cafeGAINZ Tip of the Day - Monday, March 17, 2008

Here's a recent Friday Night Lights workout of mine:
Jump Squats (5 sets x 6 reps)
Romanian Deadlift to Squat Jump (as explained in the last posted tip) (4 sets x 8 reps)
Lunges (3 sets x 12 reps)
Step-ups with Medicine ball (3 sets x 9, 13, 10 reps respectively)

In between sets I jumped rope for 30 seconds or did various core/ab movements. After legs, I did some more core. If you're not sore after this workout, you either didn't do it right or you're Superman...which would be awesome. Its a pretty sick burn.

The next day my legs were completely shot, but I played basketball anyway. An interesting thing happened in my third game.....I forget how I got the ball but it was a fast-break or delayed fast-break situation. A little past half court I decided I was going straight to the hoop no matter what, even though a defender was about even with me. Somehow I exploded to the hoop and layed it up with the defender all over me. Let's just say this: I'm not naturally athletic or explosive and this type of finish for me is pretty rare. Then an on-looker said to the defender, "you just got 'Monta'd.'" Now Monta is an explosive professional basketball player and the comparison, while not really appropriate, made me smile because the hard work I put in the night before, and the many months leading up to said 2-pt layup shot, had in some sense paid off. Its little victories like this that encourage me to continue to "get after it" and to "TRAIN HARD!" I hope this anecdote can inspire some GAINZ.