Glad to see everyone was able to crawl out from the gym last week and moreover that everyone made it back safe and sound for this week’s edition of the Sunday Squat. I have some news for you, which could be potentially relieving or mildly upsetting, depending on how hardcore you really are. Those of you who have been around since day one, fully understand that toll our bodies have taken over the course of the past 10 weeks, especially the last three. Whenever you’re training with such intensity, frequency, and volume, it’s crucial that allow your body adequate time to rest, recover, and adapt to the stress load. The week’s Sunday Squat we’re going to take things down a few notches and utilize this period as a deload week. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, deloading is essentially a preplanned period of decreased volume, weight, and frequency. There’s a lot of debate concerning how often deloading should occur. I’ve found that this is going to be largely correlated to your experience, the intensity of your training, and most importantly, your nutrition. As a rule of thumb, we’ll say a good frequency to deload would be once every one to two months for most. The notes that are bolded will signify the intensity level of each movement. Also notice the decrease in volume overall for the course of this week. Think of it as ‘the calm before the storm.’ 😉
Squats (Shoulder- Width Stance):
As with the past few weeks, we’re going to keep the warm up the same and continue to focus on squats as our primary movement. This will change in the coming weeks.
Warm up: 100 bodyweight squats. With these, focus on engaging all muscle groups (most importantly ‘pulling down’ with the hamstrings, and lowering yourself into the rep in a slow, controlled fashion – see Note below) as you progress through the movement.
4 sets, 8 reps, 2010 tempo, 120 seconds rest between sets
Note – Use a weight that is approximately 40% max-effort
Note – Each rep should be ‘pulled down’ with the hamstrings being used to lower the weight on the eccentric (negative) part of the rep. This has been a common theme throughout the past weeks, and I can’t stress the importance of this enough. If you’re doing it correctly, the intention should be felt in the hamstrings throughout the entire movement.
Hack Squat (Outward Intention):
3 sets, 8 reps, 2010 temp, 120 seconds rest between sets
Note – Approximately 40% max-effort
Seated Hamstring Curls:
2 sets, 8 reps, 4010 tempo, 120 seconds rest between sets
Note – Approximately 50% max-effort
Note – For the first set, keep your feet in dorsiflexion. For the second, place your feet in plantarflexion.
Leg Extensions:
3 sets, 15 reps, 2010 tempo, 120 seconds rest between each set
Note – Approximately 30% max-effort
#EducateAndDominate
BPak