“BODY BY NIETZSCHE”: HOW IT ALL “WORKS”

 

This is going to be an ambitious piece that will most likely be one of my lesser read posts, but I wanna try to just capture how all of training and nutrition “works” in a rapid blitzkrieg (tapping into the German there with Nietzsche) of brain vomit.  So enjoy that.

 

WHAT IS A PROGRAM?

Gonna see this theme a LOT today

A program is NOT a routine.  A routine is just something we do on a regular schedule.  It does not build toward anything.  We brush our teeth as part of a routine: we’re not hoping to gradually build up from 1 minute to 40 minutes of brushing.  We’re simply doing it to MAINTAIN health.  A program is also not a workout: a workout is a singular part OF a program.  A program BUILDS toward a goal.  In turn, a program must have some manner of progression established within it.  This doesn’t need to be ultra nerdy and mathematical and charted by spreadsheets, but there must be SOME manner of climbing toward something.

 

In that regard, we have Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” at play, in that the program is a manifestation of our inherent drive to overcome and exercise our power over that which stands in front of us.  And again, this can be a codified expression of that will, employing 5/3/1’s TM progression or Super Squats “5lbs more each workout”, or you can employ the max effort method and simply achieve maximal strain, or you can employ a rate of perceived exertion, but in either case, the Will to Power is at play, and in following that will (no life denying philosophy allowed!), we progress.

 

But furthermore: what IS a program?  A program is simply a structured methodology balancing stimulus and fatigue.  That’s the razor’s edge of progression: enough stimulus to trigger growth, without too much fatigue to halt it.  The scales require balance (duality?!).  If we have too much fatigue, it does not matter how much stimulus we have: we will not grow.  Alternatively, if we do not have enough stimulus, it does not matter how much fatigue we manage: we will not grow. 

Check out all that fatigue being managed!

 

Fundamentally, this is why new trainees are told to follow an established program: someone ELSE has done the stimulus to fatigue balancing FOR us.  And, in true cookie-cutter fashion: it will be one-size-fits-all, aiming for an idealized middleground of success…for the most part.  Many argue that popular Bulgarian training, with multiple training sessions operating near max, was used as a “sorting out” program, wherein, those that SURVIVED the program demonstrated that they had the necessary genetics blessing to be Olympic champs in the first place.  It was designed to intentionally break average people so that only the above-average would remain, similar to special forces selection…but I’m getting off task there.

 

This is because new trainees are just going to be plain awful at figuring out this balance.  Often, it’s a weird grab bag where they won’t employ enough stimulus on the “money making” exercises (heavy compounds), will blow their load on small assistance work like forearms curls and ab work, and then train too often, limiting their ability to actually push hard enough in the gym in the first place.  Pair this with awful nutrition and terrible sleep and they just spin their wheels for months.  This is why I’m such a big fan of “Super Squats”: it gives you a training program that sorts out all that stuff AND the nutritional advice to recover.

 

So do you NEED a program in order to succeed?  Not necessarily one developed by someone else, no.  We need an approach to progression, alongside a way to balance stimulus to grow with fatigue.  Experience is one of the best ways to develop all of that, and one of the best ways to GET that experience is to run a bunch of established programs so we can see how we respond to certain approaches: physically AND psychologically.  And, of course, if you can get a coach to personally tailor an approach that fits you, that’s cool too…so I’ve heard.

 

STIMULUS

It's why I do so many bear complexes

 

“That which does not kill me only makes me stronger”.  Once again: Nietzsche had it figured out.  The Will to Power that exists in our bodies makes it such that our bodies have a propensity to attempt to grow in response to trauma.  The body encounters resistance, if said resistance does not kill the body, it seems to overcome this resistance.  It does so by making the necessary adaptations to do so.  In our case: it makes its muscles bigger, as a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. 

 

And this is ALL stimulus is.  People get so wrapped up on THIS part of the process of achieving physical transformation, when really, you can boil it down to going into the training facility and putting yourself through extensive physical trauma that does NOT kill you, giving you an opportunity to be made stronger.  However, in order to create an environment wherein the process of becoming stronger occurs, stimulus must be met with recovery, and fatigue must be managed.

 

RECOVERY

Hey look: recovery!

Food is absolutely the most anabolic substance on the planet.  Gains are made of food.  All tissue growth is a result of food.  This cannot be overstated.  If you take ALL the steroids, train ALL the training, sleep ALL the sleep, take ALL the ice baths, etc etc, but do not eat enough food to support growth: you will NOT grow.  Your body does not possess alchemical abilities to create out of nothingness. 

 

I say that because SO many trainees are absolutely terrified of food.  Specifically, they are terrified of eating “too much”.  In the game of physical transformation, this is essentially fear of being “too successful”.  It’s worth appreciating that I’m writing purely from the perspective of building muscle here.  I’ll circle back and discuss fat loss briefly, as that’s not really a complicated subject, but if our goal is to subject our body to enough stimulus to not quite kill it, we must THEN make it our goal to eat enough food that the “makes me stronger” part of the process can occur.  If we do our best to eat just BARELY enough to facilitate that process, we run the risk of erring on the wrong side of this caution, and PREVENT ourselves from actually recovering and growing stronger.  Meanwhile, a trainee that engages in gluttony will more than cover this base of recovery.  Once again: no life-denying philosophy here, AND no room for “slave morality” either.  The 7 deadly sins were created to limit the slave class: the masters are gluttons (once again: Nietzsche’s words, don’t get too worked up here).

