Well “body weight” when you’re already 200lbs with no muscle is a load in itself. And like I said with Carlton, when you’re super inexperienced, a good coach will facilitate you learning your body, your baseline and target end ranges of motion, how your body feels, building proprioceptive and kinesthetic awareness, challenging muscles that may not have been “turned on” through just basketball skill training alone. You do all that with slow, controlled, eccentric movements; and when someone has never picked a barbell in their life, it’s best to just start with their own body weight.
There’s simply no point in throwing loads on a kid who probably struggled with pushups and has never tried to get in to a body weight squat, especially in this case where you had the whole semester to get him ready for college loads. Was Akok even allowed to participate in basketball activities? Or were they able to just focus on the gym? I recall the latter
