BBL Finals and a plan

This evening I've missed basketball training, my excuses for this are that I took too long cooking some damned good cajun chicken and nachos and after playing yesterday I sustained a strain to my thumb. Whilst these are justifiable and reasonable excuses, I still feel a little bit guilty! So I'll attempt to ease this guilt by a post here and probably a solid stretching session later this evening. Here goes:

So i'm blessed with a remarkably good girlfriend (who admittedly wears the trousers in our relationship), who also comes with a great set of in-laws. Now the point of this is not to boast about my personal life (it's pretty great!) but rather to say they kindly gave me 2 tickets to the BBL finals which I took the aforementioned girlfriend too last weekend.

It was the first game I've been too in a good number of years and actually a damned good one to watch with the Newcastle Eagles playing Plymouth Raiders in what was, if memory serves, the highest scoring BBL final ever.

The day started with the womens BBL finals which was a slower pace but served to teach the girlfriend the rules and they admittedly are a darned sight better than me still!! Entertainment was provided in the form of the BBL Babes (see picture below), which in reality was a bunch of fairly attractive girls wiggling around in time to the music. With the missus sitting next to me and a liking for my testicles remaining attached to my body, this was only mildly enjoyed wiggling.



However, admittedly the more impressive entertainment was a troup of europeans called the All-Star Dunkers (or something similar) which used trampets to perform truly impressive acrobatic dunks.Think 360 somersaults *mid-air* ending with a dunk, and this is when they're warming up! Truly an impressive act to see and deserving of much greater applause than the already reasonable amount they were given.

The dunk competition equally deserves a mention as there were some clearly impressive athletes. I do feel we've been somewhat desensitized in terms of expectations within dunk competitions by being able to watch some of the top NBA dunkers compete in all star competitions on youtube. I certainly tend to forget just how hard it is even to put down a standard 1 handed dunk (I can't even do this), let alone jumping over another guy to tomahawk it down into the basket!! As for youtube, there was a guest "joe public" dunker from youtube which sadly despite a clearly impressive vertical, was unable to put the rock in the hoop.

The day ended with the main event of the mens game starring the Newcastle Eagles and the Plymouth Raiders. I wont even attempt to provide any running commentary on the game but I will say it was a great game, some superb individual performances, particularly by Charles Smith of the Eagles who seemed unable to miss a shot! However, Newcastle started very strong and whilst Plymouth never looked like a weak team, they never truly looked a threat to Newcastle despite getting to back within 10 points at times; this was typically down to Newcastles defence stopping Plymouth ever really getting up to speed.

I'd whole heartedly recommend trying to catch the game somewhere online if you can and in the meantime a full review by someone much mroe knowledgeable than me can be found here: http://www.bbl.org.uk/?nilsen-eagles-win-x-factor-final,3129.

I want to end this post by talking about my plans / goals for training as my initial ambition has been tempered by reality. Our season ends in March so I'm looking to spend from now until then getting in good overall shape. This then allows me to focus on strength training as this seems to be my biggest area of weakness currently until pre-season. Finally use pre-season to get cardio back up to match fitness level and ensure the strength is being utilised appropriately just in time for the next season!

Well that's the plan anyway...

How time flies...

Ok, I admit it I'm a lazy bum and things didn't go quite to plan. Whilst I had the best of intentions when I wrote my initial posts, sadly these intentions were not necessarily fully realised in the timeframes intended.

So what happened? In short I found a myriad of what I'll continue to refer to as 'good' excuses to avoid actually starting exercising. Anything from being ill (man flu), the boiler breaking which meant cold showers and I didn't fancy more than the minimum necessary on a daily basis, and last but by no means least, stuffing my face with Christmas dinners etc.

That said post Christmas stuffing and complete with working boiler I'm back on the wagon and the workout hath begun.

I'm now into week 3 over the past 2 weeks having completed:

• 3 basketball training sessions (2 hours a peice)
• 2 basketball skirmish sessions (2 hours a peice)
• 1 plyometrics session
• 2 upper body weight sessions
• 2 legs sessions including squats and deadlifts
• 1 climbing session (well bouldering actually)
• 2 squash games

I'm not going to lie, it's been knackering and there's been a couple of days where I've seriously questioned whether or not I could skip a session, but so far I've only missed 1 basketball training session due to food poisoning which seems fair to me.

Further to this I've upped my protein and carbs intake. After purchasing the myprotein.com "big deal bundle" (or something like that) which contained:

• Omega 3 capsules
• Daily vitamins
• Instant oats
• Creatine
• Dextrose
• True Whey Protein (Milk Chocolate flavour)

This is my first time trying all of these products and I've only ever taken protein previously. Obviously it's only been 2 weeks so far but I've found the instant oats work as a good initial start to the day with a hit of protein too. Then again in the afternoon to effectively fit 2 more meals into the day (finding it hard to actually eat enough otherwise!)

As for the quality of the products, I've not got much to compare against, the capsules / tablets are pretty much what you'd expect, nothing much to differentiate them. Instant oats could mix better but don't have much flavour and still easily go down in a shake whilst helping to keep energy up. The creatine and dextrose I really can't comment on as of yet, it's too early to see much gains from the creatine but feel like it is making a difference, the dextrose I likely won't invest in moving forward as I'm not seeing any noticeable difference between taking it and not.

Finally the protein really is good, it mixes easily, the flavour is superb and quality appears high in terms of grams of protein per serving. I've used Optimum nutrition previously and whilst these seemed better than many other brands I'd tried I would highly recommend www.myprotein.com to any one wanting to get hold of some supplements. (Equally their customer service has been superb).

I'll keep you posted on how the weeks go and will give some idea of what my actual sessions are composed of later this week. For now those of you who have had great intentions for a while, but not quite acted on them yet, just bite the bullet, once you've started it's much easier to keep going.