After taking a week off to let my body rest, I hit my vert training hard this past week. I got in all my workouts and it felt awesome! In addition, I ate really well and stretched every day. Those are two areas that I haven't done very well in for the last several months. And, they are just too important to be neglected.
I looked back at my bodyfat results from the test I did back in January. To my surprise and horror, I was 18% bodyfat with 31 lbs of fat. I got my bodyfat percentage down to approximately 13% in March but over the last few months I'm probably back up to around 18%. If I'm going to get the two hand tomahawk dunk and win the Nike Elite dunk competition, I've got to get my bodyfat down probably to under 10%. So, I've recommitted myself to being super strict on my diet. I know it will help me jump higher.
Another highlight this week is yesterday I met JWdunk (Jeff) at Gold's Gym. I was doing my final exercise of the strength and explosion workout and saw a guy who looked like he was doing the Jump Manual workout and who looked somewhat familiar. I went and introduced myself and sure enough it was him. It is fun to be part of this community of aspiring dunkers and gravity defiers (is that word?)!
So, I'm off to a great start of another 12 weeks of Jump Manual training which will have me finishing right around Thanksgiving (or until I get the tomahawk). I'm calling this phase of training, "Tomahawk before Thanksgiving"!
After that, basketball season will be about to start and I think I'll just play hoops and enjoy the season. Or, I may actually start Crossfit. Either way, I think it will be time to take a break for a while. But, we'll see. When, I get the tomahawk, I will probably want to windmill! So this may never stop! But, I have several friends who are totally addicted to Crossfit and my 12 year old son has also started and is loving it.
Happy Labor Day! Tomorrow is going to be awesome. Will be playing hoops for like 3 hours!
Thanks Candyman, it was great to finally meet you in person as well.
ReplyDeleteI need to go do the BodPod at BYU in the next couple weeks to see where I am. I get 18.5%-20.5% on the hand held machines. Those things fluctuate like crazy.
What exactly is Crossfit? I hear about it alot. Is it a program? A type or way of working out? Is it a gym? Not sure I totally understand it.
Anyway, good luck and keep going for now. I hope to get there too soon so we could possibly do that dunk video eventually.
Yep - I'm going to go to the bodpod at BYU again as well. Need to pick a date and put on calendar. That will provide some extra motivation to eat right!
DeleteCrossfit is the latest rage in exercise. There is a different workout every single day and it involves a lot of olympic style lifts. I think it started with the military or something. If you google it, you will find tons of info or watch some of the videos on youtube. There are several crossfit gyms in our area.
What is cool about doing the workout at a crossfit gym is you will be competing/racing against everyone else there so as a result you really push yourself and get an incredible workout.
What I don't like about it is the monthly fees are pretty expensive and many of the workouts tend to be more on endurance/cardio side which I don't care as much about. I want to get stronger and more explosive. There needs to be a vertical jump/power/strength version of crossfit!
How awesome would it be if we did vertical jump workouts as a group? The competitiveness would push people harder and the results would be better!
Yeah, that was what I wasn't sure about. If you just do that one exercise for the day or if you added it in to a workout. It looked pretty cool from what I could see.
DeleteVert training as a group would be great. Pushing each other on the amount we squat or trying to out jump each other. If nothing else it would be harder to slack off :)
yep! there lies one of the great advantages of crossfit -- competition! makes everyone work harder!
DeleteSo who won the inevitable one on one battle?
ReplyDeleteha ha! maybe next time! :-)
DeleteHey man, I have been doing crossfit for several years now and still love it. The whole idea of crossfit is to get better at everything in fitness. So if you can squat a truck, but can't do a Pullup, that's what will improve. His squat may not go up but everything else will improve. It is a total body, all ranges of motion type deal. It's excellent for total fitness, but not great for specialists.
ReplyDeleteAll the Olympic lifting is great for power and explosiveness, and very few of the workouts are really endurance based. Stick to the sub 12 min ones like Fran and many others. It's a lot of fun trying to beat your previous times.
cool - i do think it looks really fun and would like to give it a try later this year. i do really believe to maximum results with vertical jump you need to perform every exercise at your maximum explosiveness. for crossfit, it looks like you go to the point where it turns into more cardio than strength/power. but, i like your idea about doing the shorter WOD's.
Deletehow many total workouts are there? how often do you repeat the same workout?
There are infinite WODs. That's the cool thing about it to me. But the named workouts are the real benchmarks, and there are about 50 of those. And then you can scale them however you need to. So if you can't complete a WOD with a certain weight, lower it but still go all out. That way you can still get the benefits even if you can't do what's RX'd. That's the goal for most, to finish all WODs as RX'd.
Deletecool - thanks! so are you still doing crossfit? or a modified version focused on increasing your vertical?
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