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.

 

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD

Back when this show was awesome...which is already me being a grumpy old man

 

* The great irony of training is that time under the bar is invaluable and the lessons we learn are crucial, but through the accumulation of time we out age our bodies past the point where we could best make use of these lessons.  I’m 37 with well over 20 years of lifting under me.  I’m running Super Squats right now, and through it all I’ve contracted RSV that turned into a sinus infection, pulled my quad and tore my hamstring, yet I haven’t missed a single workout because I know EXACTLY how to change with fate and fortune.  I know how to fake a hamstring with a knee wrap, I learned how to swap out squats with good mornings from Bruce Randall, AND I have enough body control that I can literally squat AROUND the injuries and rely on other muscles (which is most likely what transitioned me from a pulled quad to a torn hamstring, but I digress).  20 year old me would have simply STOPPED at the first bit of adversity because he had no idea what to do to overcome it…but at the same time, 20 year old me most likely wouldn’t have run into these problems in the first place.

 

* That’s WHY I write this blog and spend so much time online: I want to pass on my lessons to those that are in a position to make better use of them.  Some things can’t be caught, sure, but even a fraction of this is worth it.

 

* And that is one of the more interesting things I hear in response: if it weren’t for the suffering that produced the lesson, one wouldn’t know how to make use of the lesson.  Maybe so, but perhaps I can at least affect the ratio of suffering to learning in a better direction.

 

* Time under the bar ALSO extends to being able to understand OTHER meatheads as well, because we’ve all “been there/done that”.  People complain about Jim Wendler being difficult to understand, but it’s because they have such a small framework of experience to understand him WITH.  5/3/1 is SO simple once you “get it”, but to get it, you need to forget the stupid things you “know” and remember the worthwhile stuff instead.  And if your “knowledge base” is just social media, you’re screwed.

 

* Speaking of social media, boy and I glad I grew up with fat powerlifters/strongman and Ironmind to guide me.  These kids today want to be photoshoot ready year round and are squandering their primary growing years.  I was fine being “fat” for a few years if it meant getting huge in the long run. 

When THIS was the ideal body image

 

* Science has been a hindrance as well.  And I should really write “science”, and from there I should write “people attempting to understand science”, but again: I digress.  I love “Super Squats” as a book because it “cites” everything in a manner that would NEVER pass today’s internet critics’ stringent standards, yet it was MORE than adequate for us meatheads back in the day.

 

* People are so backward thinking something has to be proven before it can work.  It’s the other way around!  It has to work and THEN we go prove HOW!  Science is CATCHING UP with reality: not dictating it.

 

* My go to is this: we had TWO 600lb benchers in the 1960s: Pat Casey and Billy Graham.  They accomplished these benches in t-shirts, on a bench press that looks like something you wouldn’t pick up off the curb with a “free” sign on it these days, using primitive drug protocols and nutrition.  50+ years later, the record has moved up 170lbs for ONE individual, and otherwise a handful of dudes have added about 120ish pounds, despite ALL the advances we’ve had in training, nutrition, and drugs, alongside a MUCH wider talent-tool to draw from.  Training and eating is NOT that complicated.

 

* When you have to “prove” you are right with a study versus a literal body of evidence, that’s a pretty good sign you are out of your depth.

 

* Kids will pump all sorts of pre-workout into their bodies, mainline processed foods and mass gainers, seek out SARM sources, and then balk at a dozen eggs a day for being “unhealthy”.  No one was telling Rocky to get his cholesterol checked!

Meanwhile some kid is having their 4th "Serious Mass" shake of the day

* Not everything we do needs to make sense, but it SHOULD be intentional. 

