Hey guys, I’ve been running smolov since early September. I finished the base, and got great results, now I’m starting the intense. The first 2 days I haven’t been able to complete all reps and sets. Today I was supposed to do 365x3, then 345 2x5. I only got 2 reps on 365, got incredibly frustrated, then left.
I’m just wondering how this program is possible to complete. My max from the base was 405, and I hit it clean and it felt pretty good. Maybe because I was in a state of supercompensation? Anyway just looking for advice
I did the program as written and hit every rep as scheduled. Some reps were tough but I never missed any. Did you do the switching phase and get plenty to eat?
yes, I did the two week switching phase, box squats, cleans ect. I did low reps with light explosively. I think I got rusty from not doing actual squats. Maybe I should lower my training max, because when I hit 405 I was siked out of my mind…it went up relatively fast though
I notice when i dont get enough sleep and my nutrition sucks that day my squats feel insanely heavy.
When i get 7-8 hours sleep and i eat good throughout the day(i eat a shit load on squat days) the bar seems to be like a feather.
This had happened to me before with wendler 531. I was stressed that day didnt get alot of sleep and i only ate twice. I was suppose to hit 405x3. I unracked the bitch and i went down and came back up second rep i got pinned to the rails. Is it frustrating hell yeah. But i finished my assistance. Came back the next week and tried it again i ended up getting it for 4 reps.
You also gotta figure smolov is a very hard program to complete.
Id reccomend trying again and if you are still stuck at 2 then move on. Its not like you are gonna fail the program or get weaker. Its actually pretty normal for people to miss a rep here or there on smolov. Get some rest eat your ass off on squat day and kill it! Good luck man!
[quote]jkondash89 wrote:
You couldve been having an off day.
I notice when i dont get enough sleep and my nutrition sucks that day my squats feel insanely heavy.
When i get 7-8 hours sleep and i eat good throughout the day(i eat a shit load on squat days) the bar seems to be like a feather.
This had happened to me before with wendler 531. I was stressed that day didnt get alot of sleep and i only ate twice. I was suppose to hit 405x3. I unracked the bitch and i went down and came back up second rep i got pinned to the rails. Is it frustrating hell yeah. But i finished my assistance. Came back the next week and tried it again i ended up getting it for 4 reps.
You also gotta figure smolov is a very hard program to complete.
Id reccomend trying again and if you are still stuck at 2 then move on. Its not like you are gonna fail the program or get weaker. Its actually pretty normal for people to miss a rep here or there on smolov. Get some rest eat your ass off on squat day and kill it! Good luck man![/quote]
Come to think of it my sleep has been pretty bad recently, been eating 3,400 calories per day though. thanks for the positive feedback man, i’ll give it a go, but if I fail again do you guys think I should lower my training max by 10-20lbs?
I’d give her one more shot then lower it. It is certainly possible that you hit a really big outlier squat on test day and skewed the formula and its also possible you just had a bad day when you missed. Either way, give her one more go then do what you need to do to start hitting all the reps.
There’s a “Smolov experience thread” in this forum. Lots of great information and a whole bunch of posters ran it through with great results and provided a lot of insight.
The intense cycle is absolutely brutal. I’d give it one more shot and if still absolutely unable to complete the reps for that day, drop each day by 10-15 pounds. You may just have had an off day as others mentioned, and there’s also a chance that your body just needs a couple sessions of squatting at 90%+ again to get back to where you were before the switching.
In the future, be sure to work in the squat negatives at 5-10% above your squat PR during the two switching weeks. For a lot of people (myself included), going 15 days without a heavy weight on your back will make the squats during the first week of the intense mesocycle feel insanely heavy.
Finally, don’t be afraid to increase your rest time between working sets, or even take 5-10 seconds between reps. So much of Smolov is having the right mental state. When you get under that bar you need to be 100% confident that you’re ready to nail it.
I personally have never done any sort of super high volume training such as smolov. But, I’d personally say with squatting that much for so long your nervous system would be taxed even after the deload week, and anything can happen.
[quote]jkondash89 wrote:
You couldve been having an off day.
I notice when i dont get enough sleep and my nutrition sucks that day my squats feel insanely heavy.
When i get 7-8 hours sleep and i eat good throughout the day(i eat a shit load on squat days) the bar seems to be like a feather.
This had happened to me before with wendler 531. I was stressed that day didnt get alot of sleep and i only ate twice. I was suppose to hit 405x3. I unracked the bitch and i went down and came back up second rep i got pinned to the rails. Is it frustrating hell yeah. But i finished my assistance. Came back the next week and tried it again i ended up getting it for 4 reps.
You also gotta figure smolov is a very hard program to complete.
Id reccomend trying again and if you are still stuck at 2 then move on. Its not like you are gonna fail the program or get weaker. Its actually pretty normal for people to miss a rep here or there on smolov. Get some rest eat your ass off on squat day and kill it! Good luck man![/quote]
Come to think of it my sleep has been pretty bad recently, been eating 3,400 calories per day though. thanks for the positive feedback man, i’ll give it a go, but if I fail again do you guys think I should lower my training max by 10-20lbs?[/quote]
Im not sure of what your goals are or your weight. But if i was running smolov i would be eating 4500-5000 cals a day. With all the heavy squatting most likely you arent going to gain any fat anyway. Thats just personal opinion though. Train Hard Stay Smart God bless us all for life and injury free training.
