by Jamie Lewis
This does not in any way mean you should not push yourself in your workouts, however. This means you’re going to need to be cognizant of the speed of execution of your lifts and gauge your ability to continue utilizing that. If a weight is flying up for triples in your first couple sets and it’s a grinder for a single after a few sets, it’s time to move on to something else. That’s the beauty of high-frequency workouts- you can always make up for a shitty workout in the next. If you’re limiting your squat workouts to once a week or once every ten days, you lose that ability, and every workout becomes do-or-die. Fuck all that- I’d rather have the ability to cut a subsequent workout short because I went for broke earlier in the week and dominated than feel like there is an axe hanging over my head every time I enter the gym to do a single lift infrequently.
Clearly, I’m not the progenitor of this theory. Old-school strongmen trained and exhibited their strength constantly. By constantly, I mean every fucking day. These guys were in heavy demand at the turn of the century, as evinced by Louis Cyr's salary of $2,000 a week in 1885 is equivalent to $47,000 now... there's not a fucking strength athlete on the planet who makes anything even vaguely approximating that these days. The strongmen of yesteryear were made of stern stuff, though, and due to their high demand and the fact that they'd not been inundated with pseudoscientific claptrap about "overtraining", they trained for hours a day, every day. Likewise, Arthur Saxon and Hermann Goerner trained 6 days a week, and regularly held exhibitions and contests to showcase their strength and prove their preeminence in the sport. Thereafter, guys like Paul Anderson, Bob Bednarski, and even Bill Pearl kept the flame of high frequency training alight, as they busted their asses in the gym 6 days a week, come hell or high water (Gallagher 15, 19-20).
There’s always a catch though, right? The catch here is that even 20 years ago, people were far more active than they are now, so with every passing day the gap between the work capacity of yesteryear and that of the modern trainee grows greater. The resolution to this crisis, however, should be plainly evident- you need to increase your frequency. This does not necessarily mean, however, that you need to drag your ass into the gym twice a day and lift near-maximal weights until your eyes pop out and you shit blood. As much fun as that might sound, it's time to temper your enthusiasm with a modicum of sense- if you're fucking dead, your squat's not likely to increase much, is it? Thus, don't get stuck on stupid- approach this as you would a growling wild dog. That wild dog might tear a new hole in your ass, or it might wander up and lick your fingers, depending on how you approach it. Just as you would that dog, move slowly, keep calm, and don’t do anything painfully stupid.
One of the best ways to go about this is to heed the advice of the Bulgarians, who found "that after 35-45 minutes of rigorous weight training, the body's natural blood testosterone level would decrease by up to 80%"(Costa 22). While you might find this to be somewhat exaggerated (Hermann Goerner reputedly lifted for three to four hours at a stretch), it's good to bear in mind, as it will keep you from training for hours nonstop on a regular basis. It also lends itself to the idea that high density training is ideal- "only when a muscle performs with greater resistance in a unit of time than before, will its functional cross section need to increase... hypertrophy is seen only in muscles that must perform a great amount of work in a unit of time" (Sisco and Little 7). This is why I generally recommend keeping your reps low and your rest periods very short- you’ll easily increase your volume without overtaxing yourself, thereby allowing you to move more weight in the course of a week than you would otherwise. Low reps rarely leave you terribly sore.
If you’re wondering how frequently you should train the squat, there is unfortunately no easy answer to this question- strength training demigod Vladimir Zatsiorsky himself states at the beginning of his seminal work that "it is absolutely unclear which criteria one should use for selecting proper intervals between consecutive workouts" (Zatsiorsky 13). As I've stated before, training capacity is a wildly shifting target, due to the massive number of individual factors, both biological and environmental, that play into its determination. For this reason, you're going to have to feel this one out like a blind man at an orgy. The most common frequency for squat training appears to be twice a week. I personally vacillate between two and four squat sessions a week, as a general rule, and I vary the rep scheme and exercise at every session. Thus, I rotate between full squats, weighted jump squats, front squats, partial back and front squats at a variety of ranges, and zercher squats at a variety of ranges of motion. If you skip back to the workouts of the greats, perhaps the greatest example of this methodology is Mikhail Koklyaev’s routine. He trains the squat almost daily, but his workouts are never the length, Bollywood-esque horror shows you’ll see printed in bodybuilding magazines. Instead, they’re brief, heavy, and comprised solely of low rep sets.
If You Don’t Know Squat,You Need These Routines
Running the Ladder
Like I stated in the deadlifting section, I did this program a great deal in my early years after picking it up from an Iron Man magazine and used it for both the squat and the deadlift. I never used this routine more than once a week for either lift, though I did use it for both lifts in the same week. For instance, I might use this set/rep scheme for the squat on Tuesday and the deadlift on Friday. This was due more to the fact that at the time I’d not considered using a full-body routine, and my lifts suffered as I adhered to a bodypart routine. I spread back and legs as far from one another as I could, however, to maximize recovery from one to another and ensure that my deadlift and squat didn’t adversely affect each other. Yeah, I labored under the misapprehension that I had the recovery ability of a burn victim with cancer and AIDS for years as well. Assuming a 405 max, this is what running the ladder would look like.