 

* Dan John talks about building a habit of success.  Set up small success to build the habit and, eventually, we make succeeding in and of itself the habit.  Making our bed every morning for a week eventually turns into running a full marathon.  This actually pairs VERY well with Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” concept, in that we can make a habit of consistently overcoming such that overcoming BECOMES the habit.  To me, adversity rarely gives me pause, as I am so accustomed to frequently overcoming that I am typically able to develop a solution in the midst of encountering the adversity.  When I tore my teres minor and tricep on a set of deadlifts during BBB Beefcake, within minutes I had the SSB set up to do BBB Beefcake good mornings.  With my current run of Super Squats, “Super Good Mornings” became a solution way too easily, as did wrapping my hamstring to fake one through squat workouts.  It’s hard for me to NOT overcome at this point.

 

* There is so much value to be had in being too stupid to know that something won’t work.

 

* Fear of injury is more injurious than the injury itself.

 

* The primary benefit of trying a new program is learning from the experience.  We deny ourselves this benefit if we try to “fix” the program before we try it.

 

* I get lean when I travel.  People wonder how.  The answer is: I don’t eat garbage just because I am traveling.  Plan ahead!  Don’t spend $14 on an airport cheeseburger when you could have had a $1 protein bar from home.  And if you didn’t plan, it’s an excellent time to try out fasting.  You won’t “lose muscle”, and you might learn something.

* On the above, not every meals needs to be a celebration, especially when simply TRAVELING rather than vacationing. 

 

* It’s amazing how people focus on form vs effort.  My squats look awful, they’re above powerlifting legal…and they CLEARLY work.  But people either critique them or want to know why I don’t do them “the right way”.

 

* Order is foreign to the body: it craves a return to chaos.

You thought it was over!

 

* A daily 4-5 minute workout is one of the greatest recent additions I’ve made to my training.  It’s so obvious!  We all have that time.  That extra volume and conditioning adds up!

 

* If I were to design a curriculum of reading for a new trainee, I’d start them with Super Squats, then move on to either Powerlifting Basics Texas Style OR Brawn, depending on their interests, then 5/3/1 Forever, then Deep Water.  Start them off learning the basics, alongside what hard work and hard eating looks like.  Get them to understand training with a purpose.  Get them to understand how to structure training over the long haul.  Then get them to be completely reborn.

 

* When it has more carbs than protein, it is NOT a protein shake.

 

* “Softening up” is legit.  Stuart McRobert, Pavel, Kelso, McCallum, Drapper, Arnold, ec.  There’s no montage without a starting point.

 

* “Floor to overhead” and “level change”.  Use those 2 tools and you’ll have everything else figured out.

 

* Supply chain issues and a pandemic have taught us all valuable lessons on what REALLY matters as far as results are concerned…and a similar lesson regarding who really wants those results.

But I'm sure it was awful only having a rack and plates

 

* “No dessert until you eat your veggies” was a great lesson.  Have a bare minimum of healthy food first and you most likely won’t want to eat junk…but the “clean plate club” is stupid.

 

* On the above, ever observe someone given a pre-packaged meal?  Like on an airplane or at an office luncheon?  Ever notice how they will eat EVERY last time?  Even if they’re not hungry for that much food, they eat it because its there.  The meal ends when the food is gone.  This is why measuring/weighing food is so popular.  Instead, we could simply NOT eat all the food.  That offends the capitalist in us but keeps the cardiologist happy.

 

* Kettlebell swings are weird.  I feel fine when I do them, but as soon as I set the bell down, I want to die.

 

* You really can’t expect me to believe you can run conjugate when you screwed up “Super Squats”.

 

* “5/3/1 is too complicated!”  No: it lives up to its claim.  It IS the most simple program: it’s just not a ROUTINE.

 

* 1 year looking fat and 3 years looking awesome sounds better than 4 years of looking average to me.

 

* You can eat back 60 minutes of cardio with 30 seconds of eating.  That information works both ways.

These guys might wanna eat for 60 seconds

 

* Eat what big animals eat and eat those big animals and you’ll have a solid diet for becoming big yourself.

 

* Life is too convenient these days to have any excuses.  You didn’t make breakfast so you got an egg McMuffin?  They sell yogurt and hardboiled eggs at the gas station!  Be real: you WANTED a McMuffin.

