Thanks Peez, not sure I would agree, but I appreciate the kind words. If I can maintain my strength or slightly increase it while playing better on the basketball court this year (wasn't lifting before last season), I'll be a happy man.
Squat (M)
225x3x5 Very hard. Played 1 hour+ of half court pickup basketball with some of the local high school's football team last night. So, legs were predictably tired. The league starts next Weds, so depending how I'm feeling after a full court game at league intensity, I may need to scale my Thursday squat back just a touch.
SGDL
-60 185x2x5 Read something from I believe Hanley about starting the SGDL at ~50% of conventional 5rm. Well, that would be 155 for me, but I went a little higher just because I've already been doing these for a month or so at a much higher weight. Still scaled way back from last week, so hopefully my 3 plate conventional 5rm attempt goes well on Sunday. Tried to pull these FAST.
03-10-2016, 08:41 AM
Agilic
Stoked for the league next week. I'll give some boring details since I have a minute right now just incase anyone is into basketball.
It's a 4v4 league on a 75 ft court (15 shorter than regulation). Last year was myself, a shorter guy who's a shooter but can also put it on the floor and drive a little bit, a 5'9" hyper athletic and strong "bull" type player (guarded a 6'10" guy straight up last year in the championship game and easily won the matchup), and a 6'1" outside player who's pretty shifty and could shoot, score, and get to the basket. We won the championship fairly easily as we could all shoot so pretty much every week at least one of us was hot from 3 and we'd feed the hot hand and play off of them. If all else failed, me or the 5'9" would try to get in the post for some easy looks. Or the 6'1" guy would iso his guy if he had a weaker defender he could take advantage of.
This year, the 5'9" guy just had wrist surgery, so he's out probably the 1st half of the season, and the 6'1" guy just backed out.
The roster will be: myself, the shorter guy who can shoot from last year, and 3 new guys:
Guy#1: coworker who's about 5'10" who I've only played 1v1 with once but seems like a solid overall player with a nice jumper. Word is that he is very fundamental in a team game.
Guy#2: never played with him, but he's a 6'3" guy who can apparently bang down low on D and really rebound, and is also a good shooter.
Guy#3: never played with him either, but evidently he's 6'1" and very athletic and can easily dunk
Last year was 2 20 minute games a night so we felt fine with no subs, but this year is 1 30 minute game, so we wanted a sub to stay fresh (2 subs when injured guy returns, incase somebody can't make it 1 week, injury, etc.)
Should be fun, can't wait to get started.
03-12-2016, 11:44 AM
Agilic
Press (I)
+1 lb 107.5x6 Blah, lost a rep. 6th pretty grindy, no attempt at a 7th.
Bench (V)
+1.5 161.5x2x8, x7 8th rep was an all out grinder. 2nd set was better (got even tighter). Failed 24th rep about 1/3 of the way up...thought I was going to grind it up but I may have given up on it mentally :(. I think I'll still bump it up a pound and just move to 5x5 for a stretch.
03-13-2016, 08:05 PM
Agilic
Squat (H)
+5 240x3x5 Brutally hard. 8-9m rest between sets and I needed all of it.
Deadlift
315x1, 275x5 No explanation. Lost 2 reps from last week...I did all unweighted walks this week and took creatine all week and lowered my SGDL. Was expecting a stronger pulling day, not a weaker one. Even the backoff was much harder than usual.
Chins
3x6
Played some 3v3 half court pickup in the evening. I definitely notice a difference on the court with the lifting in terms of driving to the basket, defense, rebounding. 3pt shot is just streaky, but that's to be expected. I'll probably need a few weeks of league action to get my timing and conditioning to a decent level, but we should have a good enough team that I can afford to ease into it.
Is a week enough time to determine I'm a nonresponder to creatine? Tempted to just try BCAA's this week and see if they help.
03-16-2016, 12:16 PM
Agilic
Ceasing use of creatine for now and started use of BCAA's on Monday.
Bench (I)
+2.5 177.5x5 Ugh, a 2.5 lb increase cost me 2 reps. I may start loading this by 1 and 1.5 lb rather than 2.5.
Press (V)
+1 97.5x3x8 Hard, but bar speed was okay enough where I should have a little more progress on 8's.
They started taking trees down at my neighbors directly next to my sons room where he naps. Surprisingly, he was sleeping through it fine until my dog decided to start barking. Therefore, did not get my chins in. I don't wanna tire myself out anyway before basketball so I'll just chin tomorrow after SGDL.
