Hey Guys,
As some of you may remember I posted something about olympic squatting and powerlifting squatting. I wanted to share my conclusions.
Well I’ve been doing olympic back squats for the past 6 weeks. You purists may not call it textbook oly squat but whatever, I still use the low bar placement, but my feet are very narrow, within shoulder width. i also put 5lb plates under my heels. I also go all the way down as low as i possibly can. I used the 6 week russian program found online.
It had me squatting 3x/week. Every 3rd week I would powersquat on Monday as to avoid losing hip/glute strength, let allone back strength. I also did rdls every week and every third week i did powersquats I also did sumo deads(my preffered style) and cut out regular deads.
Anyhow, in power squat this past week I hit 415x3, i was surprised as i expected to hit allot more reps. I could have been off though as my bench felt off too, I’m going for 425 next week so we’ll see how that goes. I attribute the weakness’s to the grinder reps of rdl I did last week. I’ve been just going up 10lbs/week on those. My goal is to get 425 for 5 reps next week.
I was able to get my best beltless sumo dl reps though. I deadlift with a sumo stance, although my style looks conventional. I’m rounded over and use my back like a lever more like conventional. Anyhow, I hit 465x6 just one rep shy of my 465x7 that I got on another cycle using the belt. i attribute this completely to the increased quad strength from the oly squats. the last 2 reps my thighs were burning right near the lower part of the quad near the knee.
I don’t think this strength increase was because of the rdls as those never helped out a ton in the past. Some could argue though that i’m increasing in strength as I’m giving my body more time to rest.
Also, my body normally has been overtrained squatting more than once per week. And I felt completely fine doing oly squats every other day, a little quad soreness, no knee pain, some manageable tibilias pain though. I didn't notice any negative mood changes that usually accompany an overtraining state commonly found if I squat more than 1x/week.
I atribute this to the less cns demanding wieghts I was lifting, 260lbs just about the whole time versus the weekly high 300s to low 400s I was lifting in power squats. Like my back could handle 260 easily, so could my glutes and hips, it was really just the quads getting it. i look at this a little bit like when I first started benching. I could do it 3x a week, now I can’t more than 1x or it weakens me.
I bet if i started by benching less often ala 1x week i probably wouldn’t have made as many initial gains. I don’t think it is just increasing coordination either as I have noticed from the oly squats my quads are bigger.
So If you skip the preceading reading hear my two conclusions. If you have trouble w/ leg drive in deads or getting the bar moving do olympic squats. Secondly, you can bring up weak muscle groups best by training them often.