Why you should train the pause squat.

I am of the opinion that some form of glutes to the ground squat like the pause squat should be the foundation of any strength training regimen for the simple fact that the leg muscles are the most easily adaptable of all muscle groups.

Elite powerlifters have their strongest lift in the squat. Some of them can squat 1,000+ pounds.  We as humans have evolved mostly on our feet over the past couple eons, so you as a powerlifter  have all that natural selection breeding in your dna to enable you to put up big numbers in your squat.

There has been a lot of speculation on whether or not squats induce human growth hormone. You could probably Google that and find fifty different websites arguing for or against  human growth hormone synthesis while squatting. I don't know myself.

Spinal stretches to perform while you strength train.

I think we can agree that the squat and deadlift put severe stress on the spine. To alleviate the stiffness of your spine and align it as well, do these stretches.

First stand with feet shoulder width apart with the knees partially bent enough where you can sink your upper body between your legs. Now bend over at the waist gently to feel a gentle pull on your lower spine. Don't yank on the lower back however as it will end up injuring the lower back.

The next stretch is stand with feet shoulder width apart about three to four feet away from a wall and bend backwards so you can catch yourself on the wall behind you with your hands. Gently push your pelvis out and try to slowly arch your lower back to the ceiling. As you get more and more flexible, you'll be able to stand further away from the wall and put your back in a more severe arch.


I never do these stretches without being warm and sweaty. The only time I do them is if after performing a squat or deadlift and I feel a couple of my vertebrae are misaligned. I also do them after taking a hot shower when my body and muscles are relaxed and warm.

If you don't know this guy or his website, you are seriously ignorant of strength training

Check out Louie Simmons and his West side barbell website.

A nice workout

I recently started doing this workout, and I have to admit it feels real nice.  I go benchpress first, then deadlift, and finally pause squats.  I  deadlift before squats because the squat really smashes the legs and to do them ahead of the deadlift will only make your deadlift weaker.  Also I use cambered bars for bench pressing.  After I'm done doing the powerlifting, I'll go to the smaller muscles and start doing bicep curls, pectoral flys, tricep extensions.

Adding rigidity to your lift form: suck in your anus

Any lift from squat to deadlift to bench press to standing barbell bicep curl requires a certain amount of rigidity and torso tension to complete a successful lift.

One way to add more stiffness to the lift is to suck your in your butt hole.  It forces you to contract the glutes hard and flex  your quads, and when this happens you have a more stablebase to lift from.

Deadlift form

Squat form

Squat form

Stiff legged deadlifts: not for the weak at heart

I've been putting off how to do stiff legged deadlifts.  The main reason is that it uses bad form to pick the barbell off the ground.  You're basically standing with your shins resting against the bar. You bend over at the waist with a slight bend at the knees and latch your hands onto the bar with a hook grip and then you take in a breath of air through the mouth and then pull the bar off the ground with your lower back. In effect, you're lifting the bar off the ground with a rounded back. This puts severe stress on the lower back as you lift the bar past the knees to lockout because the weight severely compresses the vertebrae. The main thing you have to watch for is severe soreness in the lower back. When you experience a slight amount of soreness in the lower spine you should stop doing stiff legged deadlifts because they are definitely not something you want to get sore to the point where you can't even walk the next day.

As far as rep range goes, I'll hit a couple single rep sets and then go to a lighter weight and start putting in six rep sets and then do a couple three rep sets. I'm mostly aiming for lactic acid build-up and to stretch the spine into alignment.  The lactic acid build-up is for
irritation of the muscle to induce the production of intra-cellular fluid. The intra-cellular fluid while it doesn't directly lead to strength gains it adds fullness and rigidity to the muscle and you'll need structural support in your spine if you expect to lift big weights for the deadlift and squat. 

The only reason is I'm doing stiff legged deadlifts is I'm on a severe plateau and my acute angle deadlifts are not enough of a stimulus on my lower back muscles to make them adapt. I might alternate between doing stiff legged deadlifts and acute angle deadlifts when I'm not doing conventional deadlifts.

Louie Simmons on tricep extensions

Louie Simmons talks tricep extensions.

Deadlift form

Here's an excellent video of correct deadlift form. I don't agree with keeping your head in line with the spine because I don't train with a belt so I'm putting my lower back into a position very susceptible to injury, but with maintaining a severe arch in my lower back and by lifting my head as high up as possible I'm able to avoid injury.   Here's how I deadlift.

