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QUESTION:
On your website I read that
you put 77 pounds on a weightlifter’s front squat in
88 days without ever training that lift. How did you go about
that?
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ANSWER:
With a lot of my athletes I spend
hours considering experimental training variables and various specific
fitness tests searching for the best way to train them at any given
moment.
When Joe Senate started training
under me in January of this year, I took
a careful look through his training diary and knew exactly how I
was going to improve his leg strength— by finding new, unfamiliar
challenges for his neuromuscular system.
According to Joe’s diary, one
of the most prominent leg exercises was front squats. He had performed
this exercise virtually every week for as far back as his diary
went (which is by no means unusual for an Olympic weightlifter,
by the way).
So I tested his 1RM in the front squat
which resulted in a lift of 295 pounds. Now that I had this marker,
I never had him perform the front squat until he re-tested about
thirty days later.
For the first month of training
I focused on hypertrophy (his quad and hamstring development
was inadequate given the fact that he had plans to move to a higher
weight class eventually). I had him perform deep lunges emphasizing
the quadriceps.
These are done in place, exhausting
one leg before moving on to the next, rather than alternating legs.
Joe also performed stepups on a four inch block, focusing mostly
on vastus medialis development.
We also utilized stiff-leg deadlifts
supersetted with one and a quarter squats (descend, come up a quarter
of the way, back down, and finally all the way up). All exercises
were performed fairly slowly— about 5-6 seconds per rep.
On one particular session, I went
to get a glass of water, only to come back and see Joe’s eyes
squeezed closed and clicking his heels together, chanting "There’s
no place like home...there’s no place like home!" He never
got his trip home, but he did get a 326 pound front squat when I
re-tested him on February 13th.
At this point I put him slightly
back into more familiar surroundings, focusing on clean and snatch
pulls. I increased the loading intensities from the previous
month, and switched from one and a quarter squats to standard full
squats.
We also employed
trap-bar deadlifts, which is a favorite movement of mine,
due to the fact that it allows the athlete to achieve high levels
of overload with relatively low compression on the lumbar spine.
It also spares the shins, which take a heavy beating during performance
of the competitive lifts.
This second month of training lead
to a 362 pound front squat test, which I have to admit surprised
even me.
I now had three weeks left to maximize
Joe’s leg power before getting him ready for competition. I
had him start performing the Olympic lifts — the snatch, and
the clean and jerk.
Joe’s explosive leg power
and stretch reflex improved significantly using the these lifts.
I had him speed up the tempo on squats; however, I remained extremely
careful to monitor his upright posture, never letting that deteriorate.
Three weeks into this phase, on April 23rd, Joe front squatted 372
pounds.
I think Joe wet his pants when he
realized what he had done, but he swears it was just sweat.
I wish I had a secret formula for
strength success. I don’t, but when I saw Joe’s training
diary, it looked to me like he was trying to make chocolate chip
cookies and the only ingredient he was using was chocolate chips.
The theme of this story is not that
front squats are bad (if they weren’t so highly prevalent in
his past training, believe me, he would have been doing plenty),
it is that a recipe requires certain ingredients
with careful amount of each element no matter how good that element
seems.
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