 

And while we’re on those sins: sure, go for sloth too.  I’m not a great sleeper, but sleep and rest are absolutely awesome for recovery…but remember we are sloths OUTSIDE the training space.  Inside, perhaps some wrath is necessary instead?     

 

FATIGUE MANAGEMENT

This man taught SO many people how to manage fatigue...only for them to completely ignore it and say the program didn't have enough volume

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster”. Too much time fighting your body with stimulus and not enough time managing your fatigue is how one fails in this pursuit.  There are many strategies available to manage fatigue.  The simplest one is a scheduled deload. 

 

Before I go further, a deload does NOT mean resetting your weights and starting over again.  I’m not sure who starting that trend, but it’s been SO damaging to the discussion of training.

 

A deload is simply a period of time where we reduce training stress.  This can be done by either reducing the weight that we move in training, or the volume of training.  You can even simply just take a week off.  However you go about it, the point is to spend some time NOT training to your limits. IF you train, you’re simply doing so in order to maintain skill/proficiency in the lift, because, quite frequently, when someone comes back from time away from training and finds out they are “weaker”, they are simply detrained in the movement.  Lifting weights is a physical skill, and physical skills require maintenance, just like playing an instrument, throwing a ball, riding a bike, etc.  In that regard, the longer you spend lifting, the more time you can spend AWAY from lifting and not lose the skill, whereas, if you’re new to lifting, you might take a week off and see your lifts drop immensely upon your return.  Don’t sweat it: your body doesn’t know how much weight it’s lifting only how hard it is struggling.  Keep struggling and you’ll get stronger.

 

Within reason of course

I like to employ a scheduled deload, training hard for 6 weeks and then deload on the 7th.  I’ve absolutely stolen that from Jim Wendler.  When I deload, I’ll spend the entire week performing conditioning work and not do any sort of strength training.  I once did Dan John’s 10k kettlebell swing challenge in 7 days during a deload.  Yeah: that was an intense period of training, but the loading on my body was minimal, which gave me time to recover from my heavy training.  And that’s the boon of a deload and fatigue management in general: by NOT carrying excessive fatigue, we can push the training harder.  This is why athletes will take downtime before the game/event: you train to a point of overreaching, then you rest and recover so that, when you show up on gameday, you give your BEST performance.

 

Other avenues of fatigue management include auto-regulation within a training day itself.  Essentially, instead of handcuffing yourself to fixed percentages, reps and sets, you evaluate how you are feeling/performing THAT DAY and base your training on that.  On good days, you reach far and dig deep, on off days, you hit the bare minimum and live to fight another day.  As Many Reps as Possible sets are a great employment of this in a program, and 5/3/1 was cool in that it employed AMRAPs AND Deloads in it.  With the AMRAP set, on good days you can really push hard, and if you’re having a bad day, you could hit the bare minimum reps (5, 3 or 1 respectively) and call it a day.  However, this requires a bit more self-awareness and experience, which is why scheduled deloads tend to be the preferred “cookie-cutter” approach to fatigue management.   With the deload, you KNOW the trainee is going to manage fatigue, whereas auto-regulation puts a lot of work on the trainee.

 

PERIODIZATION: ACCUMULATION AND INTENSIFICATION

Oh yeah: it's about to get nerdy

“When you gaze too long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you”.  We cannot gaze too long my friends: training necessarily NEEDS to change in order to allow us to continue to grow, overcome, and exercise our Will to Power.  We absolutely have the abyss gaze back into us otherwise.

 

Yeah, I know: I’m really forcing the Nietzsche stuff, but I’m having fun.  The point is: we can’t pursue one way of training indefinitely.  No one successfully does that.  Training needs to be phasic, because life in and of itself is phasic.  We have seasons, things are in a state of constant change, and we too must be changing.  Hey, more Nietzsche stuff: we’re the bridge to the Overman.

 

This phasic approach to training is known as periodization.  There is a LOT out there on that topic, so I’m going to just quickly summarize. 

 

To make a muscle stronger, you make it bigger.  That’s it.  Strength training IS hypertrophy training.  We KNOW this in an instinctive lizardbrain level.  This is why, when you see a big animal, you are more afraid of it than a small one: you KNOW that the bigger animal is stronger than the smaller one.  It’s why, when you see a large muscular human, you KNOW they are strong before you start “thinking” about how bodybuilders are weaker than strength athletes (stop thinking: it doesn’t suit you).  In turn, this is why those very strength athletes have an accumulation phase in their training: THAT is the phase where we make our muscles bigger.

 

Accumulation is essentially the “body by Nietzsche” I’ve been writing about up until this point.  It’s a phase of training wherein we’re constantly trying to kill ourselves, “failing” at that, and, with enough recovery and properly managed fatigue, growing stronger.  This is traditionally accomplished by employing higher training volumes, as this forces adaptations.  “Volume” as a concept is a contentious issue, and gets more like Tao than Nietzsche, in that anyone who has succeeded in physical transformation “understands” volume, but as soon as you try to ascribe words to it, it fails.  I appreciate the idea of “hard work sets” as a measurement of volume, BUT we’ve also observed that a single set can have enough volume in it to drive significant growth so long as that set is an absolute and total soul crusher (think Super Squats or Dogg Crapp work).  But, in the most traditional sense, during accumulation, one is doing more sets and reps.

