Lately I am having some real issues with my lower body as a whole progressing. It seems like despite increasing my bodyweight, squat volume and frequency my legs don’t seem to grow and I’m still squatting under 3 plates. Have hit 305 twice and both times missed 315. Currently I squat 2X/week and deadlift 1X/week. I have a heavy and light squat day.
Is this likely a programming thing?
Mental? I understand there are mental barriers everyone has to break but I feel a 3 plate squat this far along in my training (~2 years) shouldn’t be one of them.
What should I tweak? Volume? Freq? Intensity?
6’3" 184 10-15%ish if I had to guess… 21 y/o clean bulking at around 3200kcal/d
What is your programming? What exactly are you doing 2x a week?
Concerning mental barriers, I would say it is mental. It is not a coincidence you are stuck at 315, just like people get magically stuck at 225 on bench. There have been a fair amount of posts regarding this on here.
Also, I truly believe some people underestimate the amount of effort and hard work it takes to get stronger, especially in squats. They can be very uncomfortable and unpleasant with heavier weights for reps.
[quote]1 Man Island wrote:
I might be confusing you with somebody else, but don’t you do a lot of conditioning work?[/quote]
Army PT mon/wed/Fri for about an hour which is mostly cardio/ endurance but other than that I honestly avoid it other than hiking and stuff.
[quote]1 Man Island wrote:
I might be confusing you with somebody else, but don’t you do a lot of conditioning work?[/quote]
Army PT mon/wed/Fri for about an hour which is mostly cardio/ endurance but other than that I honestly avoid it other than hiking and stuff. [/quote]
Take ot for what’s its worth but hour long cardio can wreck your squat numbers buddy. Trust me I was Army for 4 years and it did nothing for my squat lol. Take into account your Squatting twice and pulling once your doing a FUCK TON of volume. So this is just me so take it for what it is worth.
Since you can’t just not do conditioning if your honestly serious about a military career. How ever your only option in my opinion is going to be upping calories more alot more to deal with what your losing through cardio. At 6’3" you have a ton of room to grow so I know you can eat more.
Drop some of your Squatting and Pulling. Drop down to 2 Sessions a week Squatting. One focus on heavy work say 3x5 or 5x5 what ever. Second one focus more on reps. Add speed pulls to both days.
Do both 1 and 2
Lastly post up some videos could just be a tech issue not letting you add some pounds. Lastly if you have access to a cage find some bands and do reverse bands. Work up to about 350 and go week 1- 5x1, Week 2- 3x3, Week 3- 3x5 Week 4- Smash 315 guaranteed.
[quote]1 Man Island wrote:
I might be confusing you with somebody else, but don’t you do a lot of conditioning work?[/quote]
Army PT mon/wed/Fri for about an hour which is mostly cardio/ endurance but other than that I honestly avoid it other than hiking and stuff. [/quote]
Take ot for what’s its worth but hour long cardio can wreck your squat numbers buddy. Trust me I was Army for 4 years and it did nothing for my squat lol. Take into account your Squatting twice and pulling once your doing a FUCK TON of volume. So this is just me so take it for what it is worth.
Since you can’t just not do conditioning if your honestly serious about a military career. How ever your only option in my opinion is going to be upping calories more alot more to deal with what your losing through cardio. At 6’3" you have a ton of room to grow so I know you can eat more.
Drop some of your Squatting and Pulling. Drop down to 2 Sessions a week Squatting. One focus on heavy work say 3x5 or 5x5 what ever. Second one focus more on reps. Add speed pulls to both days.
Do both 1 and 2
Lastly post up some videos could just be a tech issue not letting you add some pounds. Lastly if you have access to a cage find some bands and do reverse bands. Work up to about 350 and go week 1- 5x1, Week 2- 3x3, Week 3- 3x5 Week 4- Smash 315 guaranteed.[/quote]
Yeah, I’m starting to see that that’s really my only option (bumping up calories). So I’ll play around a little and up the calories to somewhere between 3700 and 4000/day.
I like the idea of having 2 days with both squats and pulls actually. Volume wise I would probably do something like 5x5 on the heavy day and 3x8 on the light day.
With speed pulls what kinds of percentages and set/ rep ranges should I work with each day?
Also as far as the other assistance I’m thinking I should generally keep the same exercises and just do less sets of each to drop volume?
[quote]Reed wrote:
For an unequipped guy I have found 65%-75% for doubles to triples 5-8 sets.[/quote]
Sounds good. I’ll play around with it this weekend. Thanks for the help reed/ everyone
Sunday morning: squats worked up to 225 for 2 sets of 5 then a set with 245.
Speed pulls 5 sets of 3 with 245. Amount of volume felt good, will def be sticking with this