Super squats?

Has anyone ever read "Super Squats," and done the routine? Can anyone give me some backround on it? Thanks in advance.

 

Great book. Bascially simple old school routine based around 20 rep squats and drinking a lot of milk. A few sets of curls, shoulder presses, bent rows, stiff legged deadlifts, pullovers and 1 set of 20 rep squats, but the catch is throw on a weight you can do 10 reps in the squat, but do 20..no joke...and drink at least 2 quarts a milk a day.

The routine is very high intensity and it works, but I am not a fan of homogenized milk its not good at all for anyone, one should drink raw milk, either getting it from a farmer or here:

http://organicpastures.com/

 

Its very brutal, bt it can help you make decent gains.

 

Thanks duncon, I agree w/ you about the milk too, I like organic or goats milk when I can get it.

 

Do you do this routine everyday, squats everyday definetely does sound a bit brutal.

 

heres a pretty good article outlining 20 rep squats:

http://www.torqueathletic.com/news.php?ID=140&r=-21745

 

I read the book and its interesting but exxagerated i think. He says take your max strenght for 10 reps and do 20 with them which makes no fucking sense. Cause if your already going balls out and get to 10 then he says dig deep and get 10 more even if you have to take like 30 breaths between reps. If your max is 10 and you can get 20 guess what...why not put more fucking weight on the bar and keep your max 10?! He says the effort you exert on squats should be so intense that your teeth hurt . I plan on doing more than 1 set by the way this week...I'd like to here more experienced guys than me comment on this squat routine myself...

...i drink nonfat dry milk as a cheap protien powder...I buy it in 10lbs boxes and I make it 2x-5x strong and add 2 big spoonfuls of strawbery or chocaltate quik...so i die 10 minutes early before the the bird flu or next terrorist attack...at least i'll be big...

 

i modified the super squats program a bit 2 years ago and did it, and found it had great results! i was just lifting then though

but i was wondering, if it would be possible to do this program AND train judo or muay thai 2x a week?


does anyone have experience doing the super squats program and training too?

 

i think perhaps the point is with squats you are able to "rest" at the topbetween reps, and if you res long enough you can do more. i personally dont see the point but you could argue that while you can do 10 successive reps without resting perhaps you could do 20 with pausing.

 

Dont know about the drinking milk stuff but everybody should try to do 20+ rep squat sometime.
After going apeshit on 20+, lower reps with bigger weights feels like nothing. Its a good way to find out how much you can push yourself.

 

i did it for 6 weeks and put on a fair bit of weight, pretty good if you wanna gain mass, shit for athletisicim. 30lbs in 6 weeks is a huge exaggeration tho, i think i got 22lbs but that was with creatine loading aswell.

If you a fighter this is a shit routine follow, but if you just wanna get big its not bad at all

 

so you just do that same routine 3 days a week?

guys can someone point me in the direction of a good "pullover" description and also what muscle groups they workout primarily...sorry for the dumb questions, maybe i know it as a different name

thanks

i might give this thing another look this evening

 

I tried this workout on monday for the first time, by the 13-14th squat I seriously doubted I'd make it through twenty but somehow managed to pull iit off. My legs are still sore today, as my current injury status prevents me from doing any deadlifting or bench pressing, I think I'm going to run with this one for a few weeks and see how it goes.

 

I agree w/ Pariah and MadMick. I read it quite some time ago (10 years?) and remember thinking it was a bit gimmicky. I'm sure you can take some good things from it, but, as others have said... if it's your max weight for ten reps, then it's your max weight for ten reps. To me, if you stand there long enough w/ the bar on your back to be able to push out another ten, isn't that really two sets of ten and not one of twenty? I suppose if you're someone who has a hard time pushing yourself in the gym, then it could be good just for the sole purpose of providing an outline to follow. My $.02, anyway.

Oh yeah, one more thing -- as far as the milk issue goes, you just have to remember Arnold's quote from Pumping Iron when he was backstage at the Olympia in S. Africa...

"Arnold, you drink a lot of milk?"

"No, no milk."

"No milk?"

"No -- milk is for babies. When you grow up, you have to drink beeeah."

 

I worked some 20 rep squats into my workout routine while training MT 3 times a week and did fine. I was able to increase my max squat from 405 to 445 over the course of 2 months. I've never read the book in question, but doing 20 reps with a heavy weight (relatively speaking) is an interesting mental excercise at least.

 

The idea of taking your 10 rep max and doing 20 reps with it is to demonstrate that you're probably not working as hard as you think you are in the gym. That's the idea behind the book- to actually work hard and eat enough food to aid in recovery and muscle growth.

I'm guessing that you haven't tried the program. It's one set of twenty because you're not racking the bar. It's really not at all relaxing to stand there gasping for air with a heavy barbell on your shoulders. If you try the program, you're free to record it as 2x10 in your training log, but I'll bet that you write 1x20 because of the accomplishment you will have realized. And you will have pushed the envelope and realized that you can push yourself harder than you thought possible before.

The other thing worth mentioning is that the author doesn't say to bang out ten reps and then gut out 10 more. From the very first rep you can stop at the top and take a couple of breaths. Pace yourself. 20 rep squats are more than just physical strength. They require mental strength as well.

BC.

 

^^^^^^^That describes my squat workouts. I used to think I was working hard, but I wasn't making good gains. I realized that I could push myself a LOT harder and nothing bad would happen.

 

B.C.

I have tried it, actually. I do understand the philosophy. My point was really just meant to be the one you stated -- that the book is merely a method of making yourself work really hard. I, personally, have never had a problem w/ that (have been known to run to the locker room to puke) and therefore, in my mind, a ten rep limit is a ten rep limit. I know it's not meant to be ten and ten w/ a light bar sitting on your shoulders in between; I just over-simplified it to make a point, but I don't deny that it might have merit for many people. For me, reading it was like, "OK, so what's new?". It's not a break-through program, but it is a nice reemphasis on the age-old laws of training.

Here's my condensed version of Super Squats...

1. Bust your ass in the gym, especially w/ compound movements that recruit multiple muscles and trigger testosterone release.

2. Take in enough protein to rebuild what you just tore up -- roughly one gram per pound of body weight split into 20-25 gram servings throughout the day because your body can't use it all at once.

The End

 

FW,

Great points. My problem was that I wasn't pushing myself hard on squat for some reason. BTW, is it true that a person can only digest 25g of protein at a time? I regularly take up to 50g in a shake. Anybody know?