 

Intensification is a phase of training wherein the intent is to display all that strength we built in the accumulation phase.  Because of that, this style of training is often (mistakenly, in my opinion) referred to as “strength training”, whereas accumulation would be “hypertrophy training”.  During intensification, the intensity (duh) of the lift increases, in this case meaning percentage of 1 rep max.  Simply put: we’re lifting HEAVIER weights than we did in accumulation.  Why?  Because lifting heavy weights is a skill in and of itself, and during all that time we spent accumulating, we weren’t lifting very heavy weights: so we lost that skill.  Skills, thankfully, can be built/re-acquired faster than muscle can be built, so often we can have longer accumulation phases and shorter intensification phases.  A 3-4 week intensification phase isn’t unheard of in order to quickly peak for an event.  However, it’s worth appreciating that, since the weight is going UP the volume has to go down.  Once again, it’s a matter of balance, similar to fatigue and stimulus.  If we just increase the intensity and keep the volume the same, we’ll most likely be unable to recover, which prevents growth.

 

PHASIC EATING

Hey: it works

I have written at length about how bulking and cutting is so backwards as far as how most trainees implement it, so let me just quickly rehash this.  Food supports training: not the other way around.  Earlier we discussed how food as an anabolic agent that supported recovery from training.  In turn, one does not just start eating more food when they want to get bigger and eat less when they want to get smaller: instead, we employ phasic EATING to support our phasic training.

 

From here, it suddenly makes SO much more sense.  During the accumulation block, our training volume is higher, meaning there is a greater recovery demand placed upon us.  This requires us to eat MORE food.  That, in turn, drives us to grow bigger.  HOWEVER, we are “human, all too human” and, in turn, our body has limits. Even Bruce Randall had to stop bulking at one point, because the demand placed upon our body to eat, digest and pass all that food eventually becomes too much, to say nothing of all the TIME we must spend on cooking and cleaning, to say nothing of the absolute pounding our body is taking from that hard training.  This is where intensification comes it: it allows us a BREAK from accumulation, yet we can still make progress in training during this time, because now we to get to realize all that strength we built.  However, since the volume drops during intensification, the food may drop as well.  It doesn’t HAVE to, no, but if you were doing accumulation correctly you’ll WANT it to drop: you will be DONE eating.  This, in turn, results in the loss of fat accumulated during the accumulation phase: a cut! 

 

It's all so simple: eating matches training, and training must be phasic, therefore, so is eating.

FAT LOSS

As a fat kid in the 90s, this movie was my Rocky

 

I spent SO much time discussing the building of muscle because, along with being more interesting, it’s more nuanced compared to fat loss.  Allow me to explain fat loss: eat less.  That’s it.  When we eat less food, we lose fat.  In order to ensure a favorable distribution of fat lost compared to muscle when eating less food, we do our best to eat a lot of protein (since muscle is made from it) while also ensuring we are consuming enough fats to maintain hormonal health.  As long as you aren’t really stupid with your nutrition, you should be able to manage that.  When in doubt, I find meat, eggs and dairy a good option.

 

As far as fat loss training goes, the one thing I appreciate about a dedicated fat loss phase is you can pretty much train however you want, so long as you’re training hard.  Herein it’s worth appreciating that by “train”, I’m referring to lifting.  Don’t abandon lifting, train for an ultramarathon and then wonder why you lost muscle.  It’s worth appreciating what the intent of the lifting IS now at this point.  Previously, we were on the Nietzsche “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” approach, but now we’re simply reminding our body that there is STILL a demand for all that muscle we built, and that it should prioritize the saving of that tissue when it comes time to determine what to lose and what to keep during periods of calorie restriction.  We no longer need a program, the training does not need to necessarily “build” to anything: it is simply there as a matter of ensuring that what we HAVE built does not get lost.

 

In turn, fat loss phases are a great time to experiment, try things out, throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Fat loss is the “reward” for all that accumulation, because it’s going to feel like a vacation to no longer base your life around food and training.  However, again, exercise intelligence here: trying out a program SPECIFICALLY intended to be one run during a period of weight gain is most likely not going to go well.  Save Super Squats, Smolov, Building the Monolith, etc, for another day: maybe try out some Crossfit WODs instead.

 

TO BE CONCLUDED?

This is already 3 times longer than the majority of blog posts I write, and I haven’t even discussed conditioning yet, which is one of the topics I’m most well known for.  I’m going to cap it for now and see how it trends, and if there is a demand for more (or if I simply feel like writing more), I’ll throw that in there.  This may honestly be the start of an e-book: who knows.  Hope you enjoyed!

F**K YOU: I’LL JUST DO GOOD MORNINGS

 As much as I avoid out right profanity in my blog, using childish asterisks to block out certain letters (a trick I learned from Marvel Comics: Thanks Stan!  Excelsior!), this EXACT phrase has entered my head on multiple occasions to the point that I feel it’s worth exploring the sentiment behind it.  Those who are regular readers are in no way going to be shocked by the direction this goes, considering I literally just wrote about this experience in my most recent post, but “f—k you: I’ll just do good mornings” goes back even further, back before I adopted it for my torn tricep/teres minor during my run of 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake where I squatted 5x10x405, and actually all the way back to 2008 when I first started my home gym.  In fact, I’ll tell that story now.