Apparently there were a bunch of last minute entries (word is teams are gearing up to try to strip our title this year, good luck I say), so the league coordinator couldn't get a schedule done in time, meaning tonight will just be a 30 minute scrimmage (still refereed), and afterwords we will get our schedule for the year. I think this will work in our favor anyway as I was nervous about instantly integrating and clicking with 3 new guys right off the bat. Our 6'3" guy had his work schedule changed and had to bail last minute, so we picked up another guy who I have never played with who apparently is a very fast, strong defensive point guard. Looking forward to getting to work tonight, trying to get my basketball conditioning up and some chemistry with the guys. We're all planning on going to the outdoor court about an hour early to practice/play since the actual game won't count in the standings anyway, no need to be fresh.
Not sure if I mentioned it yet, but I thought it was pretty cool that a professional bball player wanted to play with us. He's 27, played D1 ball, and now plays professionally in Australia, but is here during his offseason. We were mixed as a team about taking him on but we ultimately decided it would be way too easy to win the league with him and therefore wouldn't be as much fun. We encouraged him to put in a team so we could have some stiff competition but I don't think that he did.
03-16-2016, 01:56 PM
foothills_g
Exciting! Going with the smaller faster lineup should be fun.
FWIW no one ever wants to talk about creatine it seems, probably because the internet is filled with bros attacking each other over giving bad advice. But I take it, though not on a schedule and not religiously. Usually I'll have about 4-8g in some sweetened (honey) water before I go do something heavy. If I've forgotten to take it in a while I might put a little more in my PWO whey shake (which I also do, though not religiously). The reason I'm writing this is that I'd recommend trying a larger dose, not in pill form because who knows how much actually gets digested, before lifting. I also think if you did something hypertrophy-ish to accompany it (like, um, DIPS!) it would probably help on the upper-body pressing stuff.
Here's to an awesome season! Stoked for you.
03-16-2016, 04:09 PM
Agilic
Hyptertrophy!?!?!? You see my sets of 8 on the presses?!?!?!
In all seriousness, you're right, I should order a dip attachment soon.
Edit: and thanks for the tip - yes, I do plan on giving creatine another try after I can determine whether or not the BCAA's are doing anything :)
Do you BCaA?
03-16-2016, 07:21 PM
Agilic
Successful first night. Got there about an hour early to work on my shot, which was off for a while but started to find it at the end. The team was scrimmaged is not one of the better teams, but not one of the worst. It's a little difficult to gauge our team because the 2 outside guys we picked up are ridiculously fast, quick, and athletic but clearly weren't going anywhere near 100%, likely because they didn't feel challenged. We were up 29-21 at halftime (15m halves), I was 2/3 from 3 plus a missed reverse layup, not feeling very confident in my shot overall however. Was trying to make it a point to move the ball around.
With about 5 minutes to go we had been hanging around up from about 6-8 points, mostly because of some lazy boxing out and getting back in transition (hopefully not an issue when the games count and those guys take it more seriously), but it felt like we could pull away at any time we needed to. Well, I guess I kinda took that upon myself. Beat my guy down the court and our pg found me for an open 3 which I nailed. Next time down they found me again and I caught, shot, and drained another one. Ditto for a 3rd time. 3 in a row is usually when the other team gets pissed so of course they decide to try to lock me down. I take the ball up left hand side of the court and pull up as soon as I hit about NBA 3 range, with the guy tight on me. Swish. Next possession, brought it up to the middle of the court, pulled a few dribble moves, then a quick step to the left and pop. Drained my 5th in a row. Of course I had to try the same thing again, and I got another good look but clanked the 6th attempt pretty badly. Oh well, felt good to get it going again. We won with a final of 64-51.
Oh yeah, and the pg threw a ridiculous back door alley oop to the big man who threw it down ferociously, I told one of the guys videoing to send it to ESPN for sports center top 10.
Edit: it was a good thing we decided to go with a sub...there's no way to condition for full court basketball other than playing full court basketball. I called for a sub about 3-4 minutes in, I was gassed. Overall, I was tired but held up okay for about the 24-25 minutes I was out there. Definitely much better than I was starting out last year, and I expect it to get better more quickly than last year also, due to my training.
Some of the guys congratulating me after the game asked me where I had been playing ball recently, and I said I haven't, just working on my game by watching steph curry highlights.
03-17-2016, 09:08 AM
Agilic
Woke up with a sore and stiff low back from basketball. Low back feels not sore and stiff after some squat and pull magic.
Squat (M)
215x3x5 Since I figured out my current 3x5 last Sunday @240, I went with ~90% for medium day. Not very challenging, as it shouldn't be, but I can't really ever call squats easy.
SGDL
+5 135, 185, 190x5 I think I'm only going to increase the top set on these as I want to keep them fairly low stress during basketball season due to compromised recovery and my dumb choice to eat slightly under maintenance.