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Quote from: entropy on December 30, 2013, 10:21:42 am

Also, and this is the most important thing I need to focus on -- get my fitness and conditioning up. That's the most athletic thing I can do for my game. I play good defense, or good offense, but i can't do both for more than a minute or two. Let me get my squat goals out of the way and i'll be a full time aerobic guy.

well, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. but doing some tempo sprinting and basketball-specific conditioning (defensive slides, dribbling up and down the court with layups at each end, etc., i'm sure there are millions of drills) would do you wonders.

Full time aerobic guy?  That will kill your game.  The best thing you can do for you game is become a knock down quick-release shooter and a semi-competent dribbler.  A 6'4'' guy who is a dead-eye shooter from outside the line is really hard to guard if he even a tiny bit of an ability to go past his man.

Listen's to LBSS's advice as far as conditioning and keep it basketball specific.  Tempo sprints are great for body composition and recovery from speed work; but tempo sprinting trains you to be an efficient at moderate velocity sprint work... something you NEVER do on a basketball court.   If you have the time you should get your basketball conditioning done with basketball specific conditioning... if you are pressed and need to lose fat tempo sprints are great because you can get a lot of work done in 20 minutes. 

i was kind of kidding about the beep test but not really: i think it's as good a measure of sport fitness as anything other than game performance.

Really?  I don't understand why the beep test is relied on at all.  The beep test is still totally aerobic.  Sure it's progressive aerobic cardiovascular endurance rather than a sustained aerobic cardiovascular endurance  (like mileage) which is WAY better but still far from optimal.  Basketball, football, etc. are still primarily anaerobic!!   Additionally the beep test also is poorly designed because it measures the absolutely useless skill of timing running speeds so they are running just slow enough to just make it during the initial beeps and conserve energy for the faster beeps.   

I think the beep test is popular because it actually predicts basketball fitness quite well because the intermittent beeps allow speed reserve to play a large role in the test.   A fast athlete like a Russell Westbrook will be able to rely on his speed reserve to use very little energy when the beep interval is long or moderate just like he can conserve a lot of energy running at sub-max speeds on the court ( when others are closer to max effort ).   This is however an "accident" of the test.   Speed == Endurance when the difference is speed is large;  rather than the beep test you could just have all the basketball players run a 50m sprint (even better would three lengths of the court with stopping and starting) and you would get similar results.   However, you are still just testing speed rather than disentangling fitness or endurance or testing that specific quality. 

This is the same concept behind short to long sprint training.  If you run a 22s 200m and a 49s (split 23, 27)  400m and increase your top speed so that you can run 20.x and 48s (split 23,25) in the 400m did you get more fit or did you get faster?  I would argue that you got faster but actually got less endurance/fitness.  Having 20.x speed allowed you to run 23s on speed reserve making it really easy to come back at 25s (which you couldn't do before)... but given your new 200m speed of 20.x your 48s time in the 400m is quite pedestrian. 

The beep test is a poor test because if we disentangle speed from the test we will find it's really quite useless.  For example if we take all NBA athletes and test their max speed in a three court lengths sprint (with stopping/starting) and then bin the athletes by ability; THEN see who performs best within the speed cohort you would be testing only which athletes have the most progressive aerobic cardiovascular endurance... which is a poor measure of basketball specific fitness.   

A better test has to consider the physiology better.  Even the above example (three court lengths) is really cheating because it is not a measure of "pure speed" aside from endurance.   Since running speed involves elastic reactive components and has to be progressively built up it's not really possible to test raw sprint power ie. it takes 3-5 seconds to get up to top speed and 3-5 seconds is long enough that the body will need to use the phosphagen system to regenerate some ATP - thus you are testing the ability of the muscle to fuel itself (endurance/fitness) rather than just the capability of the muscle contraction to produce speed.   A closer approximation to the muscle capability would be a flying run,  approach jump, broad jump or multi bounds.   

