Back on Track

Just a quick update.

Things have been going really well so far. I've been staying on track with my diet, while tracking it all on myfitnespal.com. In about 3 and a half weeks I am down 7lbs and dropped 1% body fat (according to a hand held device). I just measured my verts today and had fairly good results there. I gained an inch in all three verts (Standing, One-Step, Max) So I am very happy with those results for 3 weeks worth of excercising. Also my squat #'s have been increasing steadily, about to where they were at my previous peak. I'm positive with losing some weight and body fat I will be back to where I was in no time at all and have room to grow from there.

We also measured Andrew's verts and he had fairly similar results. He gained an inch on his Standing and his Max vert (now at 10'4"). And he stayed steady with his one-step with no gain or loss.

Good News and Bad News

Well, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I have gained a lot of weight back (mostly over the holidays and had trouble getting back down). It was about 15lbs in total. What's worse is my body fat % jumped from 18% to about 26%, which means I've not only gained weight, but lost a considerable amount of lean mass. I haven't been doing any of the workouts, though I have been doing cardio. I have lost all the jumping ability I had gained from doing the program. It's really frustrating and kinda surprising how bad and how fast I lost it.

When I said I have lost everything from the training before... it's honestly even worse then that. I'm starting at a much lower point then I did last time I started. Pulled my homemade vertech out and somehow my standing vert has dropped from 26" to about 21.5" in about 6 months. I'm positive most of it is the weight and fat I've gained. But with a lot of work, I will gain it back quickly I hope.

The good news is that I have dropped about 5 lbs over the last few weeks and have decided to start back on the Jump Manual and have really tightened up my diet. What's even better, is I have talked a buddy of mine into doing the program with me. That has made this whole process so much easier to stay motivated. He is moving away at the end of the summer and I promised him I'd have him dunking before he left. His max reach is already 10'3", so I didn't think it was too outlandish. Now if I don't stay focused I'm hurting him as well which really helps me.

Anyway, thanks for all your support, motivation and advice, It' really helps me out.

End Week 4

Sorry, about the late post. Once again I was not able to get my Strength and Explosion workout done on Saturday so I had to push it to Monday. This time though, instead of skipping some workouts and getting back on track, I decided to finish the rest of the week out as stated in the program and then start week 5 next Wednesday.  That will give me about 5 days off.  I'm still going to workout a little and maybe do the off day stuff as well, but I really need to let my legs recover and I want to get back on schedule.

This week went really well workout wise and pretty good diet wise as well.  Got all the workouts in (even though timing got skewed) and I lost another 2 lbs or so.  So I'm down about 5 lbs in the last 2 weeks.  The Strength and Explosion workout killed me this week.  I went as hard as I could, with as much weight as I could, and my legs are finally feeling better today. Took me about 4 days to recover fully.  Don't know if that's normal or not. I feel good now though.  For some reason I am still so self conscious about doing hang cleans at the gym.  It seems as if I put myself on display and everyone else is watching me because it's a workout not a lot of people do at my gym.  I feel like they are either thinking I'm trying to show off or they are judging me cause my form is wrong or whatever.  It's really weird to me that I feel that way, haha.  So usually I go home and do those afterward...

While playing basketball this week I decided to test on the same rim that is in my video on the first post and it's really weird.  I am so much lower now then when I took that original video. I don't know if that was a crazy high jumping day or if yesterday was a crazy low jumping day because of tired legs.  If it was tired legs that doesn't really make sense cause I went home and tested on my vertec and got great results.  I finally gained 1" to my standing jump. Gained 1.5" to my one step (I think this jump is mostly due to more rested legs).  And I gained about .5" to my running jump. All these jumps I use the vertec to get the height then I mark down what the machine says and I measure with a tape measure for accuracy sake. I can't figure out why these gains don't seem to translate to when I'm testing at a rim.  They are at very different times of day, which could play a factor I guess. Hope to see the translation to the hoop soon enough.

I should be picking up my new HD camcorder on Saturday, so I will record video when I go play Tuesday.  This will be on very fresh legs since I will have not done the Jump Manual for about 5 days. Hopefully with the rest I will finally see some of the results transfer to the court tests. I will also be testing my verts at home again that night to see if the 5 day rest changes anything. I will post new results and the video either that night Wednesday night (or whenever I get the video editing done).

End Week 3           End Week 4
Standing:25"           Standing: 26"
One Step: 27"        One Step: 28.5"
Running: 28.5"        Running: 29"

Overall improvement so far (4 weeks)
Standing:     +1"
One Step:   +2"
Running:      +2"

Starting Stats

I actually started the program more then a week ago.  In fact today is my last day of the second week.  I'm way behind on posting, but I want to make this my official "beginning stats" post.

Height: 5'11.5" with shoes on

Standing Reach: about 7'8"

Weight: about 200lbs

Body Fat%: 17.5

Standing Vert: 25"

1 Step Vert: 26.5

Running Vert: 27

Here is a link to a video showing where I stood before the program.

A while back a few of us did a contest to measure vertical leap improvement.  None of us were great jumpers at the time, but we needed a way to measure accurately so my brother and I ended up building our own vertec type machine.  It worked really well. It has the ability to raise high enough to measure up to like 12.5' and as low as about 6.5"

I will post my first week results as soon as I get a chance.