The All Squat Workout

Cry all you want about it and feel free to post on message boards how I’m over-training and how I will end up frying my CNS faster than an American T.V. plugged into a Philippines electrical outlet. But I’m a huge fan of banging away at squats for a whole session. No three and out token squats for me on squat day. That’s some really unsatisfying shit in my opinion; I’m gonna camp out and get after it for an hour or two straight. And when I’m done, I just walk out.

This type of training is nothing new. Big strong guys were unapologetically doing this shit 40 years ago; back when I was running around the house shitting in diapers. Hell, Paula Anderson was hitting golf balls and squatting for 4 hours a day over a decade before I was born and that guy definitely knew a thing or two about getting strong.

There is one caveat here though. You need to squat frequently to get away with this shit. So on your other gym days, it's a good idea to throw in a few sets to keep your body used to it. On those days, I just squat for my general warm up and move on. If you never get sore, that’s fine. But for me, the all squat workout will fuck up my whole week if I’m not already squatting frequently.

My squat was shit for a long time. I’m not saying that my squat technique anywhere near perfect now and I’m sure that a good coach could probably put 10% on my squat in one hour. But I will say that at this point in my life, my squat is automatic and consistent. I attribute this to a shit fuck ton of reps. There is no magic here. The more you do something, the better you’ll get at it, period.

My programming is pretty strange right now because I’m in the year of the “bulk”. So, although I’m trying to get stronger in general, the real focus is adding 20 pounds to my frame. So reps, reps, reps, eat, eat, eat is my current mind set. I got a wild hair up my ass a couple of months ago, that I’d work on hitting a 240x50 squat. This is Dan John’s fault by the way, because of something he wrote about a BWX50 challenge. 240 is not my current BW, but that’s the goal, so I’m using that number. I figure that it’ll get easier as my BW increases, so I’m starting there. Here’s how I have shit programmed now.

1. Hit a heavy double or triple for the day (not a max, but pretty hard, pausing some warm up sets)

2. (240xmax reps) trying to beat last week’s reps

3. Cut reps in half and do straight sets of 240 till I’m “done”

4. Hit some front squats if I feel “done” but not really “done”

5. Resume eating

There are a bazillion ways to go about this, but I guarantee that if you’ve never laser focused on your squats like this before, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with your body’s response. Plus it’s kinda cool to roll in and just get down with the squat for a solid hour or two. People will think you’re crazy and the hacks in the gym will start referring to you as “squat guy” behind you back after a while, but fuck them. You know what’s up!