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Happy Thanksgiving

No there isn’t going to be a workout routine today. This is a special day…a day for giving thanks.

Thanks for your family, good health, friends, good food and all that football! You gotta love Thanksgiving.

Seriously, you’ve worked hard all year building your body, mind and soul all the while getting stronger. At least I hope you have. But today is a day to take it easy. Forget about diet, workouts and all that stuff and focus on what’s really important -spending time with loved ones and giving thanks for all that you have.

In the end, all that’s really important is the love you shared along the way and how you lived your life. Everything else is just details.

In closing, I wish all of you a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

Squats and Milk Revisited IV

(This is part four of a five part series on one of the classic power and muscle building programs in the world – the squats and milk program)

On this version of the squats and milk routine will be the addition of the power clean – an exercise that has long been associated with power, stamina and muscle building.

The power clean becomes sort of a 1b type exercise, while the squat remains 1a. Where as in the previous examples of squat and milk programs the other exercises were just assistance ones with the squat being of sole importance. You will work the power cleans just as intense as the squats.

Before we get to the program, let’s go over its history in case you forgot or are reading about it for the first time.

The squats and milk program was a routine the old-timers used to pack on muscle mass and strength at alarming rates.

Mark Berry, US Olympic Weightlifting coach in 1932 and 1936, came up with the program and some of his early advocates where J.C. Hise and Peary Rader.

Rader, the founder and publisher of Iron Man magazine, documented how he went from a scrawny 85-pound weakling to a 210-pound powerlifting champion following this routine.

Later on, professional bodybuilding champions like Reg Park would take up this routine and gain massive amounts of size and strength in a relatively short period of time.

The basis of the program is the 20-rep breathing squat and lots of milk. To perform the breathing squat you take a weight that you can perform 10-reps in and do 20. All the while taking three deep breaths before doing a full rep until you make the 20 mark, no matter how long it takes.

It’s hard work and not for the squeamish, but the results are undeniable. The program recommends a gallon of milk a day, but I think that’s a little over the top. Try for at least a quart a day and work up to a half gallon. You can use skim milk if you’re worried about fat gain.

Overhead Press 2 x 12
Squats (Breathing) 1 x 20
Pullovers 1 x 20
Power Cleans 1 x 20
Pullovers 1 x 20

Notes: Train consistently 2-3 days per week. Add weight to the bar whenever possible and get lots of rest, eat good food and drink plenty of milk and water. Concentrate on the squats, they’re the key. The pullovers should be done in breathing style, like the squats, with light weights and done immediately after squats and the power cleans with no rest in-between.

Understand that to be successful in any weight training program – hard work is a must!Half-hearted effort does nothing for you. If you’re new to weight training or grossly out of shape, consult a physician first. End of disclaimer.

Squats and Milk Revisited III

(This is part three of a five part series on one of the classic power and muscle building programs in the world – the squats and milk program)

The squats and milk program was a routine the old-timers used to pack on muscle mass and strength at alarming rates.

Mark Berry, US Olympic Weightlifting coach in 1932 and 1936, came up with the program and some of his early advocates where J.C. Hise and Peary Rader.

Rader, the founder and publisher of Iron Man magazine, documented how he went from a scrawny 85-pound weakling to a 210-pound powerlifting champion following this routine.

Later on, professional bodybuilding champions like Reg Park would take up this routine and gain massive amounts of size and strength in a relatively short period of time.

The basis of the program is the 20-rep breathing squat and lots of milk. To perform the breathing squat you take a weight that you can perform 10-reps in and do 20. All the while taking three deep breaths before doing a full rep until you make the 20 mark, no matter how long it takes.

It’s hard work and not for the squeamish, but the results are undeniable. The program recommends a gallon of milk a day, but I think that’s a little over the top. Try for at least a quart a day and work up to a half gallon. You can use skim milk if you’re worried about fat gain.

Dips 2 x 12-15
Squats (Breathing) 1 x 20
Pullovers 1 x 20
Chins 2 x 12-15

Notes: Train consistently 2-3 days per week. Add weight to the bar whenever possible and get lots of rest, eat good food and drink plenty of milk and water. Concentrate on the squats, they’re the key. The pullovers should be done in breathing style, like the squats, with light weights and done immediately after squats with no rest in-between.

Understand that to be successful in any weight training program – hard work is a must!Half-hearted effort does nothing for you. If you’re new to weight training or grossly out of shape, consult a physician first. End of disclaimer.

Squats and Milk Revisited II

This is another post on the squats and milk program. This time we deviate from the original Squats and Milk program and go to a more abbreviated one.

First a brief overview:

The squats and milk program was a routine the old-timers used to pack on muscle mass and strength at alarming rates.

Mark Berry, US Olympic Weightlifting coach in 1932 and 1936, came up with the program and some of his early advocates where J.C. Hise and Peary Rader.

