Building Up, Throwing Down
Another week closer to my first dunk
Under Construction
Construction has begun on Project Lock Down the Fort. Welcome to your jobsite orientation. Let’s start by establishing some expectations- First and always first is SAFETY. The OSHA inspector said they would shut my project down if I said otherwise. So get it through your thick skull- this will be a safe job site!
Rule number two is: I expect you to show up ON TIME and give me an honest “8 for 8”; that’s 8 hours of work for 8 hours of pay. I don’t want to find you watching that Tik Tak or whatever the kids call it when you should be out there building my database!
The third and final rule is: refer to rule number one! Safety first and third! (??) That’s right! Oh- and do as I say not as I do! That goes along with all three rules!
Build Phase
Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get to work! I started the process of learning how to use SQLite to create and manage my database of NCAA D1 Men’s Basketball data this past week. All that has meant for now is that I created a few tables and am in the process of adding data to said tables. The data structure as currently constituted looks something like this:
Basically, I have a bunch of teams. Each of those teams have played some number of seasons of collegiate basketball. Each season for a specific team has had a unique roster of players. Hence we have “teams”, “teams seasons”, and “team season players”.
“Why did you structure your data like that Cameron?” Well, inquisitive reader, I studied the works of many genius mathematicians that came before me and after an intense process of weighing the benefits of different data structures, I decided that this was what would maximize my ability to profit from my analyses going forward.
In other words, I have no clue. I am an amateur and I did what I know. That’s the fun of doing something for the first time- you get to make lots of mistakes that you only learn were mistakes through the benefit of hindsight and potentially some loving (or not-so-loving) friends and mentors!
Training Update
The weigh-in this week was not so good- 170 lbs. That’s a 4 lb. gain between weeks. I remain optimistic because I have been still doing extremely well with my diet discipline. I have dramatically changed my eating behaviors and am doing virtually none of the “binge” eating I have done in the past (despite what I lead you to believe with the GIF). There also may be some inconsistency in measurement. Our family was away from home on my weigh-in day which adds an element of variability to the measurement (different scale).
Regardless of where my body fat percentage is, I am PUMPED about my jump session from this past Saturday. Working towards dunking has been CHALLENGING, but I enjoy the process so much that I am able to look past the discouraging moments.
This past week I spoke with one of the members of THP, John Evans, about my continued AC joint and shin paint injuries. The revised plan is to:
get new shoes and/or get a shoe insert to help reduce loading I am still putting on my shins,
start documenting my pain levels of my shins and shoulders, and
begin reaching up during my jump sessions at least every other week to keep developing the motor pattern of jumping to dunk.
The idea is to work towards zero shin and shoulder pain throughout the week. When I get to my jump sessions on Saturdays, I want to make sure that if I do feel pain, I am not feeling it the day after. This process will help establish a baseline for how much loading my body can withstand. I should then be able to slowly increase loading.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I set out to jump higher and lift heavy! I detailed some of last week’s lifts in my most recent update.
Saturday morning, I was feeling nervous. Friday night after my workout, I did maybe 10-15 test jumps because I was feeling good. The results were not great, but I knew that I had just lifted and that I needed to stay patient with myself.
After my warm up Saturday, I set out to measure the rims at the gym. I am trying to do this whenever I am at a new rim so that I can have some consistency in understanding whether I am making progress. The rim where I was going to do my jump measured 119 1/8”. In other words, it was 7/8” short of the perfect 120”.
As I began to work from low-effort to full-effort jumps my adrenaline began to kick in. My legs felt great and I felt like I was FLYING. I have been touching the rim consistently for some time now, but I haven’t been able to do what I could Saturday- get my full hand high enough to just GRAB the rim.
As I repeatedly jumped, I focused on pushing high enough to get my wrist up to the rim. Even if the rim had been at regulation height, I believe I still would have been touching lower on my hand than I ever have. Clearly I have gained vertical, and the validation was sweet.
Happy jumping everyone! I would love to hear from you all in the comments!
Awesome job with the jump!