New here, with a few questions

[johng33]

Hi, my name is John. I'm 18 and am 5'9 and weigh 190 pounds. I have a bit of a beer belly appearance. I love to play basketball and my ultimate goal is to get a decent body for pickup games and such, and to fit comfortably in my size 32 jeans from my senior year. Right now i'm at like a 34.

I'm not particularly interested in hardcore abs or anything like that. I just want a stomach that doesn't hang over my jeans.

So far i've been using the myfitnesspal app to help me eat better and it is working wonders. I've lost almost 2 pounds this past week by eating a little less and playing a whole lot more basketball.

The concept of losing weight is easy to me, the hard part is sticking with it.

My real questions are what exercises should I do to maximize my strength for basketball? Particularly my explosiveness and upper body hardness.
I don't necessarily want to get big, just strong enough to man handle the skinny thug basketball players haha.

At home, I have:
Two ten pound dumbells
a 25 pounder
A personal gym thing that is kinda broken, the things that still work on it is the regular bench, incline bench, the handles for flys, and something where you lift your legs. Forgive my ignorance of proper names for these things.

I use body fortress super advanced whey protein and I just ordered the bb.com micronized creatine.

I know there are better whey proteins but I like the taste of this one and I can see results. I didnt get bigger but the muscles I do have are more defined I guess. Its also 15 bucks and right around the corner.
I'm kind of a cheapskate so ya lol.

Any tips on things I should do with the equipment I have? Also some dumbell exercises for shoulders and back would be helpful. Possibly some ab exercises that dont involve a million crunches?

To sum it all up I'm trying to build a servicable basketball body at a leisurely pace, Thanks in advance for all your comments and support!

-John

[jmccauley1229]

forgive me if I come off as a dick here, but you want to transform your body and become a better athlete? and you want to know how to do that with 3 dumbells, a broken home gym thing, and no hard work? if you figure this out, please let me know and I will take ads out on the internet to get it made into a sticky on these forums.

in all seriousness, search the user determinednoob, he is great at providing links with tons of info for people just starting out. good luck in finding what you're looking for...

[danamerican]

forgive me if I come off as a dick here, but you want to transform your body and become a better athlete? and you want to know how to do that with 3 dumbells, a broken home gym thing, and no hard work? if you figure this out, please let me know and I will take ads out on the internet to get it made into a sticky on these forums....

^^ lol he has a point, but i understand what youre saying too. i played bball all throughout high school so i can help, but not sure if its what youre looking for exaclty.

you need to start doing explosive, fast twitch movements with much more weight than you have at your house in terms of lifting. power cleans, half and full squats, bnech press, BB standing shoulder press, deadlifts, and jerks are really the only lifts you need to do.

more importantly than that though, plyometrics will really improve your game the most. they will make you quicker, be a great form of cardio to lose body fat, and help you jump high and have better endurance. you can look up plyometric workouts or pm me if you have any questions, but echoing what jmc said, dont use your broken home gym and the 3 weights wont get you too far. join a gym and learn some of the lifts i mentioned above, or go to a park and do pull ups and push ups and sprints/plyometrics

[Determinednoob]

forgive me if I come off as a dick here, but you want to transform your body and become a better athlete? and you want to know how to do that with 3 dumbells, a broken home gym thing, and no hard work? if you figure this out, please let me know and I will take ads out on the internet to get it made into a sticky on these forums.

in all seriousness, search the user determinednoob, he is great at providing links with tons of info for people just starting out. good luck in finding what you're looking for...

I don't think my links will help with that, but they can all be found in the thread in my sig