Building a Big Lift, & Frequency of Training

[Optimass]

Big squatting isn't simply about building the muscle to squat, it is as much about adapting the neural patterns used to squat. In this sense, squatting more frequently is like practising any other movement to get better at it - free throw shooting in basketball, goalkicking in rugby, pitching in baseball... etc.

Agree .. for however its about conditioning the connective tissue to with stand the heavier loads. One thing Steak and I have identified is my once per week bbing leg routine is not allowing me to recover well as the heavy session cuases quite a bit of trauma ... more frequency will help the tendons get used to constant workload and should reduce the pain .. the trade off will be a dense and hard look / perhaps a slight size compromise.

[drizzt]

Agree .. for however its about conditioning the connective tissue to with stand the heavier loads. One thing Steak and I have identified is my once per week bbing leg routine is not allowing me to recover well as the heavy session cuases quite a bit of trauma ... more frequency will help the tendons get used to constant workload and should reduce the pain ..

Yeah, absolutely. When I squat heavy just once a week my adductors get terrible pain, but ramp it up and as you say, they get conditioned to the workload :nod:

[soundsgood]

There's some people who have a mean squat naturally and some who go all out and earn it. You are definitely the latter Drizz. Such an impressive increase!

I think IDW fails to take into account the difference of a Smolov workout and of a classic bodybuilder style workout. I think it's fair to say that Squats are the be all and end all of the Smolov yet after the squats are over for the bb the focus is to keep smashing your quads to complete failure so it will be followed up by 10+ more sets of hack squats, leg press, leg extensions, lunges etc etc. it's pretty much impossible to recover within 48 hours to do it all over again and again and again.

Also reps plays a part in recovery too. I always find higher rep workouts give me more doms than when I train heavy triples and similar.

As Danomyte said, what Drizzt has achieved is amazing and how he got there is irrelevant. It worked for him, and you would be foolish to write off any training method.. IDW You have been In the game long enough to realise theres alot of ways to skin a cat. (who skins cats anyways? Creepy bastards :-s )

[I Declare War]

good post SG... sums it up perfectly... Yep, I agree - I was just looking at the situation through my bber tunnel vision.

I don't skin cats btw, but my dad says back in Switzerland it's quite common for the country folk to. Not sure if I believe him, maybe back when he was young tho.

oh and don't you worry steak my boy, I will get you a nice video shortly and it wont just be 140kg. give me 3 weeks from today to come up with something.

[drizzt]

Thanks SG, and agreed, nice post. Pretty much sums it up I think :nod:

IDW, maybe it was a Swiss chef involved here? :think:

[I Declare War]

Thanks SG, and agreed, nice post. Pretty much sums it up I think :nod:

IDW, maybe it was a Swiss chef involved here? :think:

Hmm could well be a swiss chef, one that doesn't know which local herbs can't be used!

[Gasp]

. give me 3 weeks from today to come up with something.

three weeks!!.... what routine will you be using?? how many times a week will you be training?? :grin:

[I Declare War]

. give me 3 weeks from today to come up with something.

three weeks!!.... what routine will you be using?? how many times a week will you be training?? :grin:

Well I did 140kg for 14 a week out of my last blast.. about 2 weeks ago. So it shouldn't be hard to top that.

I'm training DC style so split is mon, wed, fri, mon then repeat so.. hitting every body part twice in 8 days.

[bang_bang]

. give me 3 weeks from today to come up with something.

three weeks!!.... what routine will you be using?? how many times a week will you be training?? :grin:

Well I did 140kg for 14 a week out of my last blast.. about 2 weeks ago. So it shouldn't be hard to top that.

I'm training DC style so split is mon, wed, fri, mon then repeat so.. hitting every body part twice in 8 days.

How much do u squat?

[I Declare War]

three weeks!!.... what routine will you be using?? how many times a week will you be training?? :grin:

Well I did 140kg for 14 a week out of my last blast.. about 2 weeks ago. So it shouldn't be hard to top that.

I'm training DC style so split is mon, wed, fri, mon then repeat so.. hitting every body part twice in 8 days.

How much do u squat?

Not much bro. 180kg for 5-10 reps at a guess. That's something I need to work on. Have had a bit of a bad run with injuries lately... but I'm hoping for a good run soon.

[southernsamurai]

Well I did 140kg for 14 a week out of my last blast.. about 2 weeks ago. So it shouldn't be hard to top that.

I'm training DC style so split is mon, wed, fri, mon then repeat so.. hitting every body part twice in 8 days.

How much do u squat?

Not much bro. 180kg for 5-10 reps at a guess. That's something I need to work on. Have had a bit of a bad run with injuries lately... but I'm hoping for a good run soon.

That's decent! As a BBer you'd be more concerned about your quad size than about how much you lift right? There are plenty if guys who squat 250+ with average quads

[I Declare War]

How much do u squat?

Not much bro. 180kg for 5-10 reps at a guess. That's something I need to work on. Have had a bit of a bad run with injuries lately... but I'm hoping for a good run soon.

That's decent! As a BBer you'd be more concerned about your quad size than about how much you lift right? There are plenty if guys who squat 250+ with average quads

Yeah, there's a fine line between the two though, strength is size to a large degree. There's a lot of powerlifters who decide to do bodybuilding shows and when dieted down they just cane everyone. There's a reason powerlifters are generally pretty big, most of their lifting requires controlled eccentrics... that's what builds muscle.

