Heavy, Light, Medium Training: Build a Monster Squat!

 

Heavy/Light/Medium Training
Part Three: How to Build a Massive Squat

     In this, the 3^rd part of our series on heavy, light, and medium training, we’ll take a look at how you can build a superhuman squat using this form of training.  Make sure that you read Part One, as it covers the basics of H/L/M training, before continuing to this one.  Part Two is on “upper body training,” and it, too, would be good to read before continuing here, but not necessary.  As I mentioned at the end of that essay, if this series was a book and these posts were chapters, I’m not sure the order they would appear, outside of the first and last entry.  So, read Part One so that you will know the basics; this article assumes familiarity with all of the concepts presented there.  So, with that out of the way, let’s get on with it…

 

All Hail the King

     The squat.  It has been hailed the king of all exercises.  I certainly hail it as that without reservation.  If you want to pack on muscle mass, then you better squat.  Low reps, high reps, low sets, high sets, and everything in between doesn’t matter as much as just squatting.  If you don’t do that, then (a) you’re not serious about packing on mass and (b) you would never pack on mass anyway without the almighty squat.  Low testosterone?  Start squatting.  Need to lose some bodyfat?  Start squatting.  Want to pack on 20 pounds in 6 weeks? Start squatting.  You want bigger arms?  Start squatting.  Are you coaching a high-school football team and want them to dominate other teams?  Better start squatting.  Yeah, squats really, truly are that good.

     Squats are the true test, I also believe, of pure strength, of determining just how strong you really are.  Some have called deadlifts the ultimate test of strength, probably because of its simplicity, as it’s just a matter of picking something off the ground, but I don’t buy it.  Sure, deadlifts are great, but a lot of times that strength has as much to do with the lifter’s leverages as anything else.  I certainly have always been as strong at deadlifting as squatting—well, almost as strong—but I also have ape-like arms that reach down almost to my knees.  Kinda gives me a heads up.  Squats may work much of the same muscles, but they’re just different.  Most guys, no matter their build, can build up a powerful squat, so it’s just not the same.  (Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some tall, lanky athletes that will have problems doing back squats, but there are other squat alternatives.)

     I personally took my squat to around 500 pounds, give or take, using largely Bill Starr-inspired H/L/M training.  I often credit Russian-style training with taking my squat to over 600, and while that’s true, I didn’t start using a lot of their methods and techniques until I had already acquired a tremendously strong squat through “basic” H/L/M workouts.  And even then, I eventually settled on a sort of combination style that blended Russian style workouts with Bill Starr methods, and more than a little Westside training thrown in to top it off.  (Which, I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Westside Barbell as having a huge influence on my strength-training evolution.)

     Too many times, however, lifters jump to more advanced methods before they’re ready.  Get your squat to 400 using the methods here—or other similar ones—before you start doing too many higher volume “specialized” workouts.  I also don’t think I could have handled the sheer workload of Sheiko training—or its counterparts, such as Smolov, for example—if I wouldn’t have first built up a large workload via H/L/M workouts (and other similar methods) first.

     Before we look at some of the actual programs, I have one “form” issue I want to discuss.  First, there are different ways to squat, and one isn’t necessarily better than the other.  You can squat narrow, wide, or medium.  Whichever one best suits your body type.  If you’re unsure, then start with a medium-width stance, and you can adjust it wider or narrower as you get accustomed to the training.  Lifters also prefer various bar placements, such as high-bar or low-bar.  But the one form issue that is important is squat depth.  Squat deep.  The deeper the better, but you need to make sure that you are squatting below parallel.  Anything less isn’t a real squat!  You don’t stop the bench press before it touches your chest, and you don’t start your 2^nd rep of the deadlift (or any other pull) before it touches the ground, so why in the world would you stop the squat before achieving a full range of motion?

     Leave your ego at the gym door when you start on a serious squatting regimen.  Each and every single time a lifter has told me he can squat a lot, he fails to actually hit those numbers when training with me.  A quarter squat, a half squat, and even a squat to parallel is not a full squat.  (I have even seen more than my fair share of squats with “green lights” at powerlifting meets that should have never been given those green lights.)  You must squat deep and fully.

     When Starr was the strength coach for John Hopkins University, he noticed the same thing about inflated squat numbers.  Here’s what he had to write about it: “Just about every other year I’m told that I’ll have an incoming freshman who can squat more than the gym record, which is 625.  The reports are always that he did more than 700 in high school.  That’s great—that is, until I actually see the prodigy do a squat, and it’s barely a quarter squat.  When I force him to go below parallel, the 700-pound squat suddenly becomes a 385-pound squat.  Sometimes, their egos are so shattered by that humbling experience, they never fully recover.  As yet, none of the wonder squatters has actually done a full squat with as much as he supposedly used in high school.”

