T Nation

Smolov/Smolov Jr Help

#1

Hi everyone,

Hopefully some of you can offer me some guidance, as I am a bit confused by my results below.

I gave myself a week to recover from smolov base meso/smolov jr for bench run concurrently. I still trained, but no squats/DLs.

Anyway, I went to the gym to set some PRs;

Squat: Added 5kg --> 200kg, almost made it out of the hole, then missed.

Bench: Added 10kg --> 190kg, FLEW UP.

Deadlift (just to see): Added 10kg --> 285kg, got it to knee level, then missed it.

Am I simply being too greedy with my added weight? I am confused that my bench did very well but my squat has barely moved. Perhaps I need a different approach for the squat?

One thing the base meso has done is made me a LOT stronger in the 3-5 rep range on squats, but as you can see it hasn't done much for my single effort.

I gained around 4-5lbs over the 3-4 week period when I was running smolov/smolov jr.

Any insight?

Thanks in advance,

Dave

#2

For me it is different, I get about 10kg on my squat every time I run the base meso cycle. On the Smolov Jr. for bench press, I’ve got anything from 7.5kg to nothing. Perhaps your squats have been too hard, any you need more than one week to recover, you could try to just work the squat lightly for 2 or 3 weeks, and see how it develops. Amazing progress on the bench btw. From 180kg to 190kg in 3 weeks? Woow. that’s something. How much body weight did you gain? Anything in particular you would like to mention that made you progress this much in the bench press? Never think I’ve ever heard of anyone getting 10kg on smolov jr. for bench, except from beginners. You must be thrilled. Congratulations!

Strange however to see someone just bench as much as they can squat. :slight_smile:

#3

[quote]stallion wrote:
For me it is different, I get about 10kg on my squat every time I run the base meso cycle. On the Smolov Jr. for bench press, I’ve got anything from 7.5kg to nothing. Perhaps your squats have been too hard, any you need more than one week to recover, you could try to just work the squat lightly for 2 or 3 weeks, and see how it develops. Amazing progress on the bench btw. From 180kg to 190kg in 3 weeks? Woow. that’s something. How much body weight did you gain? Anything in particular you would like to mention that made you progress this much in the bench press? Never think I’ve ever heard of anyone getting 10kg on smolov jr. for bench, except from beginners. You must be thrilled. Congratulations!

Strange however to see someone just bench as much as they can squat. :slight_smile: [/quote]

Thanks Stallion.

Squat has always been a slow mover for me, it’s improved quite a lot recently and smolov certainly helped my 3-5 rep range tremendously - just nothing on the 1 rep PR.

Bench was odd, I was working through the second week and thought - this is WAY too easy, so I rounded up all of my figures (so 136kg became 140kg etc) and then hit myself with a 10kg jump on the third week as well as the second.

One good tip I used, that I wasn’t using before, was to “pull” the bar off the supports rather than press it up and out (this tip was in a dave tate video) which probably helped add a few kgs as well. So my 10kg is a combination of actual strength and this improved technique.

I gained around 4lb or so throughout the 3-4 week period, I don’t know if this is typical but I wasn’t going nuts, just eating a small surplus.

I agree on that last paragraph, Bench = Squat is quite embarrassing…

#4

that nice bench…if you became stronger in the 3-5 rep range this should translate to a inreased 1rm…maybe bad technique when aproaching 1rm or too much of warm up and you tired yourself out

#5

It is odd. We are just the opposite then. My squat respond well to very hard training, but my bench is like a turtle. Takes ages just to increase a little bit. :slight_smile:

Good luck on improving all your lifts. Work hard, and the squat will come, even if slow.