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Old 09-18-2007, 10:57 AM
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_Wolf_ _Wolf_ is offline
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Location: Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas
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Default The exercises and descriptions

1) The Squat

The squat is the most important of all of the exercises for most trainees. As the (very) old saying goes, if you are not squatting, you are not training. While I might argue that deadlifts are more fundamental to overall body strength, nothing beats the squat for adding mass in minimum time. Deadlifts do have my preference, however, if I'm working with a total hard-case lifter who has extremely weak hamstrings, no balance, and minimal core strength. But this is very rare, and I'll also assume that even if you are one of those individuals, you can gut it out for a few weeks and accept that you won't progress as fast as a natural athlete in the initial stages. The truth is that it's meaningless, especially if you consider how much further advanced you'll be than most guys with a routine they copied from Muscle and Fiction in a matter of 3 months. All that matters is that you progress, and as I said before, the 5x5 does not fail.

I put squat as #1 on this list because I need to emphasize how important it is. And NO, YOU CANNOT DO LEG PRESSES IN PLACE OF A SQUAT!!!! Also, No FU*KING WAY are you allowed to use a Smith Machine instead of FREE WEIGHT barbell squats!!!! As another article once said, hit yourself in the head with a 45lb iron plate if you need to do so in order to snap out of this idea. If you think you can get away with substituting my recommendations with machines, STOP READING NOW AND GO AWAY. I don't want you here, and nobody will help you when you whine later that you are stuck.

If you expect this program to work, you must squat, with an Olympic bar (for safety purposes) and you must do FULL squats. If your quads do not go past parallel to the floor, you might as well not squat at all. Again, NO HALF SQUATS OR QUARTER SQUATS!!! They must either be high-bar weightlifting squats, or low-bar power squats. Both build muscle, but which you choose depends on your goals. We make women do low-bar squats since they build the butt and hamstrings, while minimizing the role of the quads. Women don't want big thighs (quads), so we do what we can to minimize this chance. Men, you are a different case (even when doing low-bar squats) because 1) you have testosterone and 2) most women stop at around 100-150lbs for their squats and choose to maintain their lower body firmness while you can obviously go much higher than this. Once you go past 300lbs in the squat (which is common after 4 months, even with average genetics), you'll be hard-pressed not to have legs that can double as car jacks as well as make the ladies drool at the beach.

So again, low-bar squats are the key. What does this look like? Basically the Olympic barbell will be resting on your lower traps and your upper rear delts. You will be standing so that your torso is at about a 30 degree angle to the floor and your butt is sticking out. In other words, you'll be squatting by bending at the waist and allowing your body to sit as you'd sit while coming home and sitting on a toilet seat at night. To practice this, hold your arms out straight ahead. Look at your toes without dropping your chin. The idea is to look straight ahead while squatting, but you'll need to look at your toes for practice. Now take a deep breath (and hold your breath) start squatting while sticking out your butt and bending at the waist. You should still be able to see your toes as you decend. At the point where your thighs have gone below parallel to the floor, you should feel your stomach touch your upper thighs (quads). Your knees should still be behind your toes with respect to your line of vision. Your breath should still be held. At this point, you'll immediately stand up to the start which starting to exhale once you are nearly at the top. The purpose of this breathing practice is to maximize the stability given to your spinal column through IAP or intra-abdominal pressure. This pressure causes your abs to contract powerfully and will work together with the muscles along the spine to give strength and stability to your core and lower back.
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