 

You caught me

It was 2008: I had finished reading literally EVERY article on Elitefts (at the time that wasn’t QUITE the undertaking it would be today, but it was still something), was “fully versed” in the conjugate method (chortle), and had laid out an extensive training plan for the next few months to get me Dave Tate levels of strong and jacked…until I showed up to my gym and saw a sign on it that said “Closed for renovations for the next 2 weeks.”

 

I was livid.  There was no prior coordination of this closure, no newsletter (this was the aughts, forgive me for dating myself there), no e-mail, nothing from the front staff: like the Ringling Brothers Circus, it just closed up one day and went away.  I already had a rocky relationship with this gym, having had a front staff member accost me because I was “deadlifting too loud”…despite the fact I was being scolded in front of a group of 3 dudes that had brought their own personal boombox with a mixed CD (still the aughts) with the Rocky soundtrack on it that they were blaring over the gym’s own sound system while they all curled in front of the dumbbell rack facing the mirrors…but I’m not bitter.  But at this point, the final straw had been reached and I decided then and there I was just going to go MAKE my own gym.  I already had a bench I had scavenged off the side of the road with a sign on it that said “free”, so now I needed a barbell and some plates.  I headed to my local “Play it Again Sports” and bought a used 300lb weight set with a crappy barbell and brought the whole mess home…only to realize the folly of my ways.

I mean, aside from that.  HEY!  Double Simpsons, how cool!

 

It was Max Effort squat day…and I squatted MORE than 300lbs.

 

Well f**k you gym: I’ll just do good mornings.

I had the latest in 2008 guidance to lead the way!

And that was my very first workout in my very first home gym: max effort good mornings (got to 275 for a single), front squats, straight legged deadlifts and ab work.  Good mornings done not just because they were effective, but out of spite.  I wasn’t going to let the gym determine when I got to execute my plan.  And by the time the next max effort day rolled around, I had more plates and more options.

 

When I was running 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake this last time around, the same thing: on deadlift day, on the very first rep of the first set of the BBB work, I tore something around my tricep and teres minor while subluxing my left shoulder.  I immediately lost all ability to hold a barbell  with the posture necessary to deadlift.  I was in the middle of an INTENSE training block with an intense goal: squat 5x10x405 by the end of the 6 weeks, and this was only week 3 of that block. 

 

Well f**k you body: I’ll just do good mornings.  I loaded up my safety squat bar, since it didn’t force me to put my arm in a position I couldn’t hold, and did one of the hardest BBB workouts of my life, starting from the bottom of the good morning off the pins, just like a deadlift, and going 5x10 in under 20 minutes.  It was brutal, it was effective, it achieved the INTENDED effect, and I did not miss that workout.

I mean...I didn't MISS that workout either

 

My amazingly catastrophic Super Squats run was detailed in full in my last post, but after tearing my right hamstring on the 20th rep of breathing squats as a result of squatting with severe dehydration due to RSV, I once again found myself at a decision point.  Was I to give up Super Squats at the mid-point and fail to realize my sole goal of “experiencing this experience?”  Absolutely not!  F**k you hamstring, f**k you RSV, f**k you circumstances, f**k you sanity, f**k you self-preservation, f**k you ‘making sense’: I’ll just go good mornings!  And once again, cue one of the hardest workouts of my executing breathing good mornings: a workout so brutal that now I HAVE to see what a full cycle of that would be like.

 

And from this, I already have so many lessons to learn.  One of which being that good mornings are an awesome exercise and I need to do more of them.  They are absolutely brutal, they hit everything, and they can maximize a small amount of weight.  Looking back during the pandemic, they were absolutely “the answer” for many people struggling with ideas of how to train with limited equipment.  You aren’t giving anything up by choosing the good morning over another exercise: there’s a reason Bruce Randall defaulted to them when he couldn’t squat due to breaking his leg in 7 places.  And in that regard, Bruce’s form on the good morning (and mine for that matter) is absolutely NOT textbook perfect once the poundages get high enough…and the lesson there is “who cares”.  If you see the video of me post Super Good Mornings, I’m having an out of body experience trying to come to grips with the sheer brutality I endured.  The training effect IS there: it doesn’t matter how straight your legs were.

Effort on the left: effect on the right

 

And there’s another lesson to be had there: we need to stop confusing the method for the goal.  I received some flak when I ran Super Squats using good mornings, because, of course, I wasn’t doing squats…but did it matter?  Again: the training EFFECT was there: I was absolutely NUKED by the time that set was done.  The amount of fatigue I generated rivaled, if not EXCEEDED a set of breathing squats, and I still held a bar on my back the entire time there.   And this is talking about swapping an entirely different exercise: just think about all the nitpicking we engage in when it comes to squat depth.  Are we REALLY going to pretend like it matters if someone is an inch or two high of powerlifting legal on a TRAINING set of squats if they still have to drag themselves out of the rack when the set is over?  We have this idea like the body is waiting for a certain magical criteria to be hit before it triggers a growth response, and really it’s a matter of simply subjecting the body to significant trauma and then giving it an opportunity to grow and recover.  And boy: if you want trauma, you want good mornings.

