Day 1 - SQUAT

 

Always first work up to heavy work sets of a competition squat as you would do it on the platform. Warm ups should be completed in 4 to 5 sets even if your work sets or competition openers start over 1000 lbs. Depending where you are in your training, you can do your work sets in briefs only or in full gear including knee wraps. Remember that full gear allows you to use a wider and more upright stance and this is what you want to practice. Raw squatting will require you to bring your feet in slightly for a bit narrower stance unless you stay with lighter weight.

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Always work on developing the right tempo and technique in your competition squat.

 

For your secondary work or next work sets you can take off your gear or wear just briefs and do variations of the regular squat, including pause squats, squats using resistance or assistance bands or overloaded high box squats.

 

For additional assistance work add in about 4 heavy sets of leg presses (10 reps) or belt squats (5 reps) or even lunges (10 steps each way for 4 sets) and even heavy calf raises. Occasionally, you could add overloaded heavy stand-ups for 2 or 3 sets of 3 reps holding the 3rd longer. Raw box squats done with a soft landing and total letting go on the box will help build the muscles for explosive strength.

 

Plyometrics or box jumping are fun things to do but they will not help your squat, instead your squat will help you jump higher. Stay away from plyometrics in the ramp up for a meet, it will make your squat worse.

 

What will help your squat the most is core strength and this is developed best by squatting. In the off season you can further develop your core strength by walking out your weights in a power rack or even in a monolift.

 

The best thing that will improve your squat is squatting.

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Day 2 - Bench Raw

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If you are pressed for time and can only train three days a week, you can skip this day. We added this day to develop raw strength, to work on form and to work and get confident in the bottom of the bench at the chest.

 

This is a light bench day both weight wise and mentally.

 

First warm up and then do 4 raw work sets. Each week you can vary the number of reps, one week doing 5 sets of 5 reps or 4 sets of 10 reps or any other variation. You could even do one or two sets of maximum reps with a weight just for fun.

 

Secondary work should include 2 or 3 sets of pause benches for 5 reps. Bring down the weight to just touch but not rest on your sternum and have someone count out 5,4,3,2,1,press, then on the second rep count 4,3,2,1,press until you get to 1,press on the fifth rep. The better you get at this the more weight you will be able to handle closer to your max raw bench. Beginners for example will have trouble doing this exercise with more than 70% of their raw bench. Why practice pause benching? For bottom raw strength, for confidence at the bottom and to develop solid stable form.

 

After that you can add a few fun exercises for variety such as 10 quick sets of 3 reps with heavy bands for strength and practice setting up quickly. Band work is only done occasionally because it is hard on the joints. Beginners can attach a 25 lb plate or a kettlebell to each end of the barbell with elastic bands to learn to build stability and tightness. This won't do much to help an experienced lifter who is already tight and stable.

Additional accessory work may include, 4 sets of 10 reps of floor presses (but this is a useless exercise for people with large chests or short arms because the bar touches their chest before their elbows touch the ground.), heavy tricep pushdowns 3 sets of 15 reps or any other bodybuilding tricep type of work.

 

Again, the amount of accessory work depends on the experience of the lifter. Beginner lifters need more accessory work because they are not able to give it all on the regular bench press. 

 

Day 3 - Deadlift

 

How often should you deadlift? How heavy should you go and how much workload should you do?

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The answer to this varies greatly. I believe you can do more workload and even max out week after week doing the sumo deadlift but you cannot do that doing the conventional deadlift. Why? because the conventional deadlift uses more of your small back and sumo is done in a more upright position. The small of your back is a section with a lot of smaller and very dense muscles with not as much circulation to assist in quick recovery. If you don't let your lower back recover your deadlift progress will suffer. Old school deadlifters used to deadlift every 10 days. But, there are always exceptions to this, most notably Ed Coan the greatest deadlifter of his time who's routine and volume of sets and reps would destroy most people.

 

At Metal Militia Montreal, we have had great success by getting most lifters to practice sumo deadlifting and maxing out in gear for several weeks in a row.

Deadlift training always starts with a warm-up and work sets of the deadlift. 4 sets of 3 reps done as singles works well. Also, when chasing maxes, warm up with triples and then do singles up to a max.

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Always work on form. Have someone record a video of your lifts so you can see immediately how your form looks.

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After your hard work sets, you can do heavy rack pulls at, above or below the knee for 4 sets of 5 reps to strengthen your grip, deadlift off blocks of various heights to practice straight form, max low row cable pulls, one arm dumbbell rows. Pick two of these and vary them each week.

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Once you've reached a maximum deadlift, it is difficult to make progress. You can focus on increasing your max through improving your form or dialing in your equipment or gear. But, then to continue to improve your deadlift, you may just have to back off for a while. I find that deadlift is a lift that you dedicate a period of time, say two months to push it and make improvements, then you coast for a while and just maintain it, then attack it again.

 

The deadlift is said to be an attitude lift or a mental lift. This is why many people only hit their best deadlifts in a meet when they really want it. It's hard to call up the mental toughness needed to lift a max deadlift in a regular training session in the gym. Many people hate the deadlift mostly for this reason and some love it.

 

Day 4 - Bench Heavy (Shirt)

 

This is where METAL MILITIA first started developing bench shirt technique and training. Bill Crawford and then METAL MILITIA were at the time mostly "bench only" lifters and soon became known as the best bench shirt technicians in the world. Here is a sample of how we train on heavy bench day.

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We change usually every two weeks, one week is max bench day when we go for a pr, and the second week is heavy work day when we do four heavy work sets of triples in the shirt. These kill but they develop strength the quickest.

 

Raw warm-up

We normally start with raw warm-ups almost to a single raw max, with a slightly closer grip. Alternate days, we start with

Close grip board presses up to a 3 rep max. This does two things: it instills the motion of throwing the weight back instead of pushing up and gets you used to the feeling and second it saves some strength for maxing out in your shirt.

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Shirt work

 start about 50 lbs more than the last board press or 90 lbs more than the last raw press.

1st set usually three reps, must touch by the third rep

2nd set usually two reps

3rd, 4th and 5th set, singles up to your max or to a pr.

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If you miss a lift, you can try it one more time, if you still miss it, then go back down to a weight you can do three reps with and find your form and work your way back up again to your max.

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Accessory work

After shirt work, we alternate with some days band presses, most days with rack lock outs and occasionally floor presses. By now, your triceps should be finished, if not go do some tricep presses and finish them off.

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Band presses

Try two different exercises with bands. One day do sets of 5 adding a band to each set until you can’t do anymore. On another day, have a least three people in a group and set the bands up so that the weakest person can barely do three reps. Then test the other lifters by adding weight plates so that they find the weight they need for a hard three rep set. Once everything is set up, do ten sets of 3 reps very quickly, moving from one person to the next as quickly as possible. As soon as one person finishes his lift, get off the bench and the next one jumps down, someone sets up the weights and the hand-off person hands off right away. This gets everyone used to setting up quicker and

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