrics, tendon contributions); 2) Coordinate yourself at high speeds generating high amounts of power; 3) Generate good triple extension in a jump after a significant prestretch has occured; 4) Generate a ton of power quickly (same as 1) - quick voluntary power generation + accumulated involuntary power (tendon deformation + additional neural activation) = a high jump = a powerful movement = win); 5) Not collapse in high speed plants (quickly lock up, similar to 1)) / make use of your calves;
And there must be others but this is what came up in my head in 20 seconds.
If you can show me how squatting accomplishes 1), 2), 3), 4) and 5), then yeah, go for squatting only.
If not, but you want to focus on strength training now since it's winter anyway, then at least do a bunch of plyos/jumps before the strength work, and stop beating yourself to death with maximal failed attempts. That's all I'm saying.
Anyway, I've talked way too much already so... whatever you choose to do, good luck.
It may make a small difference (say 2-5%) but that's about it. That's not a good return of investment. I know i'll get more out of squats than any of that plyomumbojumpo. It's an icing to the cake, something you do when you've tapped out from squatting. IMHO.
Translation:
"I know you're right... but I don't want to do plyo work because I suck at it and I will get depressed by my display in it. So I'd rather continue strength training and pretend nothing works, so at least I have something else to blame besides myself".
And to add to that - what you're doing in the weightroom does not really promote hip extension and DOESN'T promote hip hyperextension AT ALL. And these two things are paramount to jumping and being athletic (and even healthy).
Could you do stuff for the actual hip extension and hyperextension in the gym? Well, yeah, you could do hip thrusts, you could do KB swings, you could do cleans and snatches.
But you could also do hip dominant plyo work (bounding, off both one and two legs) and jumping and sprinting in general. These also promote actual triple extension instead of the deceleration that occurs with squatting at the top.
So, the thing with the squat is yes, it's the best muscle builder exercise. But it's not THAT specific to jumping. It's an assistance exercise to jumping, running, sprinting etc. These are all displays of reactivity.
You don't get athletes going to a spot, taking 10 seconds to pause and take a standing vertical jump in a real life, based 100% on their squat strength. If you were training like Kingfish specifically for the standing VJ (although I don't know why, but still) - then yeah, squatting alone would kinda make sense.
But if you want to be an athlete, if you want to be able to USE all that strength in a "functional" manner - that is - jump and dunk in games, get past your defender, be able to change directions etc etc etc - then you gotta do reactive work. It's not that complicated to understand.
Well, I have the perfect proof in the world for you:
Back in the day I was training on the track with a guy, we called him "the curly haired" or "Cretu" in Romanian.
And he was the slowest, weakest, most slow-twitch guy you have ever met. He would suck so badly that everybody was making fun of him. He was long as heck though (not out of the world long, but long).
And he was training for the high jump. And man he was weak. He was looking like you are right now moving around, but without your strength levels.
But he kept at it and continued to train on the track for the high jump. He did this for (now) I think ~10 years or so.
Hey LBSS, do you actually do a progression (different exercises than the bounds themselves) or you go directly into bounds?
Because I suck much more than you at them, I can't even visualize in my head what to do (for the LRLR version).
I also partially disagree with Today - yeah, you might not get the hip action yet, but you get plenty of calf and foot "stimulation". So let's not ignore that part, especially for you.
That's exactly what I thought of when I read "hypermobile" in lowerback, knees and hips (although hypermobile knees is something I have never heard of). Hypermobility sounds like a compensatory thing for a hypomobile other joint, and the only joint left would be the ankle.
But guess what? Doing these bounds will also build dorsiflexion, if you use the proper landing/planting mechanics (and you seem like you do in your videos). So...
Just for the record, i am with raptor here. Good fail or bad fail , it is a fail and it fucks up your CNS plus increases injury risks. Not that you should never fail or that your progress with that programming was not jaw-dropping anyway, but imho failing too often is not optimal. You could have achieved even more. According to your preferred style of training, i think you could benefit a lot going kingfish-style: Not daily, you will AREG the frequency. But whenever you train, build up to a heavy single ( 90%+ ) and try to evaluate how much more you had in you like he does. When you repeat a couple of +20lbs sessions, advance. If you need the volume, add a back-off set, but look again how much he reduces the weight, he singles 450lbs and does back-off with 315. Also look at how patient he is to get a PR, he might wait for weeks or months. Finally look how he AREGs the whole thing, carefully deloading and waiting for his body to recover when beat, constantly attacking when strong. Just another possibility to consider
This ^^^
I mean look, if you feel you need volume right now, and it's a good time to do it, by all means - go for it! Just pay more attention to recovery and you'll progress and it will also be less frustrating.
Do some depth jumps in the gym or ankle jumps, jump squats, very low volumes. 2x10 or so. Before squatting. It will also fire up the CNS a bit so they might benefit the squats if the volume is low enough.
Also KB swings work well to warm you up and potentiate that posterior chain.
But my understanding is that you're focused 100% on strength work right now, with no basketball, plyo or any explosive work whatsoever.
And when and if you get strong, you're going to come back to power work and see your strength numbers drop once again, and get you depressed once again.
You need a way to maintain your power and movement efficiency in a strength block, and a way to maintain your strength in a power/plyo/dunk block.
Yes, but if that's your plan, don't MAX out... "kinda max out". Go 95%. Don't go full 100%.
Go for a daily max. Work up in weight set to set in your warm-ups until you get to a weight that is heavy, but not grinding. If you do this, you won't blow up your CNS, you'll give your body the time it needs to adapt (and to adapt to an actual lift instead to adapt to failure) AND you will be able to repeat this more often (more good exposure = more adaptation) while still being fresh enough to do other stuff.
That's the point I'm trying to make. If you really want to max out literally, do it every once in a while. Train submaximally, but say every month or so max out and see where you are and how you've adapted. Then back off significantly after that max out day, doing easy stuff for a while (say, for 3 days after your max-out day use 80, 85 and 90% on your max single instead of that 95%).
Yes but you need more volume for what? Is strength your current focus, dissing everything aside? Because yes, a higher volume, assuming you recover well enough, is better for strength gains, as is a higher exposure (frequency). But the question is - do you recover well enough for you to progress? If doing more work was the answer, then we'd all be squatting 8 hours/day 7 days a week and be the best athletes in the world.
It's the recovery where you grow, but you already know that.
And your display of failed attempts can mean one of two things: overtraining or just poor judgement on choosing your weights. And even if it is "just poor judgement", that will eventually lead to overtraining. You staying under a maximal weight (or even heavier) bar very often and failing will eat a ton out of your CNS and your recovery abilities. If you don't deload soon, bad stuff will happen.
I used to do this, back when I still scoured t-nation for useful articles, thought Dan John was more than a high school PE teacher
^ lol
relax raptor, that overtraining, HIIT nonsense is bs. Naturals have to work hard and lift heavy/hard to make progress. You read too much nonsense from people who like selling their easier sounding pussy training bs off as wisdom
Not at all. Naturals can't afford to work as hard as people taking steroids, or as genetically gifted people. Why? Because they lack the recovery abilities of those people. If there's anything that steroids or good genetics does, then it's great recovery, among other things.
So a hard gainer actually needs to work less in order to maximize recovery.
The fact that you list endless failed attempts does nothing but to prove your continuous road towards overtraining and ultimately, failure and even health risk.