     Based on all of the “big squats” I’ve seen since Starr wrote that in the ‘90s, I’d say things haven’t changed much.  Maybe they’re even worse.  But none of that is an excuse for you to half-ass your squat!

     Okay, now for the actual methods:

     The squat can be trained frequently.  This allows for more versatility of training strategies.  You can train the squat at each workout, or you can use other exercises that help to build the squat, or you can do other versions of the squat other than just the regular barbell back squat.  This is different compared to other lifts.  If you’re a powerlifter, you can squat at every session, but you wouldn’t want to bench press or deadlift at each session.  (The bench press is best trained 2x weekly and the deadlift only once.)

     When you first begin, you want to stick with the barbell squat at all three of your workouts.  This makes it very easy to program.  Most lifters have no problem figuring out the squat when first they take up H/L/M workouts.  Other lifts can sometimes be a little tricky, simply because other exercises are needed as replacements on the light day, and sometimes the medium day, too.

     You will probably want to add an assistance exercise to help the squat, although this isn’t necessary at every session, and it’s not necessary for lifters who are built for the squat, at least not until they are already squatting impressive numbers.  Once you get advanced, at that point, your assistance exercises will depend on what your weak points are.  If you are getting stuck right above parallel on the ascent, for instance, then pause squats are a great assistance movement.  That may not necessarily be what you need to do, but I point that out because often the best auxiliary movement is going to be another form of squatting (though not always).

     If you’re built for the squat, you may just need more total work, and not necessarily an auxiliary movement, as you progress.  In either case—whether you’re built for the squat or not, and whether you do this before or after you add an assistance exercise—you will want to add some back-off sets to the squats.  At first, you would just do this on your heavy day.  Once you adapt to it, and you need more work, you will want to add this to your medium session, as well.

     At some point, you will probably want to replace the barbell back squat with a similar movement.  You don’t have to do this on all your days, and some lifters, even highly advanced ones, just do it on their light day.  But most lifters at least like a different exercise on their light days, if nothing but for a change of pace.  A good strategy is to add lunges to your light day, while still doing back squats on the heavy and medium days.  The lunge is so different from a plane-of-motion standpoint that it’s often a welcome change of pace, for both the body and the mind.  No matter how heavy you go on lunges, they will always be light compared to the squat.

     Front squats are a good light or medium day exercise.  They have good “carry over” strength to the squat.  Another movement I favor is the bottom-position squat on your medium day.  Back squats on your heavy day, front squats on your light day, and bottom-position squats on your medium day is an almost “fool-proof” method in my book of really taking your squat to new heights.

     You will also want to make some changes to the standard 5x5 as you progress.  We’ll cover that more below as we look at some examples programs, and how your training should progress over the weeks, months, and even years if you chose to use it for that length of time.

 

Some Sample Programs

     What follows are several programs, from starting out to more advanced training.  If you have never tried H/L/M training—or, really, full-body workouts done 3x per week—even if you’re already an incredibly strong squatter, then start off with the first workout to build up your work capacity and your ability to squat three days weekly.

 

Program One

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  The last set should be all-out.

 

Wednesday – Light Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  Work up over 3 progressively heavier sets to the weight used on the 3^rd set from Monday.  Stick with that weight on your 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th set.

 

Friday – Medium Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  Work up over 4 progressively heavier sets to the weight used on your 4^th set from Monday.  Stick with that weight for your final 2 sets.

 

Program Two

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  Same as Program One

 

Wednesday – Light Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  Same as Program One

 

Friday – Medium Day

Squats: 4 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  1 heavy set of 3 reps. (This method of training “heavier” on the Medium Day is discussed in Part One of this series.)

 

Program Three

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

 

Wednesday – Light Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps, no back-off sets for the light day

 

Friday – Medium Day

Squats: 4 sets of 5 reps.  1 heavy set of 3 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

 

Program Four

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

High-bar, narrow-stance pause squats: 4 sets of 6-8 reps.  These are straight sets.  Stop each set a rep or two shy of muscular failure.  For technique, imagine how an Olympic lifter squats compared to a powerlifter, and you understand the form I intend.  For the pause, commit to either a 2-second or 3-second pause at the bottom of each repetition.  For pause squats, I find it good to have a training partner, or partners, who can call out the seconds of the pause.  If you do it by yourself, you tend to begin to count faster on the pause as the set progresses.

 

Wednesday – Light Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps, no back-off sets for the light day

 

Friday – Medium Day

Squats: 4 sets of 5 reps.  1 heavy set of 3 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps.

Overhead squats: 3 sets of 8-10 reps.  As with the assistance work from Monday, stop each set a rep or two shy of muscular failure.

 

Program Five

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

High-bar, narrow-stance pause squats: 4 sets of 6-8 reps. 

 

Wednesday – Light Day

Lunges: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps.  Do the 5 sets of 5 in progressively heavier fashion; the 5^th set can be all-out.  No matter how “heavy” you train, you will never approach 80% of the weight utilized on the Monday session.