 

But finally, could there be a better “get to yes” lesson than “f**k you: I’ll just do good mornings?”  That good morning option is ALWAYS there: we simply have to be willing to take it when the opportunity presents.  And “good mornings” don’t have to be good mornings.  This could just as easily have become “f**k you: I’ll just do burpees”, which is the response I saw from Lee Hazard (AMAZING name) when the pandemic hit and took away so many fitness avenues, and in turn the dude completely transformed himself physically, mentally and psychologically.  This could be “f**k you: I’ll just do hill sprints”, which is the EXACT answer I’ve seen people give when told explicitly NOT to do hill sprints while running Building The Monolith: because THEY decided that THEY were going to take the risk, suffer the consequences, and reap the rewards therein, rather than ask permission or seek alternatives.  “F**k you: I’ll just train my OTHER leg”, which is exactly what I said after I ruptured my ACL (I have a lot of injury stories it’d seem), “f**k you: I’ll just carry my keg inside my garage” when my events day got snowed out: let’s make our first response be OBSTANANCE, defiance and spite before we start coming up with reasonable excuses and justifications.  Let’s jump to extremes and MAYBE back down toward the middle…but only if we need to.  And if anyone tells us we can’t do it: f**k them: I’ll just do good mornings.

 

 

"WHAT WOULD BRUCE RANDALL DO?": MY SUPER SQUATS REVIEW GOING FROM 20x315 TO 30X315 BREATHING SQUATS WITH A TORN HAMSTRING AND RSV

 Before I begin: MythicalStrength turned 10 years old 2 days ago: how crazy!  A big thanks to all the folks that have been reading throughout this process.  I can think of no better way to celebrate than with this.

INTRO/BACKGROUND

I can already feel your anxiety

* I first ran Super Squats when I was in college, well over 15 years ago…and never ran it again since.  In my mind it was one of the most effective programs of all time AND once of the most traumatic experiences of all time.  I could still remember the pain of those 20 rep sets, the anxiety that existed between workouts, and being SO happy when it was over.  I said I’d run it again some day, and had recommended the book to SO many trainees, yet took SO long to finally saddle back up and do it all over again.

 

* A lot had changed between then and now.  One of the biggest factors being that I had my ACL reconstructed in 2015 after rupturing it and part of my meniscus in a strongman competition.  That changes squats a little.  But I was also much smarter about training and nutrition than I was as a meathead college kid, so that’s cool.

 

* For the full rundown on stats, I’m 37, 5’9, bodyweight somewhere in the high 180s, have lifted weights for 23 years, competed in strongman for a decade off and on, did some powerlifting, combat sports/martial arts experience, and has accumulated some bumps and scrapes along the way.   

WHAT SUPER SQUATS IS/IS NOT

'tis the season

* First, it is NOT a squatting program.  Oh my god I hate how I have to keep explaining this.  Am I the ONLY one who got taught “Don’t judge a book by its cover?”  Same thing with the “30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks” thing: quit focusing on that.  The squatting in Super Squats is PURELY a mechanism employed to trigger muscular bodyweight growth in a trainee.  It wasn’t a program designed with “improving your squat as much as possible!” or “the surefire solution to chicken legs!”: the BREATHING squat is chosen because it’s a way to trigger full body growth.  And no: I don’t mean “it causes the release of HGH/testosterone”: I’m talking about the fact that, when you do breathing squats, you spend a LOT of time with a weight on your back, which is signaling to your body that the whole BODY needs a LOT more muscle SOON if it wants to survive.  The squatting itself adds stimulus, absolutely, but I’ve found that one can employ good mornings to a similar effect, and there’s a solid argument about being able to employ trap bar lifts as well.

 

* It is a SYSTEM, not a workout.  Specifically, that system is premised upon the idea of putting the entire body under SIGNIFICANT stress 2-3 times a week, and consistently upping that stress so that it’s never able to fully cope.  This is why you use the weight you’d squat for 10 to do 20 reps, and it’s why you add 5lbs per workout.  A lot of folks seem to think the magic is just in the squat set, so they’ll do a set of 20 breathing squats ONE time and go “Yeah, that was hard, but I don’t see the big deal”.  The big deal is that you have to do it AGAIN 2 days later…with 5lbs more than before…for 6 weeks.  You can’t just take the squats part of Super Squats in isolation: it’s a whole system.  It’s also why the gallon of milk a day is associated with it: it’s a system of training insanely hard and then eating VERY big so that you can be recovered enough to achieve the next goal.  It’s why when people ask “what should I do if I fail” on the program, I tell them “don’t”.  If you are actually eating as much as you need to eat and following the program, success should be your only outcome…assuming you have the necessary mental fortitude to get through it.

 

* It’s a BOOK.  Every time I see a trainee fail with “Super Squats”, it’s because they’re not actually doing Super Squats, because they didn’t read the book.  The book can be read in an afternoon and it’s $10 on Kindle: there’s zero excuse for not reading it.  It explains EVERYTHING.  It doesn’t just lay out a program: it walks you through step by step how to execute it, gives you instructions on how to perform ALL the exercises, it lays out a very effective nutrition protocol, it gives you psychological coaching to get through the squat set (along with saying MANY times that it’s 3 deep breaths between EVERY rep…but I digress), and even goes into the history of squatting and strong people in general, and EVEN gives you a follow-on plan so you can actually run Super Squats for QUITE a long duration.  There is a reason I practically THROW this book at every new trainee: if you read it, you will have pretty much everything you could ever need.

