Adarq.org

It's really sad that "good basketball" is so unexciting.

I have the same problem... if I could I wouldn't eat anything any day, except maybe chocolate. I don't care about food at all, in fact, I hate it with a passion.

You know I was eating my soup and I was thinking about what LBSS was saying that even though he has good strength his jumping is not up to par.

And it occured to me that maybe he has some antagonistic inhibition of some sort. It would ring somewhat true considering his sprinting numbers (bad sprinting speed etc).

If he has been doing so much low bar squatting and he's decent in high bar squatting as well, then it must mean his quads and glutes are decently strong. His feet/calves apparently have been improving lately.

Then it must be that the hip flexors, hamstrings and possibly tibialis anterior (to a lesser degree) could be culprits in this equation. If that's the case, if I were LBSS (I might implement this regardless in my training) I would do 1 set of supine psoas leg raises (with cables), leg curls and toe raises at the end of each and every workout.

I'd use a 20 rep set for each exercise and a weight I would confortably lift for 25 reps (so these 20 reps aren't to failure or anything so bad that it interferes with your main strength exercises). So I would do one set of 20 psoas raises and then stretch the hip flexors for 2 minutes, 1 set of 20 leg curls then stretch the hamstrings for 2 minutes and one set of toe raises (or walks on heels) for about 30-40 reps then stretch them for 2 minutes.

This would increase both the hypertrophy of these muscles & ALSO increase the awareness of the CNS that they are there and they can be used as breaks/they can be depended upon when the agonist muscles fire. And if they are dependable AND they are flexible (which you're doing both of doing what I wrote here) then the CNS can fire the agonists, which are the glutes, quads and calves in your actual jumping mechanics at their strongest ability.

If the CNS is NOT aware of these muscles being strong and flexible then it will automatically limit the power output of the agonists and this will occur, in my experience, at the end of the movement (which is paramount for jumping) - at the end of the movement because doing so it will prevent the hyperextension of that joint (a thing the antagonists should do as their job).

By the way, here's the psoas exercise:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBcw4OtXRc0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBcw4OtXRc0</a>

Good luck!