20 Week SSB Cycle

Doug is a 'whatever it takes' kind of client and has trusted me with anything and everything I've asked of him. So when he bought an SSB, I was grinning ear to ear thinking of the possible ways I could torture him.

The SSB is a great tool to build your squat up at anytime, but in particular the 'offseason.' Doug didn't have a meet in sight, so we dove in head first with a 20 week SSB Cycle...

And it paid off.

Notes:

I've included the main movement, main assistance movement, and secondary assistance movement in some cases. The rest of his assistance work was either unilateral or machine based to address his particular weaknesses.

The average RPE of these movements throughout the 20 weeks was 7.93. Now there is nothing scientific about that, but I mention it to reinforce the idea that sub maximal training is effective. And young lifters, in my opinion, need that hammered home - going heavy all the time will eventually prove to be fruitless.

Doug hit a 490 squat at his last meet. His training max for this cycle is 460 (about 94%). In this cycle, he hit 90% of his meet max, with the SSB, for a double. Pretty good. Next week we'll decide to either hit his training max for a single, or deload. I know he's capable of it at this point, the question is whether or not it's necessary. We'll determine that next week.

Because we're conjugateAF, we threw a straight bar in for a few weeks. Really the goal here was to remind him how to squat with a straight bar and to get a feel for where his strength was at.

Deloads were used as needed on weeks #4 and #14.