Assuming equal "speed capability", trainable basketball specific fitness would be better tested by a measure which measured the ability of the athlete to regenerate ATP during short and long bouts of periods of zero to no effort which are a very important part of basketball.   Basketball players have to move between all gears including really easy to really hard which requires that every energy system be well trained.   The reason I don't think you see a test better than the beep test is because pretty much every athlete at a high level gets whipped into what is pretty close to maximal shape for them just by the amount of playing games and practice that they do.   They are so fit that a lot of players sit out to avoid wear and tear and injury almost moreso than to regain energy.

LBSS, Todday both i mean doing some sort of aerobic work daily. I can certainly work in basketball drill work in that context. I am actually thinking of devoting myself to a dedicated training block of say 3-4 weeks where I work very hard on bringing up my conditioning. Like a Smolov Jnr of fitness. How would you would program that? Afterwards i'd keep up 50-50% work to maintaining and building strength and fitness.

LBSS is right in that i need something measurable so i can steadily and regularly PR my way to better conditioning.

If you watch ray allen shoot 3s, he's getting up several feet in the air on every jumpshot. He's doing that day in day out, whether out of breathe from running around on an NBA court or just practising in the gym! A mediocre athlete like me might only get that high on a gym dunk attempt. I can't get that sort of hop in my normal play, not when pulling down a rebound or even a game time move like a layup or dunk. Or exploding quickly at 105% speed to blow by a defender. Yes i can do that when fresh. Not a couple of minutes into a game playing hard D. That's got to be related to conditioning. If you have good conditioning you can probably unlock a higher level of raw athletic performance game time. I don't get why i can put 2.5ft underneath me when jumping up near a rim in ideal conditions. But find that same jump become close to 1ft game time.

LBSS, Todday both i mean doing some sort of aerobic work daily.

Umm... why?  As explained, basketball is primarily anaerobic.  Dedicating yourself to aerobic only conditioning will just allow you to spin your wheels.  Playing game after game of full court is far better than aerobic conditioning.   

I can certainly work in basketball drill work in that context. I am actually thinking of devoting myself to a dedicated training block of say 3-4 weeks where I work very hard on bringing up my conditioning. Like a Smolov Jnr of fitness. How would you would program that? Afterwards i'd keep up 50-50% work to maintaining and building strength and fitness.
LBSS is right in that i need something measurable so i can steadily and regularly PR my way to better conditioning.

I outlined an example you could incorporate above.  Three reps of 3 shuttle sprints.   You can play with the recovery if you like.  You could even do something like baseline to opposite ft line - back to ft line - back to opposite baseline, then 5 reactive backboard or rim touches THEN 20 seconds rest and repeat for a few reps.   Anything, you can come up with like that will help you more than straight aerobic conditioning. 

If you watch ray allen shoot 3s, he's getting up several feet in the air on every jumpshot. He's doing that day in day out, whether out of breathe from running around on an NBA court or just practising in the gym! A mediocre athlete like me might only get that high on a gym dunk attempt. I can't get that sort of hop in my normal play, not when pulling down a rebound or even a game time move like a layup or dunk. Or exploding quickly at 105% speed to blow by a defender. Yes i can do that when fresh. Not a couple of minutes into a game playing hard D. That's got to be related to conditioning.

No it doesn't have to be related to conditioning.   First of all Ray Allen does not jump several feet into the air on every shot.  He jumps between 1-2 feet off the ground on his jump shot.   I understand that you can't do that DESPITE the fact that you can jump 2.5 feet off the ground in ideal conditions.  There are two reasons why. 

1) Ray Allen is a much better athlete than you.  At this point in his career he spends zero effort working on his max jumping ability in ideal conditions while you spend lots of time practicing... however if he did he would jump much higher off the ground than you... say between 3-3.5 feet.   Just like the concept of speed reserve... he has jumping reserve on you and can jump 1-2 feet off the ground all day long because it's only 50% of his ideal jump.  Jumping 50% of your max is merely a hop; it requires no knee flexion.   You are trying to figure out why you hop jump more around 70% of your ideal jump....  but nobody can.