 

MY RUN OF THE PROGRAM

This ended up being the perfect soundtrack, sadly

 

* When I began Super Squats, I was amazed at how many people who read my blog kept asking me what my plan was.  “You started at 315lbs: are you planning on going all the way to 405 for 20?”  “You’ve done 5x10x405: are you planning on going higher than 405?”  “Are you planning on making this even more challenging than the book says?”.  I kept saying the same thing: “My goal is to experience this experience”.  It was to the point that I think OTHER people were getting anxiety over my “lack of a plan”.

 

* Folks: CHAOS IS THE PLAN.  It’s not just a thing I say: it’s the truth.

 

* …and BOY was it the truth.  When I originally mapped out the 6 week block of Super Squats, I had a full 6 weeks on my schedule with uninterrupted time set out.  2 weeks before I started, my job threw a trip on my schedule from Mon through Thurs of my first week of the program.   Cool, time to call an audible.  I did the first workout on a Friday, my second workout the Monday I left for the trip, and the third workout on the Friday that I returned home.

 

* …except that, in between Monday and Friday, on that work trip, I came down with RSV.  On Tuesday night of that week, I did not sleep, because my fever was so high I had forgotten how to sleep.  I literally ate non-stop for 2 hours before that, because my kid had RSV before I left and they were taking FOREVER to heal because they wouldn’t eat, so I knew calories were the answer.  My appetite was shot, but that’s never slowed me down before, and, thankfully, my room was fully stocked with travel food, because I know how to travel.

 

* …and then I STILL did my 3rd workout on Friday, with RSV…and promptly proceeded to pull something in my innerquad/outer hamstring on my right leg on rep 15, because I forgot to factor in the significant impact of dehydration when you’ve been losing all your fluids to an awful ragged cough.  Which, if you want some real fun: try BREATHING squats with RSV.  Also: symptoms last for 2 weeks…so that’s cool.

 

* Whelp, Chaos it the Plan: “What Would Bruce Randall Do?”  He’d do some goddamn good mornings, and that was EXACTLY what I did.  I figured: if a dude that broke his leg in 7 places could use good mornings to build up to a 600lb squat, I could use them to get through Super Squats.  Cue one of the hardest workouts of my life

 

 

* I kept the weight EXACTLY the same as what I failed on with the squats, because I figured THAT was the most significant part of the program.  It’s why I picked good mornings as well: it’d keep the weight ON my back in the same spot as before with the same weight as before. 

 

* I genuinely think that workout was so hard it scared my body into healing, because I was able to return to squatting again for the next workout.  I was in pain, sure, and I had to take the squats slow, but I wasn’t missing any reps.

 

* And then, like an idiot, I forgot the lessons I had learned about hydration and keeping my legs warm and, without my morning Gatorade and sweats, went and TORE my hamstring…this time on rep 20!  Yup: that was workout 7.

The workout

The hamstring

 

* Back on the good mornings, but this time the hamstring was so borked I couldn’t get the weight that I needed to for progression.  I got hurt with 345, and 350 wasn’t stable, so I warmed up until I felt the hamstring start to buckle and went for max rep GMs

 

 

* So now Chaos really IS the plan: 5lb progressions between workouts just ceased.  What is one to do?  Well, the middle of that good morning workout and my next squat workout, Thanksgiving happened, which meant I had to pull 401 reps with 135lbs on a high handle trap bar in a single set

 

 

* Because traditions damnit!

 

* Next Super Squats workout, all my hamstring would tolerate was 315lbs, so I went and took it for a ride and only managed 16 reps before I could feel it start to buckle and bulge.  So I got to yes by racking the bar, trying 1 more rep, hitting my pullovers, and then immediately getting pissed off, strip the bar to 245lbs and get my 20 reps in.  Mission absolutely accomplished. Please note my use of knee wraps to hold my hamstring in place/together, as that would be in effect for the remainder of the program.

 

* …and with THAT, the new way forward began.  We had finished workout 9, which was halfway through the program, and a new plan emerged: take 315 for as many reps as possible.  Which is TOTALLY in-line with something the book discussed about dudes going for 30 reps with breathing squats. Chaos is the plan, and we moved forward with that plan.

 

* …and comically enough, people STILL asked me what I was planning.  “Are you going to stick with 315 or eventually up the weight?”  This whole run of SS could NOT be any more an indication of “Chaos is the Plan”.  And I’M SO thankful that I embraced that from the start.  If I set out with a goal to squat 405 for 20, I’d just be miserable with how this whole experience turned out, and probably would have shut it all down at the halfway point when I “failed” to add 5lbs.  Instead, I got to experience the most challenging run of Super Squats perhaps EVER performed: afflicted with RSV for about half of it, through torn muscles, adding a rep each session and nearly blacking out from effort, with some Bruce Randall good mornings for good measure.  This is the Chaos edition of Super Squats, and it’s amazing.

 

MY SPECIFIC TRAINING PLAN

* The very first time I ran the program 15 years ago, I did an abbreviated approach, because that was all the rage then.  This time, I wanted to stay pretty close to what the book laid out.  I did no calf work, and my ab work was standing ab wheel, but for the most part I stuck with the program laid out in the book while employing the exercises listed. 

