Back again

Well, it's been a while since I last posted anything. I wore myself out playing in two basketball leagues and decided that I needed to lose some weight before I would restart my jump training. I focused more on higher-rep sets and on interval training. In the end, I ended up being more tired all of the time and my strength took a serious dive (squats, dead lifts, bench press numbers all looked bad).
So, I've decided to focus my efforts on increasing my strength as much as possible before restarting serious jump training in the Fall. I followed Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength weight program and made some progress. I then switched to the Madcow program that I found on www.stronglifts.com. I've actually lost a little bit of weight (down to 210-215 pounds) and have set some PR's in the squat and bench press.

In the video above, I hit 370 pounds for 5 reps in the squat.. a PR by a lot! Depending on which one-rep calculator you use, I should be able to squat 415-430 pounds. I was able to bench 240 pounds for 4 reps but lost all energy on the 5th rep. I tested my bench press right after the squat set that you see in the video; I know that if I had rested my bench a day or two later that I would've put up 240 pounds for 5 reps.

In my life, of course, no real gains can be made in the weight room without some type of a set-back. I'm having surgery later this month and won't be able to even look at a weight room for at least 4 weeks. Hopefully, I won't be set back too much.