The question that comes to my mind while reading your recent posts regarding these changes is, "why is this so important to you"? Why embrace what scares you? Why improve your psyche as an athlete? I've read a lot of your stuff, and I believe every time you've made a decision regarding your training, you could honestly say ''I believe this is the best way to accomplish my goals''. I don't feel as though that is your answer to the question "Why have you decided to make make these changes"?
I'm most certainly not trying to tell you how you should be training, I do not believe I know best here. I most certainly not qualified to tell you how to train, as a peruser of a strength and conditioning website and a strength trainee of 8 months, but this simply does not read the same way all your other decisions, and their reasoning, have.
I feel as though I need to ask you, do you believe all these changes are the best way to accomplish your goals?
I do think that improving my raw squat is the best way, at this point, to increase my unwrapped squat. If I were to make a list of the things I would need to do in order to improve my wrapped squat max further, it would look like this:
1. Get stronger out of the hole.
2. Maintain position out of the hole.
3. Fix my body-position asymmetry (stop favoring my right side).
4. Squat more.
Squatting without wraps is the simplest and best way to accomplish all four of these, in my opinion. Yes, I'm diving into it in order to embrace my fears, but I'm not abandoning my knee wraps (I'll still be doing as much wrapped squatting as before, if not more) or starting over.
You're right to question me here. I don't take offense, and I can see how it might appear that I'm making a rash decision. But it's important for me to make this change because I believe the weak link in my wrapped squat is the lack of unwrapped squat volume, and I think it's only getting more and more pronounced.
So, yes, beyond facing a fear of mine, I do think this will make me a better squatter. I think it's going to take me from a 510-lb. squatter to a 520+ lb. squatter for April. And I think that doing what's best for my training sometimes means doing what I least want to do. In this case, it's squatting without wraps.
We'll see though. I've got all the time in the world to get this right. If I go through this experience and my wrapped squat drops, I'll know I've made a mistake. But in my opinion, it's better to try something that I think will work and discover otherwise than continue to feel like my training is unsatisfactory.