Rader, the founder and publisher of Iron Man magazine, documented how he went from a scrawny 85-pound weakling to a 210-pound powerlifting champion following this routine.

Later on, professional bodybuilding champions like Reg Park would take up this routine and gain massive amounts of size and strength in a relatively short period of time.

The basis of the program is the 20-rep breathing squat and lots of milk. To perform the breathing squat you take a weight that you can perform 10-reps in and do 20. All the while taking three deep breaths before doing a full rep until you make the 20 mark, no matter how long it takes.

The Rader version of Squats and Milk is what we’ll be discussing today. Peary was what they like to call in bodybuilding circles, a hardgainer. He was small, weak and overtrained very easily. Needless to say, the original program was too much for him so he did what all motivated lifters do – he revised it for his own needs.

Rader eliminated some exercises and only kept the ones he felt would give him maximum growth without the dangers of overtraining. The program Peary Rader come up with is below.

It’s hard work and not for the squeamish, but the results are undeniable. The program recommends a gallon of milk a day, but I think that’s a little over the top. Try for at least a quart a day and work up to a half gallon. You can use skim milk if you’re worried about fat gain.

Bench Press 2 x 12
Squats (Breathing) 1 x 20
Pullovers 1 x 20
Rows 2 x 15

Notes: Train consistently 2-3 days per week. Add weight to the bar whenever possible and get lots of rest, eat good food and drink plenty of milk and water. Concentrate on the squats, they’re the key. The pullovers should be done in breathing style, like the squats, with light weights and done immediately after squats with no rest in-between.

Understand that to be successful in any weight training program – hard work is a must! Half-hearted effort does nothing for you. If you’re new to weight training or grossly out of shape, consult a physician first. End of disclaimer.

Squats and Milk Revisited

The squats and milk program was a routine the old-timers used to pack on muscle mass and strength at alarming rates.

Mark Berry, US Olympic Weightlifting coach in 1932 and 1936, came up with the program and some of his early advocates where J.C. Hise and Peary Rader.

Rader, the founder and publisher of Iron Man magazine, documented how he went from a scrawny 85-pound weakling to a 210-pound powerlifting champion following this routine.

Later on, professional bodybuilding champions like Reg Park would take up this routine and gain massive amounts of size and strength in a relatively short period of time.

The basis of the program is the 20-rep breathing squat and lots of milk. To perform the breathing squat you take a weight that you can perform 10-reps in and do 20. All the while taking three deep breaths before doing a full rep until you make the 20 mark, no matter how long it takes.

It’s hard work and not for the squeamish, but the results are undeniable. The program recommends a gallon of milk a day, but I think that’s a little over the top. Try for at least a quart a day and work up to a half gallon. You can use skim milk if you’re worried about fat gain.

John McCallum, the most famous strength writer of all time had this to say about the squats and milk program. This is from an article in Strength and Health from November of 1968 titled ‘Bulking Up.’

“Years ago, a fool proof method of bulking up was discovered. And yet gaining weight is a major problem with bodybuilders and weightlifters today because the old method somehow got lost in the shuffle. It’s too bad, because gaining weight is really no problem. Bulking up is far and away the easiest part of bodybuilding.

If you want to make use of some old gold and really apply yourself, you can gain lots of weight. If you want to quit scratching around for something new for a couple of months, you can get as bulky as you want. Let’s review the old method, and then we’ll outline a program for you. We can sum up the essentials very quickly. Squats and milk. That’s the gist of it.

Heavy squats and lots of milk and never mind if the principle is years old. If you’re in doubt, let me tell you this. I get scores of letters from lifters around the country who’ve tried the squats and milk program. They all say the same thing. They gained more weight in a month on the squats and milk than they had in a year or more on other types of programs. Gains of twenty to thirty pounds in a month are not uncommon. If you don’t gain at least ten pounds a month you’re doing something wrong.“

Over the next couple of days we’ll go into detail on the various types of Squats and Milk workouts there are. For now, here’s the most basic one that McCallum recommended in his article.

Overhead Press 2-3 x 12
Squats (Breathing) 1 x 20
Pullovers 1 x 20
Bench Press 2-3 x 12
Rows 2-3 x 15
Deadlifts 2-3 x 15
Pullovers 1 x 20

Notes: Train consistently 2-3 days per week. Add weight to the bar whenever possible and get lots of rest, eat good food and drink plenty of milk and water. Concentrate on the squats, they’re the key. The pullovers should be done in breathing style, like the squats, with light weights and done immediately after squats and deadlifts with no rest in-between.

Understand that to be successful in any weight training program – hard work is a must! Half-hearted effort does nothing for you. If you’re new to weight training or grossly out of shape, consult a physician first. End of disclaimer.

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