1 x 10 x 135
1 x 8 x 225
1 x 6 x 275
1 x 4 x 315
1 x 2 x 355
1 x 2 x 365-375
1 x 4 x 315
1 x 6 x 285
1 x 8 x 265
1 x 10 x 225
The key in this routine is to make sure that your second half of the ladder is noticeably heavier than the first half. It’s great for breaking plateaus and ruts, and also for getting your comfortable with your form on the deadlift.
Might As Well Jump
This program grew out of a short writeup in Muscular Development magazine that stated that the use of an explosive movement prior to a grinding strength movement would lead to greater strength and hypertrophy gains. I was never able to hunt down the article on which that was based, but I’ve used it pretty much continuously since I started competing two years ago to keep my IT bands loose (dropping into the hole of a very deep squat acts as an explosive stretch for me), and it seems to have kept my squat numbers on the rise.
Weighted Jump Squats (Assuming my current max jump squat of 500)
1 x 3 x 135, 225, 315, 405
6-10 x 2 x 455
Partial Back or Front Squat (I vary between just above bottom-position, half, and quarter squats)
Work up to 3RM
6-10 x 3 x 3RM (This is one of the few exercises on which I go to failure, and I extend my rest periods to allow me to keep getting 2-3 reps. Hold each rep for 10 seconds at the top)
Bringing Assistants Into The Rack
Clearly, you’re not going to be able to bring training partners onto the platform to help you out in on the squat in competition. That is why you’re going to have to create your own, by building your midsection, hamstrings, and calves into muscle groups so hyper-developed that they might as well have their own social security numbers.
Abs and Lower Back- Frankly, I am of the opinion that partial squats done without a belt are the single best method by which one can strengthen their abs. Using those, my abs and lower back have gotten so strong that I was able to squat 605 in competition without wearing a belt. Beyond that, I recommend the following:
The ab wheel
. This is a $10 piece of equipment everyone should own, as it strengthens your abs like nothing else.
Standing crunches. You’ll need either a standing crunch machine or ab straps like the ones Spud Inc. sells, but these are a great way to strengthen your abs and lower back.
Heavy weighted crunches. These would be done on a regular seated crunch machine, and I do them both lighter, for time, and heavier with as much weight as I can handle for 6-12 reps.
You’ll notice that good mornings are conspicuously absent from this list. That is because I consider them completely worthless. They might be useful for geared lifters, but I have never seen a raw lifter worth half a shit bother with these, and I’ve never gotten any benefit from them.
Hamstrings- I began training hamstrings due to theory I had regarding my patellar tendinitis, which I attributed a hamstring/quadriceps strength imbalance. I started doing light standing hamstring curls on a nearly daily basis, and my knee pain vanished almost instantly. I’ve also found that my ascent out of the hole has gotten much better since I started training hamstrings regularly. Thus, I recommend:
Standing hamstring curls. I generally do 3-6 sets of 6-15 repetitions on these between three and five times a week.
Glute–ham raises. As I covered in the deadlifting section, you don’t need specialized equipment to do these, and they should be done for fewer reps than hamstring curls.
I don’t do lying hamstring curls due to the pressure they put on the knee joint, and lack the flexibility to do seated hamstring curls through a full range of motion. I don’t bother with stiff legged or Romanian deadlifts due to the fact that I have to go far too heavy on those to make them an accessory movement. As such, they’re too taxing to be considered a true accessory movement in my opinion, and are better used as an alternative to regular deadlifts on a scheduled deadlifting day.
Calves- Strong calves are invaluable in the squat due to the walkout. Without strong calves, your workout will range anywhere between impossible and utterly nightmarish. Thus, I recommend doing frequent, heavy, unilateral calf raises. Doing your calf raises (whichever kind you prefer) one leg at a time will address any muscular imbalances you have between your legs.
Squat Variants You Should Be Doing
It’s not enough to simply back squat, quite frankly, if you want to be an awesome squatter. I don’t mean that you should head for the nearest hack squat machine and start slamming out some super sweet reps on that utterly fantastic machine (this is called sarcasm, in case you’re confused), but rather that there is more to the squat than meets the eye. Thus, allow me to introduce you to a couple of the best friends a squatter could have:
The Jump Squat
The jump squat is to the competition back squat what liquid Viagra is to porn stars— it enables you to perform at the highest levels without fear that you’re going to go limp in the middle of the competition and make a total ass of yourself. The jump squat makes getting out of the hole (the bottom of the squat) a simple affair, because you’ve conditioned your body to literally explode out of that position. The powerlifting back squat is a fundamentally slow affair, and could easily be conducted to the slower parts of a Wagnerian opera in a Viking helmet. Slowly grinding through the squat sucks, though, and the very worst part is that second at the bottom wherein you pause for a moment to wonder “is it really possible to get the fuck out of here with my life?” For this reason, I despise pause squats, because it makes sitting in the hole an even more protracted affair. If you regularly include jump squats in your program and go heavy on them, that moment of indecision will be lost in a thoughtless explosion of muscular force the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since JFK first got Marilyn Monroe naked in the White House. Additionally, a long term study in Russia in the 1980s showed that the utilization of different tempos in a training cycle produced far greater strength gains and hypertrophy than did a single tempo (Verkhoshanskii). Thus, it makes sense to include these regularly in your workouts.
