Forty-Five Rep Squats and a Challenge

The video of the day goes to Alex-Edward Raus and his 705.2lb squat in the 231lb weight class this past week at IPF Raw Worlds. Sick.


As promised, here is a clip back from December of me squatting 150lbs for 45 reps. The squats themselves were pretty easy, but it was impossible to breathe. These serve no purpose other than awesome-ness

I was doing my usual mid-morning Wednesday sled pulls with Skursky today and we were discussing programming. How far are we dragging this thing? Are we using enough weight? Should it be harder? Should it be easier? How many trips should we do? This got me thinking. It doesn't matter...

Challenge:
Yesterday, I wrote about increasing tonnage through warmup sets. That's great and all, but those ideas are beginner ideas, albeit applicable to even higher level athletes.

I am challenging myself and anyone who's reading this to stop thinking about sets, reps, percentages, and all that other crap. Just take one day--just sacrifice once--to go into the gym, pick 5 or 7 exercises, and give yourself a complete hypertrophy day. Don't worry about how many sets you're doing. Hell, don't even count the reps when you're doing the movement. Yeah, that's right don't count.

Ok, then what am I supposed to do? Easy, just go by feel, kick your ass, focus on the muscle not the movement. Work up to a heavy weight, do some work there, and work back down (or don't, who cares). Arbitrary enough? Good. Maybe if you don't have someone telling you to do this many sets at this many reps maybe you'll learn more about how to train your body. So how long am I supposed to do this, what if it takes me over an hour to feel "done," won't big bad Mr. Cortisol attack me? Forget that noise and learn to be awesome.

Perhaps, in time, you can learn to lift for strength in a similar regard. Perhaps, you can come into the gym knowing you're going to squat, then pause squat, then do some other accessories, but nothing else. Teach yourself to feel what it's like to get work done and know that you are becoming better. I've begun my own migration with the inclusion of RPE scales. I'm moving away from the technicality and just kicking ass.