I feel like doing something stupid

G

Goldfish

0
...Namely, squatting 6 days a week for the next 2 weeks.

This would involve 3 heavy days and 3 light days, with Sundays off, in the following pattern:

Mon: Heavy (3-5x5)
Tue: Light (3x10)
Wed: Heavy (3-5x3-5)
Thur: Light (3x10)
Fri: Heavy (SQUAT NEMESIS)
Sat: Light (3x10)

My motivation to do this is simply to see if the ridonculously high amount of practice causes my squat to return to former strength levels.

I would be doing this high bar, and with most of my other lifts on Mon/Wed/Sat -- Tue/Thur/Fri will probably be days in which the only lifting I do is squatting, probably followed with some foam roller work/stretching if I have half a brain working in my head.

The Squat Nemesis workout is one popularised by Nick Horton, and basically goes as follows:

- Work up to a max single.
- Reduce the weight to 70% of that max single, and work up in 5-10kg increments doing triples until you reach a heavy triple. Small increments are encouraged to accumulate volume in that 70-90% intensity range.
- Reduce weight again to about 50%, and do 2x5, focusing purely on a controlled eccentric and a fast, powerful concentric.

On the 3x10 days, I only plan on lifting about 70-80kg a pop. I'm curious about my own response to that, and finding out whether these lighter days will do more to assist recovery or interrupt it.
 
Well named thread.
One rest day a week for two weeks. Difficult to know how your body will deal with that. You will constantly be training when not recovered which has it's hazards, but only for two weeks and already at a high fitness level, rendering it safe.
Personal opinion, I think you will gain little in the two weeks and be recovering the week after, but next program will see gains. You will have made yourself so familiar with the movement it will be totally natural and your endurance will have been forced to increase.
I think the most important thing will be to have a strong program ready for after this shock and stick with it for a couple of months.
 
I would definitely be surprised if this had much impact at all on muscularity, especially since I'm super slowly cutting rather than bulking...but also because it is only 2 weeks. Main impact, if any, is going to be neural/skill...or a well-earned injury. If I come out of it unscathed and with the light work actually feeling really light, then I'll probably be calling it a success.
 
I'm concerned about neural damage to the CNS from overtraining syndrome. Do you have any strategies for detecting and managing this problem?
 
I'm coming from a place of being undertrained, so that won't happen in this time frame. Over-reaching is quite possible, though. I'm largely inspired by programs that involve heavy squats 5+ days per week, so the fact that I'm only really doing 3 heavy sessions and 3 light sessions is a built-in protection against that. Likewise, other than perhaps Friday, I won't be maxing out on any of my training days, which is another layer of protection. I'd be more concerned about my muscles and connective tissue than my CNS in this instance. Either way, the main things to look out for will be signs of fatigue -- physically and mentally -- especially on the Monday of week 2 (since I'll have had a day off at that point; being fatigued throughout the week won't be a huge surprise).
 
Results of Stupidity

- 1RM (at the end of each week; not a true 1RM due to fatigue among other factors) went from 130kg to 140kg.
- 5 rep sets went from 5x5x100kg to 4x5x115kg.
- 10 rep sets went from 3x10x80kg to 3x10x85kg. Each set in this range was about a 7-8/10 RPE.
- Knees weren't happy by the end, although normal rest has returned them to normal condition, so I don't think there was any actual joint damage.
- DOMS was non-existent most days.
- No sign of injury, although there was a brief hamstring scare on day 2 (it was more a spasm than anything, and it was over very quickly).
- Bodyweight increased by 700g while waist circumference decreased 6mm.
 
Weight and waist inconclusive, but the right direction so good stuff.
Increase in lifted weight suggests increase in endurance due to the stage of fatigue you will have been at. Exactly what you will have wanted from it.
Spot on, sensible use of stupidity at work.
 
I wasn't consciously more hungry, but I was a bit more liberal with my meals during the time, thus the 700g increase in weight. Energy....not sure. I'm usually fidgety, so there was nothing new there. I've been getting dodgy sleep for the last month, and that didn't change much, except for a couple nights where fatigue was probably high enough to give my brain and body the finger for even considering disruptive sleep and so I managed a full 8 hours.

A lot of variables could be affecting the weight and waist measurements, such as water retention on the day, and human error with the tape measure. I have found that my lifting belt was feeling looser in the second week, so that could confirm that my girth has in fact gone down, or it could just be me getting used to the feeling of the belt at that setting.

There would have been some increase in endurance, but I think most of the progress would be increased neural efficiency. Something that's key is that I'm quite certain that if I had just done the 3 heavy days each week, my strength would not have shot up like this. The groups that I've looked at over the last couple years that do high frequency squatting all seem to go for 1-5 rep work sets every day, trying to go as heavy as possible on that given day, but this little experiment of n=1 suggests that simply practicing the movement frequently may be more important than pushing how much weight you use all the time.
 
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