Hi I?m a 5-9 27 year old basketball player here in germany and weigh 185 lbs. I use the westside program for almost 3 month now and my strength increased a lot. Bench is now 234 lbs, my fullsquat is 287 lbs and my vert is 25inches.I workout 3 x/week. (westside for skinny, even though Im not) Now my Q is, how do I implement Speed work and stretching (as well as what stretching tech and Speed exercises) into the program? I really am slow and my vert doesn?t feel that good too. I really wanna be much quicker and dunk as well. I used to when I was 18 at least sometimes, Can anyone please help me out on this. I think this is a common problem. THX Chris
What I found to help my speeed was alot of heavy squats at a fairly wide stance. This really hit my glutes and hams. Also to increace speed you need to use speed, run some 40 yd. dashes as fast as you can along with some stiff legged deadlifts. These helped my speed and vertical, maybe they will work for you.
do a regular westside split and see how that works.
i have made some dramatic improvements in my 40 speed over the last 8 months or so. here are a few of the things i’ve learned.
technique is huge. if you haven’t mastered sprint mechanics, that is the best place to start. it will give you the most dramatic improvements. perform sprint mechanics drills several times a week, including power skips for heighth (focus on front knee driving up), power skips for distance (focus on back leg getting maximum extension), and good old fashioned high knees to build up the hip flexors.
in the gym, focus on the hamstrings, glutes, low back, abs, and hip flexors.
Increasing your relative strength will work wonders. Right now you squat in the high two’s and weigh 185. I don’t know how much bodyfat you are carrying, but if you just get stronger you will very likely get faster. If you are over 15% BF, think about dropping some. Emphasize the hamstrings and glutes and I agree with goldberg about doing a 4 day WS split. I don’t think doing 40’s will help much at this point because you need to increase your foundational strength before you can really perfect your running technique. I would limit the running to acceleration work though, if you really feel the need to run right now.
THX to all of you, my bodyfat is actually about 21% and yes, I?ll work on getting stronger and only do acceleration work. Since I have a Jumpers Knee I?m not sure if a DE Day really is good for me, I used to do it. And I know I need to drop my Fat% into 12 or less… THX guys
Chris
Because basketball is your priority #1, power (strength+speed) should be your dominant training paradigm.
Consider 3 weeks of the month doing ALL exercises in a 30X fashion as opposed to any slow concentrics.
As this becomes the dominating stressor the body will adapt with further explosiveness.
1 week out of month “detrain” with a slow concentric/ isometric type mix to give the tendons/ligaments a mini-break.
What do you mean by 30X fashion, I havent heard of this before.
Just to clarify, when I said only work acceleration, I meant for speed work…you definitely should also be doing intervals or some sort aerobic/anerobic conditioning work that also sheds fat. Something like Thib’s Running Man stuff. I would only train accels maybe once per week right now, if at all. Get the strength to bodyfat ratio fixed, and you will be amazed at how much faster you are…at 21%, bf is definitely slowing you down.