Yugo's SS and Basketball Log
Background:
Cha59 and a 2p2 lurker who is a friend of mine have both independently convinced me to change my current workout to include complex barbell lifts. This log is for that transition to SS-type stuff and also for me to do support things to help with the Rec basketball I play. For now, I'm not going to get into changing my nutrition significantly and I understand saying that is a red flag to smart posters but I'm okay with that for now.
I'm breaking this intro into two sections to hopefully make it easier to digest and give helpful feedback (which I would super appreciate!):
I'm 30 years old, 6'0", and weigh 167lbs. (up from 160 in the last 2 years, but down from 220 from 5 years ago). My goal is to stay at a somewhat similar weight but stronger, leaner (not necessarily super lean), and "meaner" on the court.
Lifting Background & Plan:
My weightlifting past is pretty much all dumbbell lifts for upper body and machine or dumbbell lifts for lower body. So that's going out the window now. If I'm going to spend my time I'd rather start making it more optimal and getting stronger to see what kind of difference it makes.
I am very concerned with my form when switching to complex barbell lifts so I'm only willing to do something new if someone who knows what he/she is doing is there to give me immediate feedback during my first routine. Thankfully, I had the chance to train with Cha59 last weekend (at his infamous home gym, which is even better than the pictures) and did squats, presses, and DLs.
Here is my current programming closely based on SS (I'm going to do dumbbell versions until I have more training with him for the other barbell lifts):
Squats each work day, alternate bench/press, alternate DL/rows/pullups
mon - off
tues - squat/press/DL
wed - cardio/drills
thur - squat/bench/rows
fri - cardio/drills
sat - squat/press/pullups
sun - bball
Here are the form videos and feedback already given (which I'm going to focus on in my next few sessions) in his Cha's excellent log:
Squat form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGv4u-WE... and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1U1W-e8...
Look at your heels coming up. I didnt see that before. Also, squats (and DLs) will feel much better if/when you lose the squishy shoes. Converse Chuck Taylors, barefoot, or squat shoes - any of those will work a lot better.
Yugo needs to stand up at the end of each rep of the squat, he is bent over at the top and is putting unnecessary force on his back. Maybe get him to watch that Rippetoe hip drive vid as well. Overall he looks like he has good fundamentals and will be able to get into good form quickly.
Press: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbukCQobi...
Press- Bar is way too low at the start. Get your elbows underneath the bar, which should get the bar in the proper position. Also get your head through at the top of the press.
See e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKEuWnMwk.... You're supposed to lean slightly backwards with your head to start, then move your head forwards after the bar passes the head. This is in order to ensure a straight bar path. Ideally you'd keep the head in the same place, but then the bar would smash your lower jaw so not such a good idea.
Deadlift: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqYI-6TGF...
DL- Lower back is not good at the start. Maybe lower hips? Also not sure if you are finishing the lifts at the top. Flex glutes and get the hips through.
This is a possibility. It's also possible you're simply not used to performing the exercise. It's necessary to get a certain amount of reps in a lift even if you were the perfect student and even if you had the perfect coach. I've seen the same thing happen with 2 people I've coached in the DL without any need for anything other than just doing DLs. Anyway, cha is definitely the man so listen to him.
Here are my main questions at the start:
1) SHOES! I have wide feet so *have* to purchase shoes that come in widths. What is the important attributes of a good lifting shoe, that comes in widths?
2) Is my frequency good enough if I can more or less stick to it?
3) And if I'm not following SS exactly, should I adjust how much I increase my lifting weight every session?
Basketball Background & Plan:
So I have a lot less knowledge and plan about wtf to do for bball so help will be REALLY helpful (at least for lifting I can just call Cha on the batphone).
I can't even touch the rim and have shaky left-hand dribbling. I've never really tried to up my athleticism and due to not really starting at an early age or being heavily coached, my fundamentals are all self-taught basically.
The only organized bball I played was a camp after 8th grade (UC Berkeley's coach at the time Bozeman put it on). My friend and I were literally the 2 worst players there. Then I played freshman/soph team in HS (300 person HS which won maybe 3 varsity games those two years combined) and wasn't even *close* to getting on the JV team.
So my real basketball experience came in college where I played a lot of 3x3 intramural basketball (DIII school). I relied mainly on my skills of:
1) wanting to win the most (effort ldo)
2) being overly physical (no refs ldo)
3) surrounding myself with shooters (I couldn't shoot outside of about 5 feet ldo)
After college I got fat (220 lbs) playing poker & watching movies in my free time and then 3 years ago got my weight back down and played on a rec team in Orange County. My experience with it kind of sucked. We had 1 ballhog team leader who just yelled at us the whole game, only passed after he got super tired, and then yelled some more when we fumbled the ball out of bounds not expecting it.
