I'm really not impressed with Iowa's conditioning. I was thinking last night during their game, that they look soft muscle-wise. Not much definition to the middle school muscles they do have.
I am not a S&C coach, but I have trained my whole life and competed at the D1 level. So I believe that qualifies me to say this. They are soft.
I take your point about, e.g., Garza looking soft. I have a different view. I've never been a D-1 athlete, like you and a
ltenberger22, not even close. (Forgive the self-promotion
I deadlifted 485 lbs yesterday afternoon @ 55 yrs old and I've studied the S&C topic a great deal over the years so have a decently-informed opinion about it. And I played BB competitively through high school so understand the thinking/taboos over the years about weight training and basketball.
The ability to look "ripped" at a given muscle mass depends to a large extent on genetics. Gaining muscle entails gaining fat; losing fat comes with losing muscle. Some guys (like Garza, I suspect) carry more fat per muscle kg than (for example) I did at that age. It's his physiology. I have no doubt Garza and his teammates are in excellent condition, as all of these guys must be in order to play every day. How strong is he relative to our Fletch-trained guys? Can't tell. Might be stronger, depending on the Iowa BB S&C regimen. Watching him go at it with Kofi can give an indication of relative strength.
We can be ripped and much weaker than a guy of the same height having greater muscle mass and fat. I weight 30 pounds more at 55 than I did when I resumed lifting at 49 but you'd barely know it to look at me. I'm just a lot denser (heh!) Strength is the ability to exert a force against an external resistance, nothing more. It's safe to say that every set of BT starters are in relatively comparable "condition" in terms of endurance and VO2 uptake. But at this level, adjusting for the genetics that give a player a 36" vertical jump b/c he's got an innate excess of fast-twitch muscle fibers and six-sigma neuromuscular efficiency, strength is what separates one player from another. It's hard to tell on the surface how it differs until, say, one guy tries to screen or post up another. And even then confounding variables interfere.
My two cents. Sorry if that seems pedantic. Can we all just agree that the Iowa players are aesthetically repellant?
I find the S&C topic really interesting. Can't wait for the tip this afternoon. Haven't been able to look forward to the BT semis in what, 11 yrs?!
ILL-!!
