So my first week of workouts was good, my body is super weak especially my left leg surrounding my knee, so I am doing mostly bodyweight stuff right now to get me ready to squat every day. I worked out about 6 days in a row last week doing some jump rope and bodyweight squats and some leg extensions to work on strengthening the muscles around my knees. Overall I felt each day I was getting stronger and stronger very little but it was starting to get a tad bit easier.
I do have some concerns mostly about squatting every day, I am worried about getting sore knees this seems to happen to me when I squat after a while. This could be because I am playing basketball also while working out my legs or just bad form all together when it comes to the squat movement. So my solution I hope is to try to perfect my form improve my flexibility and ice my knees after squatting just incase.
I ended up picking up a book on Amazon, as I have quite a bit of time at work to read on my breaks. I am trying to learn as much as I can about the squat and the correct technique. The author Horschig outlines the technique he teaches athletes he’s worked with, so we will see how well it works. I tried his technique for bodyweight squats and immediately I noticed a difference. So I am curious to see how squatting with a bar will go as he teaches that. I am only a couple of chapters in I will let you know all about it when I am done.
I figured when I do hit the weights I am going to do a jump rope workout to warm up and then warm up adding weights to the bar up to my working set of squats. It will be three sets of five, starting at 135lbs. To start I am going to try and explode every rep. Each day I will add 5lbs to the bar. I hoping that I could reach up to 300lbs without plateauing. Yes I know it might be hard. But I think it is possible.
Keeping My Weight Down
Without playing any basketball it has been extremely difficult to keep my weight down, since the pandemic I have gained an extra 20 pounds, but in the last couple of weeks I have lost a few pounds, which still is hard to maintain. Once it reaches the weekend I just want to eat and sip on my favorite beverage. I am hoping I can get to 200 pounds by the end of this year, that would be ideal. I am not trying to rush things as this is a marathon for me. I am 5’9 if your wondering…that’s a lot of weight…
This may be the hardest part is to get to this weight. I may have to fast a couple of days which I don’t mind doing. I already don’t eat at work which I think helps maintain my weight through the week, but on the weekend that’s a different story. I probably gain back what I lost by Monday morning.
Adjustable Rim Dunking
I am excited to get to this point in about 6 months or so, I have to make it through the winter here in Canada. I already have my nephew on board who and my brother excited to do some adjustable rim dunking this coming spring. I asked my nephew have you ever dunked on a lower rim for fun? He plays basketball on you know those 10-foot hoops, He told me no he hasn’t. I said you are missing out on life.
When I was younger my best friend had a basketball hoop and I could remember for hours every day we would play basketball mostly dunking with different size balls at different heights as his hoop was adjustable, and did different tricks also. I loved it, and I was jumping really high. His rim stopped at 8 feet 9 inches I could remember us measuring it, it became very easy to dunk after a while. It was also bent down a little bit and now that I think about it I can’t believe how long his hoop lasted.
When I was in 8th grade I stopped trying to dunk it was too easy and I started to work on my basketball skills more. My vertical didn’t increase at all after that, not until I played volleyball in my senior year and it increased 6 inches during the season. At 5’9 I was able to hang on the rim with one hand. All I did was jump and hit in volleyball, I liked but basketball was my passion.
So this will be motivation for me to be in excellent shape and workout and get strong for the upcoming spring. the goal is to be able to dunk 9.5 feet when it’s all said and done by the end of next summer. That would easily have me missing dunks on a 10-foot rim off a self-lob. If I can get to that point then that’s a huge win for me.