[quote]Rock978 wrote:
There’s a “Smolov experience thread” in this forum. Lots of great information and a whole bunch of posters ran it through with great results and provided a lot of insight.
The intense cycle is absolutely brutal. I’d give it one more shot and if still absolutely unable to complete the reps for that day, drop each day by 10-15 pounds. You may just have had an off day as others mentioned, and there’s also a chance that your body just needs a couple sessions of squatting at 90%+ again to get back to where you were before the switching.
In the future, be sure to work in the squat negatives at 5-10% above your squat PR during the two switching weeks. For a lot of people (myself included), going 15 days without a heavy weight on your back will make the squats during the first week of the intense mesocycle feel insanely heavy.
Finally, don’t be afraid to increase your rest time between working sets, or even take 5-10 seconds between reps. So much of Smolov is having the right mental state. When you get under that bar you need to be 100% confident that you’re ready to nail it.[/quote]
Thanks I’ll ne sure to check that out. Yeah, I’m guilty of skipping the squat negatives, I saw they were recommended, I was just a lazy pos that didn’t want to load up the weight lol. would doing squat negatives before my next session have any benefit? or is it too late. Squat negatives above your max, make sense now, sorta like how a baseball player will swing at bat with a weight around it, so when they’re ready to bat and they take it off, and the bat feels like nothing.
[quote]jkondash89 wrote:
You couldve been having an off day.
I notice when i dont get enough sleep and my nutrition sucks that day my squats feel insanely heavy.
When i get 7-8 hours sleep and i eat good throughout the day(i eat a shit load on squat days) the bar seems to be like a feather.
This had happened to me before with wendler 531. I was stressed that day didnt get alot of sleep and i only ate twice. I was suppose to hit 405x3. I unracked the bitch and i went down and came back up second rep i got pinned to the rails. Is it frustrating hell yeah. But i finished my assistance. Came back the next week and tried it again i ended up getting it for 4 reps.
You also gotta figure smolov is a very hard program to complete.
Id reccomend trying again and if you are still stuck at 2 then move on. Its not like you are gonna fail the program or get weaker. Its actually pretty normal for people to miss a rep here or there on smolov. Get some rest eat your ass off on squat day and kill it! Good luck man![/quote]
Come to think of it my sleep has been pretty bad recently, been eating 3,400 calories per day though. thanks for the positive feedback man, i’ll give it a go, but if I fail again do you guys think I should lower my training max by 10-20lbs?[/quote]
Im not sure of what your goals are or your weight. But if i was running smolov i would be eating 4500-5000 cals a day. With all the heavy squatting most likely you arent going to gain any fat anyway. Thats just personal opinion though. Train Hard Stay Smart God bless us all for life and injury free training.
[/quote]
Well, I want a nice beach body that’s all. lol just messing. I, just want to get strong, I don’t plan on competing, because I don’t a powerlifting build(small joints, fast metabolism). I know I should eat more, it’s hard to get food when you’re a broke college student. Raman noodles is basically all I have lol. Any recommendations on caloric dense foods that are cheap?
Eat half a loaf of bread a day with peanut butter. Get some powdered milk dirt cheap. Grab some tuna and eggs. Olive oil. Peanuts. Chocolate cakes. Mcdonalds lol i know but this works for me. Oreos whatever haha. But just think about this a peanut butter sandwhich with a glass of milk is 450 calories depending on the bread.
I double cheeseburger is 390 calories.
4 eggs 2 pieces of bread and a glass of milk is 550
2 servings of peanuts 300 calories
Powdered milk dirt cheap 120 calories per 8 ounce.
Tuna just packed with protein.
Olive oil healthy fats i dk im not bodybuilder but i can bulk up easily and cut down easily
I just have to chime in a little bit here - any Russian program is built for enhanced athletes. State sponsored, researched, and approved steroid programs have been a part of Russian weightlifting and powerlifting for decades. So, any program that comes out of Russia or the former USSR is designed for people who have a super-human capability to recover. I wouldn’t feel too bad if I didn’t hit every rep on a program like that.
Im running a form of smolov as well, and enjoying it. Sounds like you may of started a little to heavy, for me any way, I finish every day feeling like i could have squatted more. I think its the weekly workload that makes it all work, more so than the daily workload. I hit the prescribed reps, and move on to my regular workout. Iv had guys telling me that it would burn out my CNS, and it was to much workload without gear, but Im thriving on it, and getting stronger by the week. From what your saying, I`d drop my 1RM% base by 5-10% and work back up, mabey take a week off first. It all depends on where your at, but I personaly love the program, and may never go back to squatting only once a week. Goodluck
I’d second what others have said about peanut butter. Tremendous source of fat and protein, and you need tons of both during something like Smolov. Whole milk is also great.
I wouldn’t bother going back and doing negatives now, just something to keep in mind for next time. Their main purpose is to make sure you don’t become completely unaccustomed to having a heavy weight on your back during the 2 weeks of switching. They also help you get used to having a supra-maximal load on your back so when you go work at 90-95% of your max the next month during the intense cycle (and hopefully a squat well above 100% after the taper) it doesn’t feel quite as heavy and you have a little more confidence.
Stick with it, even if you do ultimately have to drop the training weights by 10-15 lbs. You got great results in the base so play it out and see how the intense goes.