BASKETBALL, Phase II, Hypertrophy/Strength, By: Tony Reynolds, MS, CSCS, YCS II

Important Notice
Tony Reynolds, Progressive Sporting Systems Inc, and their associates
and affiliates are not affiliated with Anabolic Steroids in anyway and
do not promote or encourage the use of these drugs. His articles within this section of our site are published to offer a broad range of fitness and nutritional knowledge that will help you to achieve your health and fitness goals without the use of Anabolic Steroids.

Phase two is a continuance of the acclimatization. The introduction to explosive strength is initiated into this phase at its base level.  Muscle hypertrophy work and connective tissue strengthening is continued as box squat volumes begin to reach strength building percentages.

The box squat cycle in this phase fits into a multi-week undulating schedule designed to elevate all levels of strength performance. Traditional periodization isolates one type of strength characteristic (hypertrophy, strength, power, etc.) allowing the others to detrain. The premise behind the undulating periodization is that alternate weeks focus on different strength characteristics allowing the entire set to grow without compromise.  

With this phase try to increase you weights from week to week even if the reps are increased. The idea is not to use lighter weights with greater reps, but to push yourself from week to week, and find the loads that bring you too near failure on your non-explosive sets. A good rule of thumb is to increase weight until you find a load that you could only do for 1 to 2 more reps than the suggested set (other than f=failure sets). This load should cause you to fail on or at the final rep of your last set.

For explosive exercise, (db complex, and db power shrugs) use a load that you can be explosive with, and that is not to light.  Remember that load and speed both go into the power equation, so don’t go to light and fast, and don’t go to heavy and slow, stay explosive.