CT, in your experience training Oly yourself & other Oly lifters what do you think is a good program to drive the back/front squat up if someone has 3-5 days a week to squat?
A Your singles or reps (2rm/3rm) + density @ 90% or 80% progression
B 54321 style progression
C wave ladders
D daily maxes a la Bulgarian
E a more “Traditional” squat progression (8x3, 5x5 etc)
Thanks!
The Russian Squat Program is good.
Well, it depends. First we have to understand that there are different levels of “squat training” for olympic lifters:
Squat specialization: when someone’s squatting strength is the limiting factor in his performance on the olympic lifts. A hard recovery from cleans, a back squat that is less than 130% of your clean, a clean that isn’t significantly higher than your power clean or a snatch that is 85% or more of your clean could be indications of relatively weak legs. This would mean making increasing squatting strength the no.1 priority of your training, which means more volume/frequency/intensity and putting the squats earlier in the workout. The drawbacks is that for this to work you need to decrease the amount of work on other lifts (including the competition lifts) so during this period performance on the actual competition lifts might stagnate or even decrease a bit, but this is temporary.
Squat secondary emphasis: this is when someone’s squat strength is sufficient in relation to his competition lifts… in other words leg strength is not what is holding back your progression on the competitive lifts. But it’s not so high that it can be neglected. For these people squatting is still important and we still want to improve squatting strength. But it is not your no.1 focus. This means that either volume, frequency or intensity can be lowered (not all 3) and be done later in the workouts. Normally this means that you are either doing the squat frequently (every workout) with a lower volume of work OR that you are doing it with a fairly high volume but less frequently.
Squat maintenance: this is when a lifter has more than ample leg strength to keep on progressing, e.g. someone back squatting 250kg and front squatting 200kg but “only” clean & jerking 140kg. In such a case, increasing leg strength even more will not lead to an increase in performance on the competitive lifts. Such a person might want to keep driving his squat up even more (pride lift) but doing so will prevent you from maximum progress on the competitive lifts since it will use “training money” that you could invest on more work addressing your specific problem area. These people would be better off doing the smallest amount of squatting necessary to maintain leg strength.
So the first step is finding out the level of focus you need to use on your squats. Sure the argument can be made about making everything as strong as possible but in truth, when you reach a certain level of strength pushing something up will require a lot of work… and you can’t do “a lot of work” on everything at once; that’s the best way to halt overall progress. This is especially true for natural athletes who do this part time.
So do you need to focus on your squats as your primary objective? If so, then yeah, a spec routine might be in order. But understand that when you do this you “need” to reduce the volume spent on other exercises.
I’ll use the “Smolov” program as an example. It is a very popular Russian squat program. It works. But it is designed for people who only focus on the back squat and do maintenance work for the other strength lifts. I know a lot of people who used Smolov… those who got good results were those who weren’t doing any deadlifting/pulls and only technique work on the olympic lifts. These guys added a lot of poundage on their squats. But those who kept on training normally and did Smolov for their squats had almost zero increase (not anything more that they would have had if they just kept squatting normally).
So the question is: Are you willing to trade volume done on other stuff to be able to specialize on your squat, understanding that you might stop progression on the “other stuff” temporarily.
Regarding the Russian squat routine. It often pops up whenever someone talks about focusing on the squat. Like Smolov and Sheiko (in powerlifting circles) it seems to have a special aura. See, what I find is that people like “themes”. If they follow something that has a “theme” they will be more motivated dedicated. For example if I tell a client “you will only eat meat, nuts and green veggies” he will have a super hard time sticking to the diet… BUT if I tell him “you’re gonna use a caveman diet”… then all of a sudden they are much more dedicated and strict.
Same thing goes for the Russian squat routine… just because it’s the “Russian” routine all of a sudden it has a certain aura. In reality it’s simply a good old periodization model, nothing extraordinary.
But in reality it isn’t THAT effective. I’ve tried it, used it with several clients and had underwhelming results. Yes it works but the gains weren’t better than other approaches I’ve used. And it certainly wasn’t much in relation to the amount of work invested in the squat.
What approach is best? Again, it depends on your needs. The max everyday on squats can work for some. Personally I had quick results with this approach, but I topped out very quickly and was always stiff which made it harder to properly train on the competition lifts.