A couple years of playing pickup basketball at 24 hour fitness and at a Korean church here in MN (ldo I know, and the court is carpeted, x2 ldo) and now I'm on a "real" 5x5 rec team (lowest division though).
We play a zone defense most of the time (which I had never played before) and I'm the 2nd shortest guy on the team (our other guys are all 6'1"-6'3")
My current skills:
1) playing smart (it's amazing how helpful just playing within one's abilities is)
2) rebounding (o-boards 4tw)
3) hustle (loose balls, tipping the ball, setting screens, etc.)
4) passing (both identifying a useful pass and making it)
5) solid mid-range shooter (but somewhat slow release and tentative)
I think I have tons of room for improvement in raw areas like my vertical, strength, dribbling (moving while dribbling), and ability to score in 5x5 situations (I'm too slow and indecisive).
I really don't know what to do for basketball training, up until now I just shoot around a bunch at spots on the court I rate to shoot from during a game.
Questions:
1) Wtf should I be doing besides just going around the gym shooting from where I rate to shoot from in a game?
Hmm...I did play some basketball last year (after several years of absolutely none). But then got burned out and wasn't enjoying going for some reason. I had gotten back to a point where I was pretty decent against not very good players. Maybe the problem was that I then expected myself to carry my casual teams to wins despite not actually being good at basketball.
Also have been "sort of lifting" for much of the last 4+ years. I have to admit that I've learned a lot about how I don't seem to handle fatigue very well running a set "program." I tried Barbell Medicine's Low Fatigue template(s) last year but only got through one properly before I went back to failing to follow the program week-in and week-out.
Mental health was a complete shitshow until about a year ago and got better. However, I can tell it's still not really where I want it to be. I developed so many bad habits, thought-loops, and struggled so much during the last few years. Not on paper. On paper everything is fine. The only bummer is my dad died in 2021 a couple of months before we would have all been fully vaccinated and I would have visited. Sudden and hadn't seen him for almost a year before that.
Ok...so, not many logs here, might as well add another boring one and we can house all the real discussion in Emo Ken's log that somehow is always interesting and often inspiring. If it wasn't for his log I may not even have been in the habit to check H&F for the last X years.
Also, why did 2p2 decline soooo much? Does it have to do with poker content or the site was mismanaged, or something else? I mean, even after the poker content became lacking there seemed to be tons of discussion everywhere for quite a long time.
Oh, for this log I will be running a Renaissance Periodization "simple template" with 3/week workouts. I've watched part of quite a few Mike Isratel videos at this point and still feel like I have no actual idea of how to program/progress hypertrophy properly.
The program seems to be full body 3/week. I guess it's a synchronous program but I actually think I would do better on an synchronous one since I have too much of a recent history missing a lifting session for no good reason and then feeling like the whole program is compromised - with asynchronous it seems I'd just do the next thing the next day and not worry at all about any concept of "weeks".
Saying that, I could always just take a synchronous template and remove the "weeks" from it and instead label everything "workout 1 - 2 - 3 - etc." and just be sure not to miss more than 2-3 days not lifting in a row.
I'll be following along. I haven't been on this site in ages until I decided to start logging again and wondered the same thing: where'd everyone go. It's like a graveyard.
My only suggestion as a similarly situated old is start slowly. You're going to get a lot of newb gains with low volume/moderate intensity. There's no reason to go balls out for at least for the first 3 months. I would just ramp up slowly where your last rep or two are difficult but not impossible. Psychologically, I also think it's easier to be consistent initially when you're just moving around moderate weight for moderate reps. Glgl
I'll be following along. I haven't been on this site in ages until I decided to start logging again and wondered the same thing: where'd everyone go. It's like a graveyard.
My only suggestion as a similarly situated old is start slowly. You're going to get a lot of newb gains with low volume/moderate intensity. There's no reason to go balls out for at least for the first 3 months. I would just ramp up slowly where your last rep or two a
I never completely left but I also didn't pay super close attention. Site just fell off a cliff at some point fairly rapidly.
Yeah, I'm not planning to go super high intensity almost ever. Maybe even never (lol). I feel that volume over intensity is going to work much better for me. The main key is to consistently lift enough. In the past I did that but didn't manage fatigue. Now I just am not consistent. :/
I agree with PoW; just take the gains as they come and take it slow. There will be plenty of time to plateau later (ask me how I know).
