YOU DON’T WANT IT TO BE EASIER/STOP F**KING UP SUPER SQUATS

  

The title of this blog post could have gone on even further, to include “read a goddamn book” too, because inevitably, 100% of the time, without exception, every single time a trainee screws up Super Squats, it’s because they won’t spend $10 and an afternoon to read ONE book that literally contains all the answers and information they need in order to succeed on the 6 week adventure they’re about to undertake.  This blows my f**king mind.  I literally can’t fathom the decision making process, because it’s so backwards.  So you’re going to spend $120 in milk and significant amounts in food and 18+ hours in training over the course of 6 weeks, but you can’t pony up another $10 and 2-ish hours at the front end to ensure that all of that money and time is spent CORRECTLY?  It’s like saving up to buy an Indy car only to drive it off a cliff because you never took into consideration that you live on an island with no straight-away.  An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure and all that.  Man, I’m not even writing an intro at this point, so I’m just gonna jump into the middle here: when it comes to getting bigger and stronger, you don’t WANT it to be easier.

Do things the hard way long enough and they'll name a shrug after you

 

So again, how does this tie in?  Because one of the big things I see people screw up about Super Squats is failing to understand that these are 20 BREATHING squats.  They’re not just a straight set of 20 squats. This isn’t a widowmaker from DoggCrapp that was later co-opted by Jim Wendler (who gives credit to Dante, before people construe that to be an accusation of theft): that’s an entirely DIFFERENT training protocol.  The squat in Super Squats/20 rep squats is a BREATHING squat, which means, between EVERY rep, the trainee takes (at LEAST) 3 of the DEEPEST breaths they’ve ever taken in their lives, breathing deep into their CHESTS and exhaling forcefully and THEN they squat.  Yes, I realize I used the capslock on that previous sentence a whole bunch, but trust me: I needed to, because trainees keep f**king this up.  IF trainees even employ any manner of the breathing squat, it tends to be accidental, done at the end of the set simply because the set became difficult, but that’s NOT the point: those breaths needed to be taken from rep ONE.  It goes ONE-breathe-breathe-breathe-TWO-breathe-breathe-breathe-etc.  What do we notice about such a protocol?  It’s going to make these squats take a LONG time.  Yes: that is THE point. You WANT that bar on your back for a long time: you don’t WANT this to be easier.

 

And folks, I have been called ALL sorts of nasty names for saying this.  I’ve had people tell me I clearly misunderstood the book…even those these same people hadn’t actually read the book.  I’ve had people question if I was SURE that’s what the book said.  I’ve had people tell me that it doesn’t matter as long as you get the breaths in at the end.  All of this is simply people experiencing cognitive dissonance once they realize WHY this program has such a reputation for being so brutal: because it really IS.  Simply going from 1-20 is easy compared to FORCING yourself to pause between EVERY single rep from the get go.  Holding that bar on your back becomes MISERY when you do it for 6 minutes vs 1.5.  And that’s to say nothing of the belief the older times had that these deep breaths into your ribs were what forced your ribcage to expand.  It’s ALSO why you’re supposed to follow up the squats with a set of LIGHT pull overs: to further expand that ribbox.  Whether that is possible or not is immaterial: if you didn’t read the book, you don’t have that understanding, and, in turn, are embarking on a journey by starting on the WRONG road.  This would be like turning east at the start of the Oregon trail.

This was a terrible way to end John Candy's AMAZING legacy

 

“You don’t want it to be easy/read a goddamn book” goes even further with other programs too.  Every single time I hear someone say that 5/3/1 doesn’t have enough volume, I ask the same question: “What are you doing for conditioning?”.  70% of the time, I get crickets.  20% of the time, they ask if I mean cardio.  10% of the time, they’re walking their dog.  Yeah: I TOO find that, when I only do HALF of a program, it doesn’t have enough volume.  And people would know that if they read the book instead of tried to piece together a jillion forum posts to figure out WHAT 5/3/1 is, and would once again save time and money in the long run.  All these attempts to save are just bleeding into overall costs AND resulting in worse results: it’s the ultimate shooting of oneself in the foot.  And meanwhile, notice how cutting out conditioning is the easy way out, yet again?  Lifting weights is easy: you get to take breaks in the middle of it.  Hell, you get to lie down when you bench press.  Conditioning sucks.  That’s the point of it: it gets you conditioned to things sucking so that, when you experience things that suck, you are ready for it.

 

This is such an easy guiding principle for physical transformation, I’ve even gone so far to detail it by the amazing Jack LaLane quote of “If it tastes good, spit it out”.  Do you find yourself making changes to how you train or how you eat and suddenly things are easier?  Do you imagine you somehow made things MORE effective by doing that?  What produces physical change?  It’s the body reacting to a demand, SPECIFICALLY, a demand to adapt to a new stimulus.  And typically, this stimulus is trauma.  This tends to mean that the body needs to experience suffering in some capacity, and the more significant the suffering, the greater the stimulation, which means the greater the impact.  So when given the option to breathe between EVERY rep vs only the end reps, which one do you think is actually going to be more effective?  Hey, remember when I pointed out that touch and go was HARDER for deadlifts vs dead stops?  Funny thing that.  And, of course, I know some people are going to be stupid about what I’m writing here and act like it’s a charge to use terrible technique to put you at stupid mechanical disadvantages to make things “harder” so you can get injured and call me an idiot: more power to you, your intentional misunderstanding bettered us both.  For the rest of us, think about the cardio adaptation principle: the better you get an activity, the less taxing it is, which means, as far as promoting physical change goes, the WORSE of a choice it is.

Just wanted to redeemed John Candy and showcase a 96oz steak

 

Seek to do the things that are MORE difficult, which includes READING a book before you start training.  Amazingly enough, doing these more difficult things will give you an easier time getting results.