 

* On the above, with inflation these days, you can’t even say you got the fast food because it was cheaper!

 

* My rule these days when eating out is I won’t order something I can’t make better at home.  Why grab a burger when I can make a better one?  Why would I ever buy a sandwich?  Chinese food?  NOW you have my attention.

"Chinese" with a HEAVY asterisk 

 

* Low footprint gym?  Power tower, dip belt, adjustable KBs.  Front squat and belt squat the KBs for leg work, weighted dips and chins for upper body, swings/snatches for hinge, all sorts of carrying opportunities. 

 

* Low footprint diet?  Eggs/whites, avocados, spinach.  If you need carbs, add potatoes.

 

GIVING 100% OF 80%

This topic title comes off of something I told the wife the other day.  My run of Super Squats has been about as full of misfortune as possible, and the write up on it is going to be nuts, but currently I’ve pulled my hamstring pretty badly which forced me to have to do one more “Super Good Mornings” workout for the immediate follow-on.  For the follow-on after THAT, I wrapped up the hamstring as best I could, loaded the bar to 315 and tried my hardest to get it to over 20 reps, but the hamstring gave me a warning at rep 16.  So I racked it, paused long enough to recover and assess, went for more reps, got 1 more while still feeling the same issue, racked it, did the pullovers…then decided I’M STILL going to get my Super Squats on, so stripped the bar down to 245, got in 20 MORE breathing squats, promptly died and did the pull overs

 

This is like a 13 minute snuff film

And this is how it looked when it felt GOOD!

I came back inside from the garage after finishing the workout and the Mrs asked me how it went.  I told her “I’m not 100%, but I gave 100% of the 80% I am”, as since she’s a psychotic athlete like me, she TOTALLY got that as she watched me limp to the couch and collapse while muttering profanity to myself under my breath.  It also helps we were both political-science majors in college, and therefore have no issue with Sophistry and butchering mathematics.  But this does speak to something in the training sphere that I feel is significantly under-appreciated.  People strive so hard to BE 100% that they tend to (at best) only GIVE 80% effort, whereas I argue that giving 100% of 80% is vastly superior than 80% of 100%.

 

Ok, NOW I’ve made it insane and confusing.  Good.  I like it when my opponent is off balance.  I learned that from martial arts.  And martial arts ALSO taught me the valuable lesson that NO ONE shows up to a fight at 100%.  Through the process of PREPARING for a fight, we tend to get beat up.  Training to fight means FIGHTING, and fighting HURTS.  Even with compliant partners and controlled drills, we get dinged and banged up and bruise and worn out, and, inevitably, when the time comes to actually fight, we have some issues we need to work around.  Sore knees and joints, a cut over the eye that keeps opening up, or in the case of Mike Tyson: a broken back

 

Knowing Mike, I am 100% certain this was without hyperbole

And despite all of this, the bell goes off and we go and give 100% of the 80% that we are.  And the “trick” there is to make it so that, even at 80%, we are STILL quite the handful, so long as we’re willing to give 100% OF that 80% to whatever is opposing us.  And folks: that’s when it comes time to make another human go to sleep when they don’t want to.  When it comes to physical transformation, our only opponent is ourselves: they are outmatched and outnumbered when they have to face off against our ID, ego and superego!

 

Which is why it’s so patently ridiculous how much trainees want to be 100% just to TRAIN for “the fight”: not even the fight itself.  How many trainees have to time their pre-workout meal and supplements JUST right, while resting JUST the right amount of time between workouts, with perfectly calculated macros and MRV against RPE with the exact right frequency of training movements paired with exactly 9 hours of sleep or else the whole workout was wasted!  I’ve known dudes who simply WON’T train if they had a bad nights sleep or not enough protein for the sake, operating under the premise that it’s better to have NO workout vs a bad one.  And people think I’M crazy!? 

And I know a thing or two about bad ideas!

