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April 4, 2005
The Russian Squat Assault
There are many effective routines but few are powerful enough to acquire cult status. The Five-Sets-of-Five... The Twenty-Rep-Super-Squats... The Smolov...
Shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, powerlifting coach S. Y. Smolov, Master of Sports designed what is undeniably the hardest and the most effective squat program ever. This strong statement is backed up with extraordinary gains from lifters on both sides of the pond. After I wrote up the Smolov in Powerlifting USA magazine a few years ago I was swamped with incredible success stories. Here is one. A drug free master lifter took his squat from 560 pounds to 665 in thirteen weeks! Then he went on to win the world lifetime drug free master title and to set a world squat record in his class! Usually, a report like this is followed by ‘individual results may vary’ in small print. Not in the Smolov’s case! Such gains are typical. I repeat: many advanced strength athletes have added 100 pounds to their squats in just over four months!
Now for the bad news. Quoting the above powerlifter, "I have never worked harder in 25+ years of exercise." Coming from a world champion, these words carry weight. The original Smolov routine calls for four heavy squat days a week totaling 136 reps with very heavy weights!
Russian expatriate powerlifting authority Andrey Butenko spoke up about the Smolov regimen, "I've used this squat program many times and I was drug free. It gave me huge gains and that's the only program I would recommend for fast and guaranteed improvement… my weight has gone up with huge increases in the legs and the back… it is very, very, very intense... or insane, but it does work... I've done it a hundred times and it always worked… It kills but it works!"
Accept the Russian Squat Assault challenge! This brutal routine will flush every cowardly myth about "overtraining" down the toilet and make your legs swell with muscle and power! Comrade Smolov promised that your gains will surprise you and he has not let anyone down yet. Squat till, as Soviet weightlifting great Yuri Vlasov put it, there is "dark red twilight in your head" and "the roaring of blood in your ears" and you will earn it. The power.
I am a realist; most iron athletes just do not have the conditioning to survive the full Smolov. So I have developed a kinder, gentler version of the program adapted to two days a week…
For more information on this topic order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at April 4, 2005 6:04 AM