Well, my foot is feeling better but I don't feel like I have much strength through my ankles. I'll add some calf raises this next week to address this imbalance.
My squat deload may seem extreme, but I found that I wasn't going as low as I should on my squats. I wasn't always bringing the fold in my hip below the top of my knee on every set. So, I decided to drop the weight and start going really low on every set. The reps were easy on Friday but my legs are really feeling the effects of them the next day. I'm going to add 5 pounds each session until I have to deload a couple of times. At that point, I'll plug my squats back into the Madcow program. Until then, I'll keep using Madcow for my other lifts.
My foot felt pretty good so I restarted plyometric exercises. No pain before, during, or after the jumps. My foot injury ended up being plantar fasciitis. Usually, plantar fasciitis has a more gradual onset, but all of the other signs were there. I should be able to push forward with more aggressive jump training in the next 1-2 weeks.
Wednesday
Squat: 270 lbs x 5 x 2 sets
Overhead Press: 160 lbs x 5
Deadlift: 335 lbs x 5
My back has been bothering me a little bit starting the end of last week. I'll try to really focus on keeping my back in rigid extension while squatting. I tried stair jumps but my left foot started hurting on the 4th jump. I quit jumping at that point.
Friday
Squat: 370 lbs x 3 reps
Close-grip Bench Press: 245 lbs x 5
Power Clean: 195 lbs x 5
My back is now really starting to bother me: It's tight but not really painful. I am going to deload starting this next week. Part of me wants to push through this thinking that I can avoid injury by just concentrating more on proper form. The other, more rational part of me knows that I will just injury myself if I stay on this course. The good news is that I'm back to my 5-rep PR on the squat (I know that I can get 370 pounds with 5 reps right now). I'll stick with the weights I'm using on the other exercises with deloads in the near future.
With my squat deload, I'm going to drop the weight by quite a bit so that I can really work on explosiveness and form.
No plyometrics today because of my left foot strain.
Wednesday
Squat: 265 lbs x 5 x 2 sets
Overhead Press: 155 pounds x 5
Deadlift: 325 lbs x 5
Friday
Squat: 360 lbs x3
Close-Grip Bench Press: 240 lbs x 3
Power Clean: 190 lbs x 3
I'm feeling pretty good right now, except my foot is still bothering me. Hopefully I can start jumping again next week. I found that, in order to stay tight while squatting, I need to descend more slowly than I have been. Last week, I dropped really fast and had a hard time coming back up. This week,I counted to 2 during my descent and was still able to bounce out of the bottom while staying tight.
I was hoping to be able to push through this 12-week Madcow program without problems, but I think I'll deload starting next week. This past Monday, 355 pounds felt really heavy on my shoulders and I really struggled to put up 5 reps in the squat. My form was not great on the last rep. What I'll do is see how 360 pounds feels at the end of the week and go from there. I was really tired on Monday after working a long four-day stretch with family gatherings after some of those days (Thanksgiving for a very long day). I'm hoping Monday was just a bad day and that I can keep pushing forward. If 360 feels really heavy, I'm going to deload by going back to week 3 of the program and progressing from there.
My left foot strain is better but I still can't perform any plyometrics right now.
My knees were a little sore after this workout. I didn't push my knees out as much as I should have. I also played basketball before this workout so the soreness could have been from that and not the weightlifting.
Wednesday
Squats: 260 pounds x 5 reps x 2
Overhead Press: 150 pounds x 5
Deadlifts: 320 pounds x 5
I strained the bottom of my foot playing flag football, so I cut out jumping exercises today.
Friday
Squats: 355 pounds x 3
Close-Grip Bench Press: 230 pounds x 3
Power Cleans: 190 pounds x 3
I'm close to getting back to my 5 rep squat PR. I'm looking forward to breaking that record in week 8.
These were my max efforts; warm-up and work-up sets are not listed.
Monday
Squats: 335 pounds x 5
Close-grip bench press: 220 pounds x 5
Barbell rows: 190 pounds x 5
Drop jumps off 22 inch bench: 5 x 5 sets
Wednesday
Squats: 250 pounds x 5 x 2 sets
Over head press: 145 pounds x 5
Deadlifts: 310 pounds x 5
Stair jumps (up to 4th step): 5 x 4 sets
Friday
Squats: 345 pounds x 3
Close-grip bench press: 225 pounds x 3
Power cleans: 185 pounds x 3
Pogo jumps: 10 x 4 sets
I really focused on pushing my knees out to the sides during each squat rep. I was able to move through each squat rep with more explosiveness than I could with the same weight in the past. My close-grip bench press sets felt easy.
It seems that almost anyone who is a serious lifter will rank squats as the number one exercise to build strength and power. I didn't start to focus on squats until I was about 21 years-old when I used my older brothers squat rack. At the time, I did full squats with my rear-end touching my calves. I was explosive and the knee issues that I had up until that point seemed to disappear. When I went away to college, I didn't perform one squat for 2 years. When I was 23 years-old, I badly injured my left knee; I woke up one morning and I just couldn't bend it. A few days earlier at my parents' house, I got in my brother's squat rack and, without warming up, tried lifting weights close to the amount that I was using 2 years earlier. I remember my knee feeling funny when I was done, but didn't think anything of it. A couple of days after that, I went to play basketball and my knee felt even funnier after I went up and dunked it a couple of times. Then, as mentioned, I couldn't bend my knee the next morning.
Well, money was tight for my wife and me so I didn't get it checked out. To this day, I still can't jump with max effort off that leg or else it stiffens up on me.