 

* I created two separate training days (A and B) and rotated between them every training day, 3x a week.  Do, for example: Week 1 would go A-B-A, week 2 B-A-B, repeat.  This got me a little bit of variety and allowed me to have some extra recovery between sessions of SLDL.  They broke down as such.

 

DAY A

* Axle clean and strict press 3x10/superset with 50 band pull aparts

* Weighted dips 3x12/superset with axle bent over rows 2x15

* Breathing squats 1x20/pull overs 1x20

* Axle Straight Legged Deadlifts 1x15

* Poundstone curls (1 rep more than previous workout each time)

 

DAY B

 

* Incline DB bench 3x12/superset with 2x15 weighted chins

* Behind the neck press 3x10/superset with 50 band pull aparts

* Breathing squats 1x20/pull overs 1x20

* Kroc rows 1xmax reps

* Axle shrugs against bands 1xmax reps

* Reverse hyper 1x50+ reps

 

* Once this portion of the workout was finished, I’d drink a protein shake (a PROTEIN shake you philistines: NOT a carb/fat shake.  It was egg whites mixed with a scoop of protein powder), and then finish up with 20 reps of standing ab wheel, 30 glute ham raises, 25 push downs, band curls on day B, and then some manner of 3-5 minutes of conditioning. 

 

* On top of this, daily, I’d do either 5 minutes of kettlebell armor building complexes w/24kg bells or the “TABEARTA” workout of Barbell bear complexes with 95lbs getting in 3 complexes per round.

 

* In between Super Squats workouts (to include the two day break on the weekends), I’d do conditioning workouts.  I initially was a little cute and creative, but pretty quickly I settled into a rut of something I referred to as “Armor Bearer”, which looked like this

 

 

* An “Armor Bearer” is 5 minutes of Dan John’s kettlebell “Armor Building Complex” (2 cleans, 1 press, 3 front squats) followed immediately with TABEARTA (tabata protocol Bear complexes w/95lbs). 

 

* Just 1 round of these can absolutely nuke you if you really push it (for me, that’s getting around 25 ABCs and a full 8 rounds of 3 complexes with the bears), but for the Tuesday workout I’d typically do 3 rounds of these.  Weekends would be 1-3 rounds.  On Thursdays, I’d end up doing something slightly less aggressive, like a circuit of swings, thrusters and burpee chins or something similar.  Basically, I’d recover/recharge over the weekends, come out hard * * Mon through Wed, and need a slight dip down in intensity on Thurs to be able to absolutely smash Friday.

 

* On Tues and Thurs, I’d train fasted.  I feel like that’s better for nutrient partitioning post workout.  For the Super Squats workouts, I had half a low carb bagel with sunflower seed butter pre-workout for the first half of the program, switching to a slice of homemade sourdough toast with sunflower butter for the second half…because my wife took up making sourdough and it’s amazing.

 

* Oh yeah, one other thing: I was STILL training first thing in the morning for all of these workouts.  Typically around 0400.

 

* What’s worth appreciating is that I realize this violates Super Squats recommendation of resting as much as possible between the workouts, but it SHOULD be noted that this DOES represent a significant reduction in training volume for me.  Instead of 40-60 minute conditioning workouts, I was doing 10-30.  Instead of 10-20 minute conditioning workouts post lifting, it was 3-5.  I was sleeping more, and the volume within the lifting workouts itself was on the lower side.  This program will STILL beat you down, no matter who you are, and it DOES require throttling back to recover.

* For those that want to see it, here is the full run of the program

 

NUTRITION

I wish it was this easy

* It would be WAY too tedious to document what I was eating, because I am a constant grazer as it is and this program just turned my appetite up to 11.  But I’ll say that was probably the biggest thing: I stopped restricting myself and just ate if I felt any hunger.  I still stuck with Deep Water/Mountain Dogg approved stuff for the vast majority of my nutrition, but was a bit more willing to eat “off menu” here and there.  I maintained a focus on food quality, and didn’t need to resort to “dirty” eating to get in my calories.  Between avocados, nuts and nut/sunflower seed butter, it’s pretty easy to jack up calories, and mixed in with a variety of animal based protein sources and some keto magic breads/tortillas, I was in a good way.  My dirtiest daily item was a protein bar/keto bar, which is also one of the first things I cut out of a diet when I’m no longer gaining.

 

* Biggest meals were always my post training breakfast and my pre-bed time meal.  Eating before bed remains one of the most effective strategies I know for gaining, and I love starting the day off with a win by smashing a VERY large and nutritious breakfast.

 

RESULTS

 

* As much as it upsets people, I don’t weigh myself, and I took no before/after photos. 

 

* But what WAS amazing was how I was just smashing lifts every time I trained on this program.  I imagine coming into it with a LOT of accumulated volume and finally taking the time to laser focus it into an abbreviated approach really paid off, especially when paired with a LOT of food.  I’m not an excel ninja, so I’m just going to spell out the progress I had.

