A Leap Forward
The journey continues whether anyone is reading this or not, or whether I stop my goal of 40 inches of vertical by 40 years of age tomorrow, today I have an update from my first 10 days of workouts.
Surprisingly it has gone a lot smoother than I anticipated. If you’re new here and you are wondering what the hell is this old guy doing to trying to increase his vertical? Ill tell you. Squats… Every day. Bodyweight squats? Nah!
I am going against what conventional wisdom states in the world of strength training and deep squatting every day with weight. This is to build my strength base while in the process, I hope to gain some inches on my vertical in the next 6 months and squat two-times bodyweight squat. That’s the goal, the end goal is a 40 inch vertical.
Progress
For the last 10 days, well it has been more if you want to count the bodyweight stuff I have been doing to get me ready for squats. For the last 10 days, I have been deep squatting 135 pounds with 3 sets of 5 reps and adding 5 pounds every day to the bar. Currently sitting at 175 lbs as my working set and today I am finally taking a rest day.
I have been out of the jumping game for 10+ years. As a kid, I use to jump all the time, and as an adult was almost close to dunking a 10-foot rim at the height of 5 feet 9 inches tall.
So far my legs have been feeling really good but my left knee still feels a bit unstable. There are reasons for that, you can read my past blog posts if you’re interested.
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Warming Up
I was initially warming up with jump rope but now using an agility ladder. I think I am going to just go back and forth between the two. My daughter loves the agility ladder so that a bonus keeps her occupied when I get under the bar in the next room. I have weights in my home that I use.
I make sure to include pogo jumps two-legged and one-legged to help work on my elasticity in my lower legs.
Right now I am not able to test my vertical jump, that will be a while yet due to the pandemic, and its cold here up north in Canada.
I am trying to cut some weight in the process which right now I am 210 at least. The goal is 190lbs. I have dropped some weight already being the heaviest I have ever been in my life at 218 pounds. I am not drinking as much and am eating healthier, my clothes don’t feel as tight. Playing basketball is not an option everything is shut down, but when I do play the weight flys off me.
Working Sets and Weights
Right now I am at 175 pounds for 3 sets of 5 and it feels easy. When I get to 215 pounds I am going to switch to 3 sets of 3 reps and go from there.
That’s only 9 reps a day for 5 days a week, that’s low volume with 45 reps. If I did 5 sets of 5 reps twice a week like a lot of programs, that is already 50 reps and more than what I am doing now.
I will continue that until I plateau, then use 3 steps forward, two steps back approach. I am looking to try to keep things moving with different ways to add weights.
My overall goal is 2 times my body weight at hopefully 190 to 200 lbs. That would hopefully be 380 to 400 pounds on the full squat.
I will then incorporate power lifts sometime after I am able to squat one and a half times my body weight. Jumps squats, hang clean, snatch clean etc.
I know what I am attempting is unconventional how I am going about it, but that’s ok. I am hoping after the winter the pandemic is gone, life will resume and we can start playing basketball again.
After the winter I will be working on my jumping technique and focusing on jumping a ton.
The only thing I am afraid of is being really disappointed in 6 months’ time and not jumping the way I envisioned after training. I feel I should be able to get rim by then, but who knows.
I also realized at some point I am going to need some motivation. This is why I like to watch youtube with guys like Isaiah Riveira and pro dunkers alike. Really motivating to see their progress and the dunks they re doing oping to be half as good.
Thinking about how high I use to jump helps also. I think I really need to focus on the process of just being healthy for my family, that seems to be the ultimate motivator.
Until next time.