2) Ray Allen has practiced his jumpshot mechanics 10000x more than you.  When his shot comes off a dribble the momentum of the ball perfectly helps him rise up, when he has to step back and rise up his body coordinates itself perfectly to allow his legs to move slightly forward at the peak height to get him centered and high; his armswing with the ball is effortless and perfect.    This is mechanical perfection.   Let me give you an example for my case.  I was able to get my head a few inches past the backboard ( a 38'' inch vertical ) by practicing my running vertical jump where I would approach with speed plant my left foot first and then rapidly put my right foot down and rise up....  Pretty good.  But if I played in a game of basketball I rarely found myself getting close to this high on drives to the basket...  Not surprisingly I tested out my vertical jump with the opposite plan (Right, left)....  My maximum jump using these mechanics was hard to test because I was so uncoordinated it was hard to give a good effort... But we can ball park it around 25 inches.   I'm losing 13 inches of jump when I jump in an unfamiliar fashion and it's not due to a lack of conditioning!!!!  I simple have no mechanical efficiency using an unnatural plant.   Similarly, you can't jump well in your non-ideal conditions because you are mechanically inefficient at jumping during a jumpshot compared to Ray Allen.  But again, this has nothing to do with conditioning!

If you have good conditioning you can probably unlock a higher level of raw athletic performance game time. I don't get why i can put 2.5ft underneath me when jumping up near a rim in ideal conditions. But find that same jump become close to 1ft game time.

Cool theory but really makes no sense.  Your best bet is to work on (1) and (2)....  Get your maximum jump higher.   Realize that your maximum jump is the result weight-training and lots of jumping and as such may translate less to your sub-max jumps than someone who has not "maxed-out" their jumping ability so you will need more jumping fuel to get hire on submax jumps.  Work on (2) but drilling different kinds of jumps; practice drop steps both ways; doing repetitive rebounding drills; get mechanically efficient at all sorts of kinds of jumping.   But drop the idea that conditioning is going to help you jump much higher during game conditions.   From your previous posts I thought your focus on conditioning was for court speed which makes a little sense.... but when it comes to jumping and fatigue....  It's a pretty much all or none proposition.  Either the muscle has ATP or it does not; microtrauma to the muscle will usually be minor from basketball.  That's why you will notice you can still jump pretty high AFTER a game or two or three of pickup ball. 

Just because you brought it up.... Ray Allen's three pointer last year.   In that very clip though... Ray Allen's a distant second as far as the most impressive sub-max jumping going on.  Watch Norris Cole on the bench.... What is that like 8-10 jumps of 3 feet in about 5 seconds?   Those are not ideal jumps by ANY means... but Norris Cole can jump because that's what he does... jumps with fist bumps, jumps with chest bumps, just jumps all the time and has become really mechanically efficient jumper.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44T6FYdLcLc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44T6FYdLcLc</a>

So i've decided this a good time as any to begin the inevitable cut down to an athletic bodyfat level. Perhaps i've already accumulated a good amount of muscle mass underneath all this adipose (and yet i remain pessimistic about this in reality). In the meantime, I expect my squats to continue climbing up towards the magic 180kg absolute mark while relative ratios approach and surpass 2xbw. I'm not going to get greedy while shedding bodyfat, i'll keep training very tightly controlled around the limited recovery.

I'm just aiming to get my bodyweight under 80kg/175lb @ 10-12% bodyfat from today's 96.5kg/212lb @ 25% bodyfat.

Here is the obligatory progress & goal graph



Happy new year all!

Day #2

Bodyweight: 95.65kg / 210.87lb
Waist: 39.5"

I'll do daily updates for the first 3 weeks, then when cutting has become ingrained habit, updates will occur every 10-15 days.

Long term hypertrophy goals
I am committing myself to getting 17" arms, calves and neck. My measurements are around 14" atm. Will do calf raises and curls/chins every week for the whole year and hopefully add some size. At some point i'll need to do a specialisation block for each of these, to really make them grow. Dunno what to do for neck, just push my bench press up to 3 plates i guess.

Legs im happy with for now at 27" - but i wouldn't mind have 28" legs when lean. That's not really a goal just a nod towards improvement.

also, you have a 14" neck at 6'3, 215? holy shit!    i'm pushing a 15.5 at 4" shorter and 40 lbs less than you.