From that point forward, even though there was a nice gym at the college I transferred to, I stayed away from squats because I thought they were the cause of my knee troubles. I performed leg presses and leg extension instead and stayed away from anything that even looked like a squat rack. When I purchased the Science of Jumping program when I was 25 years-old, I added heavy deadlifts to my routine and saw some nice progress in my vertical leap. After I graduated from college and we built our home, I purchased an Olympic weight set and power rack...but I still refused to squat.
My older brother, over this period of time, kept trying to convince me to try squatting again. I finally gave in after I read his copy of Beyond Bodybuilding by Pavel Tsatsouline. I used Pavel's squatting techniques and liked that I could squat, with correct form, without any knee pain. I then incorporated squats into my routines but never saw any real gains until I used Stronglifts by Mehdi. After some time, I finally used the Madocw intermediate program and got my 5 rep squat up to a PR of 370 pounds. That progress was derailed by hernia surgery; had I been able to stay on the program, I'm sure I would've pushed my 5 rep PR up to 400 pounds.
Right now, I am again using Madcow and, based on the program's predictions, could get my 5 rep PR up to 420 pounds with a 1 rep max of 473 pounds. I hope I can stay with it this time.
Here are some personal tips that I follow when I squat:
I squat to or just below parallel. Anything higher isn't a real squat and anything lower is hard on my knee. I have tried dropping the weight to allow me to squat deeper, but my progress is always hampered by knee pain. I use a sleeping bag to let me know when I am low enough.
I wear knee sleeves. These keep my knees warm and pain free. I don't feel like they increase the amount of weight I can lift other than the fact that I can lift without pain. Mark Rippetoe, in his book Starting Strength, suggested that a knee wrap does not significantly increase weight lifted unless it is so tight that it cuts off circulation to your lower leg and needs to be removed inbetween sets.
I high-bar squat with the bar resting on top of my scapulae. I've tried low-bar squats, but my shoulders are so tight that it hurts both during the set and for a day after.
I keep my chest spread and and my sternum raised like I'm trying to show off my pecs.
I arch my back naturally and take in a deep breath, bracing my abs like someone is going to punch me. I also wear a belt to protect my back. My abs, over time, have actually become stronger and more solid since I started wearing belt (Rippetoe explains why this happens in his book Starting Strength).
Before each set, I grab the bar for balance and then lower myself into my lowest position. I move my feet around, make sure my thighs are angled out so that I don't develop hip impingement, my feet out pointed out no more than 30 degrees, and then find my groove. This is the position I will squat down to with each set.
I explode my hip upward as soon as I hit the bottom position and keep driving upwards so that the weight feels like it may shoot off my shoulders.
I love squats. I just wish that I hadn't stayed away from them for as long as I did.
Getting older and dunking the basketball don't seem to go together. I've read through and tried different training programs that don't seem to work for me as I've gotten older. A lot of them claim that an older person should still see progress with these programs, but my success with them has been limited because of a few factors:
I'm turning 40 this year. My ability to recover has changed drastically in the past few years. I haven't been able to complete every rep of every exercise every week because of this.
I work full-time, have a wife and kids, and don't have a lot of time to devote to training.
I work swing-shifts. Sleep isn't consistent and neither is my training schedule.
I have some nagging injuries the don't allow me to perform certain exercises: Bad knees, bad right Achilles tendon, bad shoulders.
It's recommended that I get lighter in order to jump higher. I've put on some muscle over the years and I'd rather not have to lose any of it. Right now, I'm almost 6'1" and weigh about 215 pounds. When I was younger and jumping my highest, I weighed about 190 pounds.
Over the years, I have discovered certain factors that have consistently helped me to jump higher:
Heavy lifting with squats and/or deadlifts. I don't have a lot of natural strength and heavy lifting has always had a positive effect.
Depth jumps. While the height of the box and training frequency has varied over the years, my highest jumps always came with these added to my training program.
Olympic-style lifting. When I was younger and skinnier, I hardly ever used these exercises and still had success. As I've gotten bigger and more muscular, vertical jump gains have not come without these lifts incorporated into my program.
That's it. These are the 3 factors that have always helped me jump higher. With this blog, I'll keep track of my training progress and see if I can get back to dunking a basketball using these exercises without causing further injury to my body and without having to lose this muscle that I've been able to put on (I'll gladly lose any of the fat that I have). This blog will help me keep track of what's working and what isn't.
My training program, which I started last week, looks like this:
A modified Madcow program. Madcow is an intermediate lifting program that I found at www.stronglifts.com . I used this program before a recent surgery and liked the gains that I made. I've tweaked it a little bit to add some plyometrics and power cleans. Here's how it looks:
Monday: Squats, bench press, barbell rows, drop jumps (depth jumps where you stick the landing off the box).
Wednesday: Squats, overhead press, deadlifts, stair jumps (from a stand, I jump to the highest stair the I can).
Friday: Squats, bench press, power cleans, pogo jumps.
While squatting three days a week may seem like too much, especially when I've said that recovery has been an issue for me and that I have bed knees, this program has you lifting at different intensities throughout the week. The lighter days, I've found, really help me with my recovery. Squatting, overall, has helped my knees become stronger and feel better.
Over time, I'll change the drop jumps to regular depth jumps. I've decided to start with drop jumps to re-learn to load my body for jumping and to land properly. This should help me jump higher and help prevent further injury.
To help determine if I will have success with this program, I've set the following goals:
Dunk a basketball with two hands.
Squat 480 pounds (this is the amount of weight that I have here at home)
Close-grip bench press 275 pounds (close-grip makes it easier on my shoulders)
I'll let you know how my training goes and I'll add some posts explaining more about my exercise techniques and which programs I've used in the past.