Suggested Set and Rep Scheme: I don’t recommend high reps for these due to the fact that your speed drops precipitously as your reps increase. Thus, 4-10 x 1-5 would be best.
Form Tips: Vary your stance on these. You will have to keep the bar higher on your shoulders to prevent it from slipping, but you can still change your stance to alter the loading on your quadriceps and hips.
The Front Squat
No matter your sport, the front squat can have a profound positive effect on your lower body strength. The front squat places the primary emphasis on the quads, so it’s a great companion exercise if you’re a low bar, wide stance squatter, as wide stance squatting focuses the bulk of the load on your hips.
Suggested Set and Rep Scheme: 4-10 x 1-5, once again. There’s really no point in doing higher rep sets if you’re interested in improving your competition squat, as taming the beast that is fear and getting used to a heavy, uncomfortable weight driving you downward is key to mastering the squat.
Form Tips: You have three options in terms of the way you grip the bar on the front squat. No matter which you choose, however, the bar will essentially rest on your neck, as it’s your front delts that hold the bar in place. As such, you can squat hands-free if you wish, because your hands are more or less redundant. If you cannot take your hands off the bar without it slipping off your delts, the bar is in the wrong position. As for where to put your hands, you can either hold the bar in an Olympic-style clean catch position, cross your arms like a bodybuilder and hold the bar in place with your thumb and forefinger, or you can hook your straps around the bar and hold onto those. If you choose the form I do (bodybuilder style) I would recommend against hooking your thumb all the way around the bar, as it generally hurt and can pinch nerves and reduce circulation to your thumbs. Regardless, vary your stance as in the jump squat.
The straps variation on the front squat.
The Partial Squat (for advanced lifters only)
The partial squat is one of my favorite movements, although I wouldn’t really recommend it for neophytes, as they really need to get the basics down before messing with the formula too much. Thus, if you’ve not lifted for at least three years, stick to the back squat, the front squat, and the jump squat.
Suggested Set and Rep Scheme: 6-10 x 1-3, with the inclusion of the occasional death set. This movement is really about moving heavy-ass weight, not getting in a ton of work. Frankly, this is something you can do a lot of if you’re not doing bottom-position squats every time.
Form Tips: My favorite method for performing these is at or just above the bottom position of your squat. It’s godawful the first time you try it, but if you work it hard, it is the easiest way to get your squat up quickly- the more weight you can move from a dead stop at the bottom of your squat, the more weight you can squat in general. I use this as an indicator of what my competition squat is going to be- if I can bottom position squat 600, for instance, I am 100% certain I am good for 635, and have a pretty good shot at 660. On the other end of the spectrum you have lockouts and top half squats, which are useful for feeling out weight and strengthening your abs and lower back. If you’re doing the former, there’s no real reason to hold the weight at the top of the movement, but if you’re doing the latter, a 5 to 10 second hold makes the most of the movement. At the end of an ultra-heavy festival of half squats, you will literally feel like a human bulldozer- not terribly agile, but fucking unstoppable.
Basic Tips on the Squat Itself
This will probably be a fairly unpopular opinion, but I believe there’s not that much to the squat, other than training it. Clearly, I’ve done a lot of tweaking with my form over the years to arrive at what works for me, but the sum total of my knowledge there will help exactly one person on Earth squat better- me. With that in mind, here are a couple of things that I believe are pretty much universal.
Show me your tits. Before you get all excited that I’ve snuck boobs into the book, settle down- I haven’t. When I show chicks in particular how to s
quat, I tell them to show me how a slut stands. They always stick their tits and ass way out, which is basically the position in which you should be in when you squat. A less interesting way to say it would be “chest full, head up, ass back” which is what you should be repeating to yourself every time you get into the squat rack. Eyes looking straight ahead at the top of your head if you’re looking in the mirror, chest as full as you can back it, and reaching your ass as far back as you possibly can as you descend. One fascinating trend on the internet currently is a preoccupation with “butt wink”. For those of you living in blissful ignorance, “butt wink” occurs when you tuck your ass at the bottom of a squat. If you do it, you’re squatting incorrectly. When you squat, you should be reaching your ass back like you’re trying to find a chair you know is somewhere behind you in a dark room. Rather than bust your ass on the ground, you force it behind you like it’s a spear you’re using to fend off a particularly ugly stalker at a really cool bar. You know, the kind of bar that allows you to bring in a spear. If you’re reaching your ass that far back, tucking it is a physical impossibility.
Do not deload to the bar. Even the weakest asshole on Earth can squat more than 45 lbs, and using nothing but the bar does not give you an accurate picture of what your squat looks like. In order to determine how to squat, you’ll need to have some weight on the bar to ensure your leverages are correct. Limitations in flexibility will also cause your squat form to change if the weight on the bar is too light, which will also give you an incorrect picture of what your squat form is and should look like. Thus, if you must do a form check, do it with something along the lines of a three to five repetition maximum.