Kidney failure and overtraining

Kidney failure or renal failure can happen when the muscles break themselves down and release myoglobin into the bloodstream. The myoglobin can then clog the kidneys and cause kidney failure.

One of the causes of muscle breakdown is muscle exertion. I drink whey protein while I work out, so it pretty much prevents my muscles from breaking themselves down. Even then I can only workout for only two to three hours without severe  catabolism damage to my muscles although I will usually eat a nice sized meal of eggs and carbohydrate before my workout to prevent muscle breakdown while I  lift weights.

Here's a link to a clinical description of rhabdomyolysis which is potentially life threatening.

Here's how the pros get the job done. Louie Simmons talks how to train the bench press.

Louie Simmons gives his take on how to train the bench press. 

Notice the use of different bars. He also uses bands and chains to add more resistance.

Fast twitch versus slow twitch muscle fibers

Here's a link to explain the difference between fast and slow twitch muscle fibers.

The book that influenced my strength training

This book  is what influenced my thoughts on strength training. I don't recommend going out and buying it because it costs 65 dollars.   Also it's written by scientists with degrees in biomechanical engineering, so the language is very technical. But if you want to see why I do the workouts I do, then
maybe you might want to read this because this blog is a practical application of the
theories presented in the book.

Why this site is unpopular

I started this site because I saw a lot of bad information out there about how to get strong. I know it's out there because I've waded through most of it. Along the way armed with less than seriously proven strength training programs, I've injured myself. I've had terrible plateaus that would go on for months. I've had the worst kind of diets that have caused me to get sick. The point is what I write about to make strength gains has been backed by hard fought research gained through blood, sweat and tears. The problem is my training programs are  hard.

I guess when people clicked on the link to this website, they thought there was going to be some quick fix or a little pill they could swallow, and magically muscles would pop out of their chest and arms, or I was going to talk about aligning their chakras or connecting with their spirit animals or some other silly nonsense.

Cambered bar bench presses are scary stuff. You can hurt your shoulders doing them.  Pause back squats are equally as painful and  terrifying. Who wants to eat eggs all day?  Who wants to do single rep sets using all the strength you can muster? The answer is not many.

You  have to be a special kind of person to do my workouts. You have to be a trouble shooter first off. You have to have the ability to analyze your plateaus. You have to break down the range of motion into individual muscle groups that need to be strengthened. Secondly, you need to have a high tolerance for pain. Everything from the lifting to the eating even to the resting involves some kind of pain. You ever eat a bunch of eggs after you workout?Your muscles feel like they're about to split in half. But that pain is muscle growth.  Lastly, you need courage. A four hundred pound weight on the back of your neck is scary. A three hundred pound weight suspended in air above your chest is equally frightening.

Strength training is not for weak minded individuals. These are the kinds of  people who probably look at you at the gym and ask themselves what is that weirdo doing? All the while, they're still lifting the same weights. I had an experience at an old gym of mine. After couple of years of not being there, I went back, and what did I see? The same narrow minded people who would mock me or make little asides to themselves or their friends had the same weak scrawny bodies, and they were lifting the same wimpy weights.

I think those are the people who are frustrated when they come to this blog and expect to find a quick fix to their plateau but find there is no shortcut to strength gains. I don't know. Maybe
you can give me an answer as to why this site isn't more popular. Write your answer in the comment box below.

The squat analyzed

This is really an excellent video series on the mechanics of squat form and how to strengthen your squat. I know the guy is only doing box squats, that is just sitting down and squatting off a box, but in powerlifting you only have to go down enough so that your glutes sink below your knees so I can see why powerlifters are always training box squats.

I prefer to do olympic high bar back squats with my glutes almost hitting the ground. High bar position means the bar is sitting on the back of my neck as opposed to resting on the middle of my back. I feel when the glutes reach that low of a position, the glutes are being fully recruited in the range of motion and more of a strength gain adaptation will be seen in not only my squat record but also in my deadlift record. If you want to read my advice on squatting click here.

In this series, the instructor also lists some very nice complementary exercises to strengthen your squat and deadlift. 

