"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.