I personally feel that doing a lot of quality work for 2-5 reps works best (shooting for a total of 12-30 total work reps). If you train hard in that zone (and yes, that includes the “Russian squat” routine since that’s the main training zone) you’ll get results. Now, you can get a little bit more or a little less results depending on how often you squat and where you put the exercise in the workout (and in the training week) but understand that what you need to do to get a faster improvement in squats will lead to a slower improvement elsewhere for a temporary period.
Personally I’m having good results with a simple double progression scheme: I do 5 work sets with the same weight. I pick a target number of reps (3 or 5) that I will keep for a certain period of time. Whenever I can complete all 5 sets (do all the planned reps) I can go up in weight.
For example if I pick 3 reps and use 445lbs and do 3,3,3,2,2 then I keep the same weight the next time I squat. If I get 3,3,3,3,3 then I can go up in weight at the next session.
I have two squat workouts per week (and two pull workouts). But I am focusing more on pulling strength (more volume) since it is a weaker aspect than the squat for me. While I also need to get my squat to go up, it is more important for me right now to focus on pulling.
If I were focusing on squatting I might do 3 squat workouts per week, or keep the twice-weekly set-up BUT add 1 or 2 assistance exercises for the squat (e.g. half squats, eccentric squats with weight releasers, or something else).
Another note on the “Russian squat program”.
I think that it works mostly because it make the person focus on gradually improving. If you just do squats at the end of the workout and do whatever feels ok, you rarely challenge yourself. If you have a certain weight planned and HAVE to get that weight, then it changes your focus.
I feel that the reason why people aren’t progressing as fast as they could is that they lack a progression model. The quality of the progression model (as long as it is logical and realistic) almost doesn’t matter… at least it doesn’t matter as much as actually using one.
Wow thanks for all your thoughts!
Regarding the Russian Squat routine I have done that in the past and like you didn’t find the results to be all that great.
I think I’m probably in category 2 that you listed above, I don’t believe leg strength is holding me back but it definitely needs to improve.
I’m a 36 yr old 75kg lifter and have been doing Oly since Jan 2013. My current best lifts are 82kg Snatch & 97kg C&J, I’ve jerked 100kg from blocks, my clean is limited by second pull technique, when the weight gets around 85-95% I tend to let the bar drift and not keep it close enough, try to power it rather than pull under, not stay over long enough, and just get intimidated by the weight (I have none of these issues with the Sn for some reason, I find that lift to be sooo much easier)…my best FS is 115kg and BS is 131 kg so I definitely have the leg strength to clean & jerk 100-105kg (as my understanding is if you can FS it for 3 you should be able to clean and jerk it).
So obviously I need to improve my clean pull as well, which I’ve been prioritizing lately over my snatch.
I think I may use the progression your using doing 5 or so sets until I can get 3-5 reps then adding weight.
Something to the effect of BS twice a week, FS once a week and maybe make one of the back squat days a pause squat.
Thanks again for all your input!
[quote]Howard Roark wrote:
Wow thanks for all your thoughts!
Regarding the Russian Squat routine I have done that in the past and like you didn’t find the results to be all that great.
I think I’m probably in category 2 that you listed above, I don’t believe leg strength is holding me back but it definitely needs to improve.
I’m a 36 yr old 75kg lifter and have been doing Oly since Jan 2013. My current best lifts are 82kg Snatch & 97kg C&J, I’ve jerked 100kg from blocks, my clean is limited by second pull technique, when the weight gets around 85-95% I tend to let the bar drift and not keep it close enough, try to power it rather than pull under, not stay over long enough, and just get intimidated by the weight (I have none of these issues with the Sn for some reason, I find that lift to be sooo much easier)…my best FS is 115kg and BS is 131 kg so I definitely have the leg strength to clean & jerk 100-105kg (as my understanding is if you can FS it for 3 you should be able to clean and jerk it).
So obviously I need to improve my clean pull as well, which I’ve been prioritizing lately over my snatch.
I think I may use the progression your using doing 5 or so sets until I can get 3-5 reps then adding weight.
Something to the effect of BS twice a week, FS once a week and maybe make one of the back squat days a pause squat.
Thanks again for all your input![/quote]
Do you have short or long legs relative to your torso?
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Do you have short or long legs relative to your torso?[/quote]
I’m not sure, Medium maybe? Here is a picture from the first meet I did a year ago if that will help determine short or long.
I’m 5’8’’ tall.
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