Kükk jõusaalis — kõige odavam anaboolikum lihasmassi kasvatamiseks

The squat — the cheapest anabolic there is

In gyms all over the world there are thousands of guys trying to add mass and strength to their “frame” until they drop. Want to know the cheapest and perhaps most effective way to do it? SQUAT!!!

I have worked with, seen and come across people who trained but never made real progress unless they squatted. I know lifters (natural, of course) who put on 8–9 kg of body weight in three months after they started squatting seriously — and, of course, eating. It doesn’t take much: just 7–8 basic exercises that the training plan revolves around, with the main emphasis on squatting. And of course, those 8–9 kg don’t all go onto the legs — by squatting you build muscle all over your body. Below is an excerpt I wrote years ago for Hardgainer Magazine. And although Hardgainer Magazine focuses on natural bodybuilding, I would add that these words and principles apply just as successfully to the practice of a chemically assisted bodybuilder:

Why does the squat make your whole body grow?

A typical hardgainer can forget about building or gaining any muscle mass if they can’t stimulate growth in their thigh and back muscles.

Let’s look at it this way: if you’ve realized that your body doesn’t let muscle mass come on very efficiently, and your training plan consists mainly of bench press and biceps exercises, then how big a demand have you actually placed on your body to make it start growing? Training mainly chest and biceps, plus a little shoulders and triceps, you use only about 10% of your growth potential. By focusing seriously on the squat or the deadlift (you don’t have to do them at the same time) you put roughly 70% of your muscles to work, and that is already a serious signal to your body: START GROWING PROPERLY, OR THINGS WILL GET TOUGH!

The reason is that these two — the squat and the deadlift — affect metabolism a great deal, hence the excellent results. Of course, in practice it isn’t the easiest thing for many people; everything valuable in this life has its price: brutal workouts with constantly increasing weight. The most effective method for those who struggle to gain mass is the 20-rep squat, done as just one set after the warm-up set(s).

The 20-rep squat — exactly how it works

So no crying or whining — just brutal workouts that demand serious effort.

If you’ve never done long sets of deadlifts or squats, you’ll be amazed at how hard it is even with a light weight. A long deadlift set or squat set may be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your gym, perhaps even the hardest thing you’ve ever had to endure in life. But without a doubt, such undertakings are the most productive things in the gym when your goal is muscle mass and growth.

It’s important to add that a 20-rep set of squats isn’t done by putting some random light weight on the bar, doing your 20 reps with mild effort and tossing the bar back on the rack. No, no, it definitely doesn’t work like that. The weight is such that by rep 10 you’re gasping for air like a horse ridden to exhaustion, and at rep 15 you’re “almost dead”. And once that 15 is done, instead of racking the bar, you take a deep breath and keep moving toward 20, rep by rep.

You have to fight with every last muscle fiber in your body so that they help you lift the bar for those remaining reps. After everything, you’ve somehow managed to complete 20, and you shouldn’t be capable of doing a twenty-first squat. If you’re able to do a few more sets, then you didn’t put your heart into it or the weight wasn’t heavy enough.

That’s why I always do this “madness” (on either the deadlift or the squat) as the last thing in the workout. Try it and you’ll see why last!

I’ve trained many people who claim that they already train like this; that they work like animals in the gym and even do 20-rep squats, after which they writhe on the floor like fish pulled out of the water onto dry land. And they’re sure that with such a small number of sets, let alone that one long set of squats, they still won’t grow. Incidentally, after some time of such training, applying various hardgainer training principles in their plans, most of these talkers have grown into very powerful and strong men.

Translator’s note: the importance of basic exercises

From the translator: Although the article is primarily about squatting, on the basis of it we can state again and again the importance of basic exercises as a whole. The author of this article is right. Let’s be honest, most of us start or have started our training careers with “CHEST/BICEPS” training programs. Now that there is so much training information available, though, this shouldn’t happen anymore. In my own early years I couldn’t grasp the importance of basic exercises either, but looking back I think, what a fool I was. Today I would dare to recommend to young bodybuilding beginners and strongmen who crave strength and mass that, if the skeleton holds up and the will is strong, they concentrate their efforts in the first couple of training years mainly around four basic exercises — bench press, deadlift, squat and standing press (with a little kick), which strongmen also call the push press. These should be the core exercises around which you build your weekly training program. Why??? Because these are the exercises that put a very large share of your body’s muscles to work. A simple example — assume relatively equal genetics and body type, and put two men with equally little training experience to work. One does biceps twice a week and the other does deadlifts once a week — which man do you think will have gained more muscle mass after a year? The deadlifter, of course. What’s more, I think that if each man had recorded his bench press result at the start of training and retested it at the end of the control period, it would turn out quite clearly that, although neither man had been pressing, the bench press numbers of the man who deadlifted had risen significantly. That is the effect basic exercises give — especially the squat and deadlift, but also standing presses and bench presses. And — speaking very figuratively — while training biceps perhaps 4–5 muscles are working (abs and back to hold the body upright, with slightly sloppy technique also the front of the shoulder, plus of course the biceps), in the deadlift, for instance, the muscles of the whole body are working in earnest — biceps, back, all its individual muscles, quadriceps, hamstrings, traps, deltoids, calves — name any you like. And all of them large and with great mass potential. So draw your own conclusion: do you do one lift in which 25 muscles work, or one lift in which 5 muscles work — which is more useful for building base strength and mass???

For the deadlift I recommend the Canadian system, and for those who plan to build their program around the squat, assuming prior squatting experience, I recommend the Smolov squat program. Both programs also contain long sets, which makes these systems especially valuable for building mass.

Of course, you need to eat plenty and eat quality food so that you definitely get your protein — and don’t skimp on fats and carbohydrates either.

Finally, here is a link for those who aren’t familiar with the push press: