Steve Justa's Singles Routine

[sambo fighter]

I picked up Steve Justa's book "Rock, Iron, Steel" a while back. Its a pretty interesting read. Steve presents many unorthodox training ideas. In the book he talks about walking with heavy weights, isometrics, partial movements, barrel lifting, and a routine involving singles.

He says you can make great gains with his singles routines. He has several different routines depending on what your goals are. The only two Im going to outline here are the ones that have to do with powerlifting.

Big Three Routine #1
-Train every day
-4 singles with each lift with a minute or two rest in between. Use 70% of your max.
-Add 5 lbs to your bench every 3 days and 10 lbs to your squat and deadlift every day.
-Max out every 3 weeks. Recalibrate your daily training poundages to 70% and start again.

Big Three Routine #2
-Train every other day.
-Train the bench at every session. Alternate between the squat and deadlift.
-25 singles for the deadlift or the squat plus 12 singles on the bench.
-Add 20 lbs to your squat and deadlift every week and 10 lbs to your bench every week.
-Max out once a month. Recalibrate your daily training poundages to 70% of your 1RM and start again.

I dont know, but these routines sound like they could be some fun. They remind me of the 3x3 routine or something like that. I think I like the #2 routine better than #1, but #2 routine sounds disproportionately harder than #1. I dont know if I could take that much volume. For me 70% of my 1RM in the deadlift (525) would be 365. I dont know if I could do 25 singles with 365 in a half an hour, but Im willing to try.

I think Im going to mess around with this routine for a while. I am going to sub 1 arm barbell presses for the bench (Ive been having a shoulder issue lately). The only other change Im making to this routine is Im going to be flexible on the every other day thing. I think for me I will train every 2 or 3 days. Those of you who care can check my progress in my log. http://www.sherdog.net/forums/showthread.php?t=535133

What do you guys think about this? Has anyone ever tried this?

 

[juanlawnmower]

High frequency, nothing real special.

 

[tinker_190]

That sounds incredibly difficult.

 

[JPC]

Looks like a sort of "greasing the groove" routine. Starts out very light with high frequency. I don't like the recomendation to add a set amount of weight every time, it should be a set percentage of your max. He moves a lot of weight, so those increments would be too much for someone moving much less weight.

 

[Richmond_Hrvat]

Looks like a sort of "greasing the groove" routine. Starts out very light with high frequency. I don't like the recomendation to add a set amount of weight every time, it should be a set percentage of your max. He moves a lot of weight, so those increments would be too much for someone moving much less weight.

Yeah. If I have a squat max of 350, I'd be starting with 245... by the end of the week I'd have added 70 pounds up to 315... there's no way I could continue til a third week.

 

[Mark Limbaga]

Nothing special...


I also disagree with maxing out every 3 weeks... that's a surefire way to fry your CNS

 

[BlastBeats]

25 singles? Christ...

 

[GroundNPound]

I think it is similar to the concept of 20 reps squats except for you rest between them. Doing that routine for all 3 though sounds like you couldnt hold a regular job and do it.

 

[Tornado]

I toyed around the principles behind this routine for a while and I had fantastic results doing it. However, I do agree with BabyPhenom about maxing out every three weeks, but if you do decide to max out that frequently, try not to make it a psyched max so you minimize pscyhological arousal and keep the nervous strain to a minimum. You won't be lifting as much but at least you'll be raising your psyched max ceiling by not psyching out. Otherwise, I found it very difficult to overtrain using single rep sets and gains were consistently made. I would stick to the 70% guideline though since it's not too light that you have too little tension but not so heavy that you can't recover from one workout to the next.

 

[zop]

This looks like a cross between the Texas method and the Smolov cycle.