 

* Axle clean and strict press went from 3x10x136 to 2x10x171 and 1x9x171 (so close!). Behind the neck press from 3x10x95 to 3x10x135, Weighted dips went from 3x12x55 to 3x12x100 and weighted chins from 2x15x7.5lbs to 2x15x20lbs(keeping in mind I gained bodyweight through the program), DB bench from 3x12x80s to 3x12x105s, Axle rows went from 2x15x193 to 2x15x228, Axle SLDLs went from 15x243 to 15x283 (doing them AFTER the squats is just awful), Kroc rows from 15x115 to 23x115

 

* And, of course: Breathing Squats from 20x315 to 30x315…WITH a recovering torn hamstring

 

LEESSONS LEARNED

Hey, they wrote a book for me!

* The squats themselves are immaterial: it’s more about the loading of the body and hard effort.  In turn, the “5lbs per week” is also immaterial.  Good mornings and increasing reps proved viable, and I’m sure there is much more room to play around with.  But that’s why we run these programs: we learned lessons like that that we can carry forward.

 

* If you’re not drinking the gallon of milk a day, you’ll have to eat like it’s your job.  I really would have preferred to just suck down a gallon a day and eat normally vs the sheer volume of food I was putting away.  I legit felt like I had been hit by a bomb through weeks 3 and 4, and finally managed to get a handle on things toward the end.

 

* If we wait until we feel good, we’ll never train.  I tore my hamstring before I was halfway done with the program, and up until the final workout it still ached.  It hurt LESS, sure, but I could still make an argument that I was injured at the final workout. And if I waited until I was “ready” to start again, I have no idea how long that would have taken.  Instead, I “went before I was ready”, squatted through pain, used knee wraps to fake a hamstring, took things slow, etc.  I genuinely do not feel I slowed down my healing rate in doing so: if anything, I sped it up, because I kept the muscle moving and gave it fresh blood.  In addition, I had zero “break back in” period.  Often, people that get injured and rest take FOREVER to get back because, upon their return, they’ll try out the movement that hurt them and still experience some pain in doing so, and they’ll freak out and go back to resting.  My continuing in my training, I effectively did my own rehab, getting the muscle from completely worthless to almost 100% functional, and didn’t miss any training as a result.

 

BONUS SUPER SQUATS RAMBLING!

* NOTE: What is written below are some jumbled thoughts I came up with toward the middle of my Super Squats run, so the timeline of thought processes may seem “off”.

 

* Going beyond 20 reps has been such a different way to make this program awful, and I feel like it just compliments things so well.  Just by nature of my injury I ended up doing 2 weeks of going up 5lbs a workout before resetting the weight to the start and then going up one REP a workout, and both progression models seem to work out pretty well.  I feel like there’s something to doing this intentional.  Perhaps running the program for 3 weeks where you go up 5lbs per workout, then reset and push max reps.  Another approach would be do 1 week going up 5 reps per workout, then hold that weight for the next week and go up a rep per workout and keep alternating that way.  A way to slow down the weight increases while still making things suck.  You might even do 10lb jumps during the weight increase weeks to compensate for the “down time”.  Another option would be 6 weeks one way, 6 weeks the other, with a program in the middle of course. 

 

* And then there’s alternate MOVEMENTS to include in there.  I’ve demonstrated that, at least ONE workout of “Super Good Mornings” is viable.  It’d be interesting to see what a full cycle would be like.  I also know that the book talks about hip belt squats, and from there the trap bar is a very logical transition.  And then we can combine that all with the above.  What about a week of good mornings where we progress weights, next week we take that top weight of good mornings and make it a squat week where we’re chasing after max reps, and then next week is a trap bar week?  Are we making conjugate Super Squats?  It’s a bit like Dogg Crapp, which, actually, would ALSO work just dandy here: change between 3 movements every workout.

 

* I’ve also entertained the idea of being cute and having a theme of “Paul Kelso Super Squats”.  Use the trap bar for presses, rows, trap bar lifts and SLDLs.  I’m literally thinking AS I write this and I realize I just came up with a (potentially) INCREDIBLY effective hypertrophy program with ONE piece of equipment and NO rack.  Just think of how space economic that is.  Biggest issue would be getting the trap bar in place for pressing without a rack, but that circus act CAN happen.  And using radar chest pulls, you don’t need a bench and dumbbell to get the pull over effect. 

 

* All THIS said, I REALLY don’t think the SSB meets intent here at all.  I feel like a BIG part of the “success” of this program Is having that bar just absolutely CRUSH you for all it’s worth and you just survive for as long as possible.  The SSB is too comfortable AND it allows you to stand there and take the pressure off of you by pushing it back or pulling it forward as needed.  You are ON the clock when it’s a barbell crushing you, and even with the trap bar with straps, you’re still standing there having it pull your shoulders out of the socket.  Don’t ask me about the belt squat: I have no idea how that’s supposed to work.

 

* I DO have to avoid for falling into the trap of making Super Squats the answer to everything.  I have to appreciate that this laser focused program was effective BECAUSE I came into it with SO much accumulated volume.  In that regard, I plan to do a write-up at some point of Super Squats and Deep Water being yin and yang.  Both absolutely crazy, but SO different in their insanity, making them ideal pairings.  3 days a week of 1x20 vs 1 day a week of 10x10.  Of course, the kind of dude that is just plain ALWAYS running Super Squats and Deep Water back to back is too crazy even for me.  At some point there would need to be some sort of OTHER side of balance, which would probably be a great time for a lighter 5/3/1 program, the 10K swing challenge, or something else just plain wildly different.