I never go under 5 reps on anything so yeah I'm not too concenred what my 1RM is. I do agree a big Squat doesn't necessarily equal big quads.

I think it may relate to something that's been touched on in this thread. If you're only training Squats once per week your legs get much more of a shock, which could in turn lead to more hypertrophy. And if you train them more frequently there's a different kind of adaption that takes place.

[southernsamurai]

True that.

Then you take the whole stance and bar placement into consideration which hits diff muscles etc. Someone like Soundsgood for example, high bar squat with not a wide stance squatting 300kgs.

So in a sense size=strength

Sorry to de rail thread drizzt :doh:

[drizzt]

Sorry to de rail thread drizzt :doh:

Not at all, all good discussion

Then you take the whole stance and bar placement into consideration which hits diff muscles etc. Someone like Soundsgood for example, high bar squat with not a wide stance squatting 300kgs.

Personally I've always been very quad dominant with inactive hammies and glutes before I started powerlifting last year. Had to retrain my squat to sit back and utilise more of the posterior chain to increase my numbers.

I still squat fairly narrow (for a powerlifter) although I have shifted my stance out slightly - I find this gives me more out of the wraps than anything else - not super low bar (but not high bar either), and can still feel a bit of quad inolvement some days when I get lazy about sitting back.

Definitely depends on your goal though, and if I was looking at specific muscle growth (correct me if I'm wrong SG etc...) I'd look at changing stances on the back squat depending on what kind of area I was hitting, and throw in variations like front squats, hack squats, even zerchers etc.

[BarBrother]

Have only read a few of the posts on here so if this point has been made then forgive me. just a bit of anecdotal evidence.

Speaking on behalf of the Getstrength crew. For our trainign we have never squatted more than once per week apart from the occasional speed sessions. Personally my raw squat would have gone from 150 ish with out knee wraps to maybe 240-250 with knee wraps currently That is over about 36 months though i think. Jono Radich would have been similar (Gains) i think as well as my brother. Not sure what John Starchan improvemnets were like because he has been at it for 10 years already lol (srs).

I think squatting multiple times per week has shown to work well over short periods of time 6/8/12 weeks but probably because of the skill element in regards to technical improvemnets and efficiency. I think that over time it would boil down to 1-2 heavy squat sessions / week when trying to combine with the other 2 big lifts and peaking etc. of the 3 lifts it appears that bench responds the best to high volume (3+/week) squat mod volume 2 /week and deadlift 1/week. that is based on my epereince but also i woudl say a general consensus across literature aswell

Nice work btw Drizzt. you have therefore added 100kg to your man card aswell

[drizzt]

Nice post bro, I find the way you Getstrength guys train really interesting, and it definitely seems to work :nod:

Nice work btw Drizzt. you have therefore added 100kg to your man card aswell

Thanks bro, and yuss! :jive:

[Laver]

Some anecdotal evidence: I found benching about once a fortnight worked well for my bench, when I first started training when I was 17 it was around 65kg, now I can do 95kg for a single!

[tomleegolf]

Some anecdotal evidence: I found benching about once a fortnight worked well for my bench, when I first started training when I was 17 it was around 65kg, now I can do 95kg for a single!

How heavy are you and how old are you now?

[Laver]

23 and I weigh 80kg

[tomleegolf]

Some anecdotal evidence: I found benching about once a fortnight worked well for my bench, when I first started training when I was 17 it was around 65kg, now I can do 95kg for a single!

Well, I'm not trying to be an a-hole here but if you're doing 95kg for a single after 6 years of training, benching once a fortnight doesn't seem to be a good idea. I can do 90kg for a single after 1 year of training so...

[Laver]

Some anecdotal evidence: I found benching about once a fortnight worked well for my bench, when I first started training when I was 17 it was around 65kg, now I can do 95kg for a single!

Well, I'm not trying to be an a-hole here but if you're doing 95kg for a single after 6 years of training, benching once a fortnight doesn't seem to be a good idea. I can do 90kg for a single after 1 year of training so...

That's good improvements

How often would you recommend?

[karm015]

Some anecdotal evidence: I found benching about once a fortnight worked well for my bench, when I first started training when I was 17 it was around 65kg, now I can do 95kg for a single!

Well, I'm not trying to be an a-hole here but if you're doing 95kg for a single after 6 years of training, benching once a fortnight doesn't seem to be a good idea. I can do 90kg for a single after 1 year of training so...

That's good improvements

How often would you recommend?

depends how long it takes you to recover bro, pretty sure most people can handle once every 7 days

[Laver]

depends how long it takes you to recover bro, pretty sure most people can handle once every 7 days

Yeah good point, I find if I bench more than once a fortnight I get a sore sensation in my shoulders and elbows, so I just keep weight to 50kg and do fast reps, which is really annoying cos everyone always leaves 60kg on the bar.

[Wookie]

I make continual squat gains generally back squatting once a week and then every few weeks taking a week off. I front squat most weeks too for low volume.

My deadlift is different. It seems to respond better to more frequent training, twice a week generally.

Everyone is different. I was having a yak last week to Matt R, and he mentioned that training programs that worked great for other top lifters, just didn't have the same effect for him.

And that's why it's good to keep learning, and when you stagnate, work out why, and perhaps try something different.

My plan is to get my back squat up a bit over the coming weeks, then switch to box squats. I hope they help my deadlift too.

Good job Drizzt, you should be proud of your gains.

[Wookie]

And my bench responds best to 3x a week training it seems, sometimes even 4. Too bad I hate benching.