Resolution to squat every workout day

That's right. I've finally resolved myself to do pause back squats every workout. I know. I know. I'm always whining about repetitive movement injury and how you shouldn't do the same exercise two workouts in a row. But there's no way around pause back squats. Sure, you can do acute angle deadlifts and they will hit the glutes almost as well as squats provided you maintain an upright upper torso position. The problem is once you lose that position and bend over at the waist your glutes are taken out of the range of motion and your lower back carries you to the top.

That's why I'm going to do pause back squats every workout. There's no exercise that smashes the lower half of the glutes like pause back squats. The reflexive back squat uses too much bounce to carry the upper torso out of the bottomed out position. That's good if you're trying to break a personal record, but that won't help you stimulate the lower glute muscles.

I think I'll avoid repetitive movement injury in the knees for the simple fact that any kind of pause added to any exercise's range of motion will require a less heavy load. Thus it will reduce the stress on my knees.

Also , a key component to any repetitive movement injury is the shearing action in the exercise's range of motion. Shearing action means when your joints shift out of position and the bones in the joint become misaligned.  If you place a load on the joint when it's misaligned, you're increasing your chance of injury.

When a bounce is added to a range of motion, the potential for that shearing action greatly increases.  When you bounce out of the bottom of your squat, you don't know where your knees are and how the bones in the knee joint are positioned. They could be out of alignment, so when you activate your glutes to carry you to the top, the bones in your knees have the potential for injury under the stress of a heavy load. That's why I think doing the pause squat will reduce my knee pain because it gives my knee joints a chance to settle in and align properly before I try to muscle the weight back to the top. When I used to do pause bench presses, my shoulder pain was greatly reduced as well because I was dealing with a lighter load and I was giving my shoulder joints a chance to align themselves and thus my shoulder pain was reduced.

There is really no way to have a strong deadlift without having strong glutes and quadricep muscles.   From the moment you step to the bar to the point where you reach the top of the lift, the muscle fibers in your legs are firing off to stabilize the weight your holding and to assist your lift to knee lockout. The pause back squat fully stimulates all leg muscles involved  in the deadlift.

Deadlift analyzed

This powerlifter talks deadlift form. He talks  alot about keeping your head in line with your spine. But you have to keep one thing in mind. These powerlifters are wearing training belts, and belts support your lower spine throughout the entire range of motion in the deadlift. If you took the belts off, their lifts would decrease by one to three hundred pounds.

I've tried keeping my head in line with my spine, and it doesn't work for me. The main reason is that I don't wear a training belt, so I take in as much air as I possibly can and try my best to extend my belly out as far as I can and raise my head as high as I can to overemphasize the arch in my back. Click on this link to read how I lift without a belt.

  He  also talks about how if you keep the head in line with the spine, it will enable you to put a more severe arch in your back. That's fine and dandy if you're wearing a training belt like the powerlifters in his video, but I go completely raw in my workouts. I don't use training belts or talc powder. The only thing I do use is wrist straps in my deadlift. That's because I'm trying to put the tension on my back rather than on my hand grip. I could use a mixed grip where one hand goes over the bar and the other hand goes under the bar, but that hand position puts too much tension on one side of the body and encourages a twist in the stance to one side and thus the spine becomes  unaligned. If you keep lifting like that, you risk injury to your spine and hips and biceps.

Deadlift and squat plateau

 I've been on a plateau for my deadlift and squat. The problem is I keep bending over at the waist. When this happens, my lower back is overused and since I don't wear a training belt to support my lower back I consequently don't make the lift. What do I do now?

I guess I have to listen to this guy. He squats about half a ton give or take a couple hundred pounds. In this video he gives some complementary exercises to address weaknesses. Notice how he recommends seated good mornings and some weird lower back machine that probably doesn't exist in 90 percent of all commercial gyms.

I used to do stiff legged deadlifts and I saw pretty good gains in my deadlift. I think the reason was that the form for the stiff legged deadlift has you start in a bent over at the waist position with knees almost locked straight and deadlifting the weight off the ground. This motion will pretty much blast your lower back and hamstrings.  Be careful though as this puts your lower back and hamstrings in a position very susceptible to injury. 

The amount of tension you can hold in your hamstrings determines how well you keep your upper body locked in an upright position. If you lose the tension in your hamstrings, you'll double over at the waist and use  the lower back to make the lift which is a good way to injure your lower back.

I think the guy in video above talks about hamstring tension somewhere in his video series. It's a five part video series and you should definitely watch it.