Russian squat cycle template

With those kind of numbers, it is safe to say that they knew something. When the Russians were conducting their research, they spent the majority of their time studying the nervous system and the different types of strength potential of their athletes. After much research, the Russians concluded that what separates and elite high level athlete from a novice is not exactly strength, or endurance per se.

It was movement. Using EMG studies they found that the best athletes actually stimulated and contracted their muscles differently than their novice counterparts.

They not only moved differently, but they also moved better. With that new insight, they developed a system for training athletes using similar movement and velocity. Thus the speed to strength continuum was born.

If an athlete is a sprinter, or depends mainly on speed to win at their sport, then they need to train for speed. What is speed? It is the fastest possible contraction of the muscles. But your muscles will never actually contract as fast as possible, if they did they would probably tear. So there is a limit.

However, you can still tap pretty far into your max speed potential with proper training. Examples of speed exercises are box jumps, sprinting, plyometric pushups and depth jumps. Now starting to get a little slower, we have speed-strength. Speed-strength is the fastest possible contraction of your muscles against the heaviest external resistance as possible.

A perfect example of this is classical weightlifting. The clean and jerk is a fast movement that requires you to lift a lot of weight quickly. But it is neither your maximum strength or speed, it is somewhere in between the two but leaning more towards speed than strength.

Speed-strength was made famous by powerlifting guru Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell. He introduced dynamic effort workouts into powerlifting. Dynamic effort work is speed-strength work. He basically found a way to train the squat, bench and deadlift like the Olympic lifts.

By attaching resistance bands around the bar and lowering the weight, you can now train them as fast as possible. Now you are starting to perform heavier exercises with slower speeds. This type of training is what you typically see in most gyms and athletic training facilities.

Most bodybuilders and powerlifters perform this type of training to add hypertrophy and strength to their working muscles. Another name for this type of training is called the repetitive effort method. This is due to all of the repetitions you perform.

Strength-speed helps to build your maximal strength and will improve your muscular endurance for sport. Example exercises are barbell squats , bench presses , lying tricep extensions and dumbbell shoulder presses. Just like before with speed, you will never actually reach your true maximum strength.

But you can get pretty damn close to it. Training for maximum strength requires you to lift 1 single repetition for the heaviest weight possible. Obviously, this is not recommended for a novice. This type of training is much better for experienced and trained athletes. The best exercises for this type of training are any of the big three powerlifting exercises and their main assistance lifts.

With all of the different types of movement, how did the Russians figure out how to design a training program that was appropriate for their lifters. One Soviet weightlifting coach named Alexander Sergeyevitch Prilepin found a solution to this problem.

He designed a table with the appropriate reps, sets and volume relative to intensity. This chart was made for weightlifters originally, but it has found use in many other forms of strength sport. This is the core of the Russian program.

They found that performing too many reps would lead to a complete breakdown in form. In the Russian program, quality of movement was key, NOT quantity.

Since the main lift is the most important, it is imperative that your movement is top quality for this exercise. However, this is completely wrong because it ruins the second most important part of the Russian strength training program, GPP. GPP stands for general physical preparedness and it is an essential part of the Russian strength training program.

GPP is essentially your general base of conditioning. But not just conditioning of the muscles, but the nervous system too. Whenever you perform a movement, you are moving your body with your muscles and nerves.

The Russians found that after studying elite athletes that their quality of movement was directly related to how much energy potential that each athlete had to repeat the movements of their sport. In other words, if an athlete was poorly conditioned for their sport, then guess what? Their movements would become sloppier much faster than an athlete with great conditioning. But on a final note, GPP is just the starting point.

Once an athlete becomes conditioned, then they will need to start becoming more specific with their conditioning. This paves the way for the third and final piece of the Russian strength training program, SPP. When you look at the Russian program and realize it is all about movement, how could you make this current workout routine even better?

Make the conditioning even more specific. This is where SPP comes in. SPP stands for special physical preparedness. This is when you perform more specific conditioning exercises that more closely mimic the movements of your sport. If you are a powerlifter who is trying to increase your back squat, then this could include Bulgarian split squats, Glute-Ham Developers, Hack Squats, Pistol Squats , etc.

You would perform these exercises for as many sets and reps as possible with nearly perfect form. If you want a specific number, then I would say to aim for anywhere from reps. If you can do more with heavy weight, then do more. But remember, it is all about form and quality of movement, if your form breaks down at all, then stop.

That is only for the main lift s. Simple as that. This does not mean you just move exceptionally well, but you also move very economically as well. You will burn much less energy than a novice and will be able to stay in the game longer. You will also be able to recover faster as well. The original lasts for 6 weeks with 3 training sessions per week, while the masters routine lasts for 8 weeks with 2 training sessions per week to lower the intensity for older lifters.

This lowers the average intensity of the masters workout while still allowing the athlete to get some high intensity sets in. Just make your own copy , enter your 1RM for each lift, and go lift! Full write up on Dragon Door. Russian Squat Routine Spreadsheet. Here is an example of how the squat workouts are structured for the standard Russian Squat Program.

Spreadsheet source. Update: KG and LB rounding now supported. Developed by Fred Hatfield aka Dr. Squat , this 9 week peaking program is based on two workouts per week: one heavy, one light. It can be run for a specific lift or all three lifts. For example, during the 6 sets x 4 reps workout, I rested 4 minutes between sets. All the workouts including the 6x6 workout have gone well. It has been hard enough that I've stopped all other pressing exercises.

I'm interested to see how the next three weeks go and then how this affects standing, overhead, barbell Press when I try it after the cycle. Join Date May Posts Hey spiderman I'm near the end of my first 9 week cycle of the Russian Squat Routine for bench and would like to know what you do at its conclusion ie do you take a deload week then start a second cycle or do you advise going straight in to cycle number 2?

I think the default, safe answer is to take a deload week. But given that the first week is the lightest, the last week has the lowest volume, and you are doing 9 week cycles, maybe you don't need the deload week. How fresh do you feel? What were the percentages and weights you used for this cycle?

Which workouts were the hardest? Pleased to say that my cycle ended with success and I managed to add 2.