 

I stopped caring about optimal a LONG time ago, because I realized something: we will NEVER be optimal.  We are a SUB-OPTIMAL species.  A big part of that is we managed to side-step “survival of the fittest” such that we have no natural selection process to weed us down to “the elite”, which is why Nietzsche believe that we were merely a bridge/stepping stone for the REAL humans to come along as the Overman/Ubermesnch.  And please, don’t go crying “eugenics” on me here or explain to me how we ARE the product of survival of the fittest because circumstances of survival have changed etc etc: we’re both smart enough to understand where I am going here.  As a species, we’re flawed.  Amongst the flawed, very very VERY few of us are “the ELITE flawed”, which is why we pay SO much money to watch them on TV and in movies.  From elite athletes that get paid millions to play a game in front of us to elite actors who get paid to PRETEND TO BE OTHER PEOPLE (so elite that we want them to be someone else instead so we don’t have to remember) in front of us, we are enamored by the elite of us species…and if you’re reading this blog, you aren’t one of them.

 

So, knowing that you’re part of a flawed species and that, amongst the flawed, you’re NOT part of the upper echelon, it’s a given that you are, ALREADY, not 100% of what you COULD be.  Your potential was pre-emptively squandered.  In turn, your pre-occupation with “being optimal” is goofy, because optimal went away a LONG time ago.  You’re operating off of a NON-OPTIMAL framework: why not just push it as hard as IT can go?  You don’t have a Ferrari, you have a Ford Windstar: but that baby can STILL go 126mph before it hits the governor chip, so long as you have 40 miles of straight open road on a downhill incline and don’t mind rattling the whole way while your suspension barely holds on (don’t ask how I know about that…)

These guys are absolutely in the spirit here

 

What inevitably happens is that, in the pursuit of trying to BE 100%, there’s no room to actually GIVE 100%.  The dudes that try their absolute hardest to ALWAYS have perfect form, in turn, prevent themselves from ever exerting themselves to the point of actually creating the stimulus for muscle to GROW, because when we EXERT force, form tends to get compromised.  Hell, for me, that’s when I know the set is STARTING TO WORK: it’s the moment when I can no longer control the weight and, instead, and SURVIVING it.  The dudes who try to have their died dialed in to the EXACT calorie for growth end up…not growing, because they can’t account for the reality that our flawed human bodies do NOT grow in a predictable, linear and fixed pattern, and sometimes we need to OVEReat in order to capitalize on a growing phase (anyone who is a parent and ever watched their kid put away enough food to give Brian Shaw pause during a growth spurt “gets” this).  The people who strive for the absolute PERFECT frequency of 2x per week on a muscle group will NEVER have one of those squat workouts where you so completely blow your legs away that you NEED 6 days of rest before the next workout.  In attempting to BE 100%, we do not allow ourselves to GIVE 100%.

 

Accept being flawed, broken and “less than”.  “You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you, he never wanted you. In all probability, He hates you... We don’t need him. F--k damnation. F--k redemption. We are God's unwanted children? So be it!”, to quote Tyler Durden from Fight Club.  “Only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”  Once you free yourself from the shackles of everything having to be “right” are you able to finally realize 100% of what you are.  When I set up for my set of breathing squats, I didn’t care that I had to wrap my hamstring with a knee wrap to get it to stay in place, I didn’t care that I had to lean slightly to the left to take weight off the healing leg, I didn’t care that I had to put the bar even LOWER than usual to shift to pressure away from the injured leg: all I cared about was giving 100% of the 80% that I was.  No different than when I set up for some Super Good Mornings, knowing full well that my legs were going to have some bend in them, that I wasn’t going to do things textbook: when it was all said and done, I could barely stay standing because I had given so much goddamn EFFORT into that set that it didn’t matter if it was “80% good”: it was ONE HUDRED PERCENT given.

Not shown: "good form".  Shown: one hundred perfect effort

 

Give 100% of the 80% you are, and you will, without question, be MORE than those who can only give 80% at 100%.