Small Changes Big Results – Squatting Twice A Week

I  have written and spoken in the past about maximising training efficiency, the idea of doing strength work twice a week for grapplers and MMA fighters has been kicked around for some time. The task being having a limited amount of time to try and yield maximum training efficacy. The aim always being maximum in ring/on mat performance. With such a small window for tweaks, often small changes can yield great results.

The program that spawned a thousand templates

Lots of folks based their programming on Wendlers 5/3/1 for MMA which had you squatting and benching one day and deadlifting and pressing another. I and my clients made great progress training this way and I suggest buying Wendlers book, it is great. 2 days lifting a week is great for the MMA fighter and Grappler, with such a lofty skill ceiling as I have said before, your time is best spent on the mat, rather than trying to serve two masters. I found the volume of the program simply wasn’t enough, progress is slow and peaking is difficult as the program is intended to be done year round. Jim’s program has been utterly memetic in the online training community sometimes to its detriment.  The other issue is that people’s collective critical thinking abandoned them and suddenly the idea of performing any movement twice a week was abandoned. A nod also goes to Defrancos ‘Westside for skinny bastards’ which had a similar consciousness raising effect, but has left people hung up on a method that perhaps they could move on from.

Increasing Frequency

Time is limited and we need performance now, if you want to be good at something do it regularly. Dan John, Pavel and John Broz talk about the idea of doing something regularly if it is important. While I’m not expecting you to go all Bulgarian and squat heavy everyday, you can perhaps try the approach of squatting regularly either two or three times a week. Why not 4 or even 6? This as mentioned before is because I only see the MMA and Grappling athletes I work with two to three times a week for strength work. Could the small change of twice or thrice weekly squatting make that much of difference?

Load variety is key in squatting more than once a week, too often I’ll see athletes chasing down the absolute strength path often maxing every session. Sometimes for off season cycles we will lift 90% plus but most of the time we keep it between 60-80% emphasis being on high force, high velocity movements. Lifting in this range keeps you fresher and the movement quality/speed as high as possible. The emphasis is on quick execution, if you are grinding out reps you are probably going too heavy. Accessory movements should target weaknesses and for the non competitive there is no harm in trying to make the interesting or fun! I generally keep the volume quite low rarely straying over 6 reps unless I feel the athlete needs more work capacity at which point we might do AMRAP sets or descending reps.

The Program This Thinking Spawned

Below is a sample program from an athletes program, this was coming off a Heavy Day1 80-90% and Day2 90%+ Block. This Block has a medium day and a heavier day. You can combine with contrast work for a more power/explosiveness emphasis, seeing as the ability to produce force quickly is crucial. Don’t forget the emphasis on the squat should be doing it as fast as possible

Below is a 3 day template, that allows us to slip in a lighter weight higher volume day, so lighter loads slightly higher reps. On Day 2 if the athlete looks sharp we might go for a total of 8 sets, if they how ever look sluggish we may stop at 4 or 5 sets.  Day 1 and Day 2 also present an opportunity to toy with contrast, complex and multi-set potentiating clusters, all means of getting those jumps and high speed movements in for rate of force development improvement.

This template is not set in stone and serve merely as a possibility for what you could do. Individuals will need lifting selection and intent to be tailored according to their needs. Don’t worry too much about the athlete or yourself fitting the template get the template fit around you.

I found with my own athletes squatting 2/3 days a week yielded better improvements in jump measures and 3RM testing than doing it once a week. Not only this athletes told me they “felt” stronger when shooting, pummelling and controlling.

What about dead lifting twice a week? I experimented with it, but felt I got more out of the squat, in terms of knee extension and isometric and eccentric strength out of low positions. Mixing speed and max effort deads is great if you have enough time and recovery to do it.

What about squatting and deadlifting together? Apart from deadlift variations used as accessory work, conventional and sumo tends to beat up the hips too much and they come with a big neural hang over and there’s injury risk too. Combine this with squatting and unless your last name ends with “kov” or “inski” and you takespecial supplements I wouldn’t try it. A good strength coach should always be asking “Can we get the same but with less spinal compressive movements?”  That is not to say we don’t deadlift, we’ll retest with it and often see improvement purely off hitting snatch grip deads/rack pulls/RDL’s hard and at speed as an accessory movement.

What should I do for posterior chain? Pick movements that challenge your weaknesses, weak lower back do GM’s, weak Glutes and Hamstrings do RDL’s, want some core involvement do zercher GM’s. I even have one client who only has Kettlebells and we still manage to make it work.

I can’t Back squat, what should I do? Front Squat, Zercher squat, Safety bar, Box squat you have a ton of choices.

What about grappling specific training? Barring the fact you probably just need to get stronger, zercher movements especially staggered zercher good mornings, Speed Sumo deadlifts and snatch grip pulls go a long way, basically anything that requires strength and explosiveness out of a low position. Oh and don’t forget to directly target hip flexors and grip if needed.

Can I do more reps on the squats? Yes but the idea here is keeping volume low and speed high I would keep between 4-6 on Day 1 and 3-4 on day 2.

I will generally run this for 4-6 weeks blocks, in the run up to a competition before doing peaking type work, it also works well as a general method when athletes need to take some load off their joints from heavier lifting. Either way be sure to give it a shot!

This is an ongoing series of articles from guest blogger and Strength & Conditioning coach William Wayland of Powering Through.