 

Friday – Medium Day

Squats: 4 sets of 5 reps.  1 heavy set of 3 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps.

Barbell hack squats: 3 sets of 8-10 reps. 

 

Program Six

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

Partial squats in the rack: 4 sets of 6-8 reps.  This is a good exercise if you know you have a particular sticking point.  Set the pins in the rack so that you are starting just below where your sticking point is located.

 

Wednesday – Light Day

Lunges: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps.

 

Friday – Medium Day

Front squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps.  As with the lunges, you can go all-out on front squats, and you still won’t get more than 90% of your poundages used on Monday’s workout.

Barbell hack squats: 3 sets of 8-10 reps.

 

Program Seven – Four-Days-Per-Week

     At some point, you may want to try a 4 day a week program.  This isn’t necessary for all lifters.  There are some who will make better gains on a 3 days program no matter how long they’ve been lifting.  But I also think (as I’m fond of saying) that more isn’t always better, but it usually is!  So, once you become fairly advanced, give one of the two following programs a go.

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

 

Tuesday – Light Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  Use the same method as the Wednesday workouts from the first 4 programs above.

 

Wednesday – Light-to-Medium Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps. 2 back-off sets of 8 reps.  Use the same weights on the 5x5 as the Tuesday workout.  The only addition is the back-off sets.

 

Friday – Medium Day

Squats: 4 sets of 5 reps.  1 heavy set of 3 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

 

Program Eight – Four-Days-Per-Week

Monday – Heavy Day

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

 

Tuesday – Light Day

Lunges: 5 sets of 5 reps

 

Wednesday – Light-to-Medium Day

Front squats: 5 sets of 5 reps. 2 back-off sets of 8 reps. 

 

Friday – Medium Day

Bottom-position squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  2 back-off sets of 8 reps

 

 

Set/Rep Variations

     In Part Two, I mentioned how, as you advance in Starr’s form of H/L/M training, it helps to think of the workouts as 5x5ish.  In other words, most of the set/rep ranges, even when they’re changed, should be similar to 5x5 workouts.  On average, the set/rep combination should have a total rep range of around 15-30 reps.  This means that 5x5, 4x4, 3x5, 5x3, and even 8x2 or 4x8 all fit the bill.  Other set/rep combos, such as, say, 2 sets of 5 or 8 sets of 10, would be either too much or too little and are best used on a different program.

     As you get more advanced, you should change your rep ranges more often.  An intermediate lifter can get good results from doing the same rep range for around 3 weeks.  An advanced lifter can make a change every week or, at the least, every 2 weeks.

     As an example, the first week, you might do the standard 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  The week after that, you go to 3 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps, followed by 2 progressively heavier triples.  The week (or two) after that, it’s 4 sets of 8 reps.  And the next week(s), you do ramps of 5s, 3s, and singles, working up to a near max.  For this final week (or two), you might end up doing upwards of 7-10 sets on your heavy day.  It’s a lot of workload, but you would then de-load the next week by returning to the standard 5x5.

     As you get really strong, you can stop worrying about the exact number of sets you use, since you will need more than just 5 progressively heavier sets to reach your top set.  At this point, you may find that all of your heavy and medium days are between 7-10 sets of 5 reps.  Even more sets when you do triples, doubles, or singles.  Once you reach that level, however, you will have developed a work capacity that can handle it.

 

Other Stuff

      One thing to keep in mind is that all this squatting work is done on the same day as your back training and your pulling movements.  On the heavy day, you might be doing deadlifts or high pulls.  You might do chins and good morning on your light day.  And you could be doing power snatches, power cleans, or Romanian deadlifts on the medium session.  In addition, your back work will include its own auxiliary movements.  Those movements will all affect and have a carry-over to your squats.  And even if you are more interested in building up your squat than your pull, you still need to get some work in on different pulling exercises because they help to make your squat stronger.  The inverse is true, too.  All of the squatting work will improve your heavy pulls.

     As you get really advanced, you would probably need some alternative training methods, such as speed work, multiple sets of really low reps (triples, doubles, or singles), and possibly the use of bands and/or chains.  But those shouldn’t be the focus at the outset and may not be needed by a majority of lifters anyway.  Starr certainly never utilized much of that stuff in his programs.  We will end up covering a lot of those techniques in a future installment on advanced training.

     I admit to writing this essay in one day, so there may be stuff that I’ve missed.  A book on squat training alone would probably be possible, but since this piece is already stretching 3K words, I figure we covered enough for the time being.  However, if there are any questions about any subject(s) that I didn’t cover, then please shoot me an email or leave them in the comments section below.  Until our next entry, perhaps it’s time to head for the squat rack.  Because if you’re not squatting, you’re not gaining.