You know, it’s funny. If you were to ask me two years ago about how to improve my squat, I would’ve replied with something like “cycle your intensities,” or “don’t train the movement more than twice per week,” or “drop the movement altogether and replace it with a variation for a short period,” only to return to the movement in hopes of being stronger.
However my views have changed a great deal over the last few years and I have the likes of John Broz, Nicholas Horton, Matt Perryman and Bret Contreras to thank for this.
When building training programs, especially those geared toward strength and muscle gain, I was always weary of taxing the nervous system. I never wanted my clients to overdo it.
Now, I’m still a believer in rest and recovery, but the old notions of needing a full 3-4 days (or more) of rest before training a movement again have since faded from my psyche.
It began as I experimented last year with frequent full body training. I was basically doing heavy pulls, squats and presses every other day, no matter what.
Some days were good, some sucked, but I was consistent. Guess what? I got stronger. [Read more...]

When Mike came to me, he was fairly lean already as you can see in his before picture on the left. Truth be told, he tore his ACL late last year and had surgery to repair it in early January 2011. Prior to the injury, he’d been training fairly regularly and been as heavy as 190lbs, body fat unknown.

