Air Alert done

Last Wednesday, I did my final Air Alert workout. I will no longer be doing Air Alert. On the very last jump of the day, the full jump on the last set of squat hops, I hurt my back. I think I was tired from all the reps, and my form slipped and for the next 3 days I was pretty much confined to bed. I'm much better now, though I'm taking this whole week off to try and get back to 100%. Next week, I plan on starting the volleyball program I talked about in the last post. It's a 3 day a week program, I'll keep doing my upper body workout, and I'll add in some cardio, probably just 15 min of running on days I'm not doing plyos.

I had added about an inch after just one week to my vertical, but I'm pretty sure that was just because I had done nothing for the previous month. I guess we'll see how Fox does with it. Has anyone started the volleyball workout yet?

Alternate vertical leap program

Week one of Air Alert is done. Not too bad, certainly not as bad as week one last year. I've had some people asking me about the other jump program I found. It's a volleyball program. It doesn't have near as many reps, and has a progression in intensity of exercise-type, which I think is a better way to approach a vertical leap program. It still doesn't have any lifting involved though. I hope to get some info on other vertical leap programs up here soon. As I said, I'm giving Air Alert six weeks to see how it does. If it's not showing me some improvement, I'm going to try the volleyball program. Even if I am happy with Air Alert and go all the way through, I may do the volleyball program after a bit of a break, I think they'll be complimentary.

Also, I moved the blog to the beta blogger. Not sure what that means yet...

Pre-Season Workouts

The off-season is over. The pre-season starts today. I'm asking Rivalers to post their workouts and questions here. I'll get the ball rolling.

Fox and I started Air Alert yesterday. I'm not really sold on Air Alert, too many reps if you ask me, but I'm going to give it 6 weeks. If I don't see any improvement in my vertical by then, I'm going to switch to a different program. Because Air Alert is so hard on the legs (3 days a week and literally hundreds to thousands of reps), Fox and I aren't doing any other leg work, or even any cardio (I may sneak in some light cardio now and then). To supplement, I'm doing some upper body work and core work.

Twice a week I do a core workout. It consists of:

• Bridges - Front (plank with elbows and toes only on the ground), side (forearm and side of foot), and back (on back, shoulders/head and heels). I do 3 sets of 30 seconds for the front, and 3 sets of 20 seconds for the (each)side and back.
• Upper abs - 2 sets of 15 of an upper ab exercise - swiss ball crunches, incline bench crunches, cable pulldown crunches.
• Lower abs - 2 sets of 15 of a lower ab exercise - leg lifts, hanging knee lifts
• Obliques - 2 sets of 15 of an oblique exercise - medicine ball twists (sit with knees bent, feet off the ground, hold the medicine ball above stomach then move it from side to side), side bends, various oblique machines.

Make sure when you are doing your ab work that you try to keep your belly button pulled in the whole time. This well help with your form, posture, and make it so that your muscular abs don't make you look fat. Note: Lots of ab work is not good if you are trying to get a thinner stomach/waist area.

For my upper body routine, I split it up into two days. I'm trying to develop strength to prevent injury (my shoulders are in bad shape). I also don't want to add much size (I'm so big already), so I do high weight and low reps. I also do some rotator cuff exercises twice a week.

Day 1

• 5x5 Pullups
• 4x5 Bent over rows
• 2x5 Dips
  
• 2x5 Bicep curls
• 3x10 external shoulder rotation
• 3x10 45 degree one straight-armed rows

Day 2

• 5x5 bench press
• 4x5 military press
• 2x5 wrist curls
• 2x5 reverse wrist curls
• 3x10 external shoulder rotation
• 3x10 45 degree one straight-armed rows

If anyone is interested in doing this workout, let me know, there are some details that I don't want to have to get into right now.

Other than that, get out and play. Try and throw at least once a week. Work on your weak throws. If possible, get a couple of people to join you so that you can throw against a mark. Once a week I plan on running and throwing (throw, run away 5 yards, cut back, catch, throw...).