Good luck!
Yes, I'm looking forward to plateauing. Always good times! At least if I'm doing hypertrophy I can just "up the volume" whereas on something like SS you can't just "up the intensity".
6/3/24 - day 1
incline medium grip bench - 90x9,x8
high bar squat - 130x8x2
barbell bent-row 90x13x2
barbell upright row - 45x10,x9x2
barbell curl - 45x11,x10x2
V-up - bwx7,x6
Gotta start somewhere!
What kind of program did you settle on?
The RP 3 day simple template. It's full body and seems fine. I have no idea when/if 4 day full body would be better. Or maybe 4 day isn't full body any longer. There are definitely a bunch of more days/week with some kind of split but I don't see a good reason to start with something like that.
I agree. I think 3 day full body is a good place to start. When you get to a point where you feel like you need more volume, you can consider tinkering, but I'd stick with this for at least 3 months and reassess after.
6/5/24 - day 2
Assisted underhand pullups - green band x9x2
medium grip bench - 105x11x2
DB lunges - 10x13x2
skullcrusher 45x12x3
barbell upright row - 45x10x3
V-up - bwx8x2
6/7/24 - day 3
high bar squat - 130x9,x8
Stiff-legged DL - 115x13,x15
barbell bent-row 90x10,x12
barbell upright row - 45x12,11,10
barbell curl - 45x11,x12,x12
V-up - bwx9,x9
6/11/24 - day 4
incline medium grip bench - 95x9x3
high bar squat - 135x9x3
barbell bent-row 95x8,x9,x10
barbell upright row - 45x11x4
barbell curl - 45x11x4
V-up - bwx9,x8,x8
Good to see you at it again Yugo!
But haven't you heard, barbells aren't kewl anymore?
6/13/24 - day 5
Assisted underhand pullups - green band x9x3
medium grip bench - 115x11x2
DB lunges - 10x11x3
skullcrusher 45x12x3, x14
barbell upright row - 45x11x4
V-up - bwx9x3
6/15/24 - day 6
high bar squat - 135x9x3
Stiff-legged DL - 120x10x3
barbell bent-row 95x9,9,10
barbell upright row - 45x11x4
barbell curl - 45x11x4
V-up - bwx9x3
6/18/24 - day 7
incline medium grip bench - 95x10x3
high bar squat - 140x9x3
barbell bent-row 95x10x3
barbell upright row - 45x11x4
barbell curl - 45x11x4
V-up - bwx10,9,8
6/20/24 - day 8
Assisted underhand pullups - green band x10x3
medium grip bench - 115x10,11,11
DB lunges - 10x12,12,13
skullcrusher 50x10,12,12,12
barbell upright row - 45x11,11,11,12
V-up - bwx10,10,12
glad to see you back at it Yugo. Just be careful with shoulder impingement with the upright rows. They can be done safely but can lead to issues if done incorrectly.
glad to see you back at it Yugo. Just be careful with shoulder impingement with the upright rows. They can be done safely but can lead to issues if done incorrectly.
Good to see you post too!
So far they seem fine. My wrists were quite unused to doing them at the beginning but it's feeling better recently.
How's the program going more generally?
Fine? I dno, lol. Just doing things on the sheet and not worrying or thinking about it too much right now.
I'm actually tracking calories on MacroFactor (I believe it's called?). Actually a decent tracking app unlike the abomination MFP has been.
But my weight is...not really going down much? Keeps dropping my calories by 100. Gonna be at poverty calories and still fat soon.
I use MFP because it's free and I'm cheap. I feel like it's fine. What's wrong with it? I saw some fitness influencer hawking macrofactor. It seems good but I don't want to pay for an app.
How many calories are you at?
It's just faster at everything and "cheaper" (iirc) unless you use free versions. But the MFP free version doesn't have barcode scanning which is a big pain ime.
It's UI is cleaner, it's less cluttered with other stuff. It's just better. But it does cost money. There is a relatively short free trial but definitely long enough to try it out.
If your #1 priority is not paying, then, yeah, MFP maybe is the best choice. I found I just didn't keep using it, and $80/year or w/e MacroFactor is must be worth it if it helps me be compliant.
I started at 2500 calories. Now after a few weeks of logging almost every day I'm at like 2200. Lol. Fatties wanna keep their calories :(.
I quite like MFP. It is a bit terrible in some ways; but I have logged every day for over 5.5 years so it's quite a deeply ingrained habit at this point.
