Breaking Plateaus in Squat and Bench Press

(Note: This post has turned out to be the most viewed post on my blog. I strongly testify to the routine I suggest here, and it is a definite ball-buster. I am curious to know how many people actually implement the routine I suggest. I am a little suspicious that a lot of people read this post only in hope of finding some tweak or short-cut, and do not actually go for such a non-orthodox routine. So, please drop a comment if you have implemented this routine, or a variation, along with your gains. )

Plateaus are very common in Weightlifting. I have only been training for about 4.5 years, so I'm not sure if I can label my no-gain periods as plateaus. Most of the time, I wasn't focusing on any single lift and hence it hadn't improved. Especially my squats- I squat throughout the year with a frequency of about twice a week. And yet my gains did not reflect my training- I have been improving about 10-12kg per year. The slow improvement is quite frustrating. What I write now is the routine I used to speed up my gains. Although I haven't used it to break through a plateau, I believe the same can be used to break plateaus. First, I'll briefly mention the gains I'm talking about.
In 2009, my max squat was 100kg. In 2010, my max squat was 110kg, in 2011 it was 117.5kg. In April 2012, I hit a max of 127.5kg in a Powerlifting competition.
In my 9th semester (Aug-Nov 2012), I was focused on Olympic lifting. I did not hit a max squat during the summer. The improvement in my lifts from August 15 to November 5 was:
Back squat: 130kg to 150kg
Front squat: 115kg to 132.5kg
Push press: 70kg to 87kg
Power snatch: 70kg to 77kg
Power clean: 90kg to 97kg
Snatch: 80kg to 92kg
Clean: 105kg to 117kg
Jerk: 105kg to 117kg
Even after these significant gains, I was hungry for more improvement. Instead of going easy on the intensity, I maintained it through November. Around December 10, I injured a knee (still recovering from it) and a rhomboid (recovered at the end of January)
During this time, my bodyweight went from 73kg to 77kg, which is kind of inevitable.

My bench press max was 80kg in 2010, 85kg in 2011, and 82.5kg in 2012. I do bench press only from January to mid-April. The rest of the year, I never do bench press, except some close grip bench press 2-3 times a month. On January 10th this year, I benched 80kg. But in the first week of March, I benched 95kg for 2 reps and 99kg for 1 rep.

During both periods, my improvements were quite significant for me. In 2.5 months, I improved more than what I would usually improve in an year.
Please keep in mind that I have been training for 4 years when I tried my new routine. Such routines may not be suited for beginners and must be used only in times of desperation. 

I once read this somewhere (not the exact lines, but with the same gist)-
"How much would you usually improve on your squat in a month? 5 lb? 10 lb? What if someone came along and kidnapped your family and said that they would be released only if you improved 50lb on your squat in 1 month, or else they will kill your family? Would you still squat only once a week? F**k that, you'll be squatting every freaking day. You would either gain 50lb in that month, or kill your legs trying to do that."
"A lot of people talk about why its not good to squat more than once or twice a week. But look at factory workers, or workers in construction and in mines. They lift some serious weights. In the first few months, they may find it very taxing on themselves. But later on, they get used to it. They get used not only to lifting heavy loads, but also to lifting them everyday. You can do the same to your squat or your bench press. If you start squatting everyday, your body will get used to squatting everyday."

So, between August and November 2012, I started squatting 4 times a week instead of my usual 2 times a week. I cycled the intensity and reps. One day I would do 105kg for 3 reps, one day I'd do 100kg for 5 reps, one day I'd do 115kg for 2 reps, or 120kg for 1 rep. Sometimes front squat, sometimes back squat. But I kept squatting in every training session. I did good mornings and push presses on alternate days, with the same approach - varying intensity and reps. I did the same on my pulls. Usually I'd do snatch or clean pulls only once or twice a week, I started doing pulls 4 days a week. I trained for about 15-20 days like this. The following week, I dropped down on the volume- only singles upto 120kg, and squatting only twice a week. I took 3-4 days of rest after my previous squat session, and boom, I hit a max after that. 2 cycles of this routine, and I hit 150kg back squat and 87kg push press.

To summarize the routine:
1) First 15 days: Perform the exercise more often- 4 or 5 times a week. Cycle the load and the reps between 5 reps at 80%, 3 reps at 85%, and singles at 92%, all of them for multiple sets. Maintain a sufficiently high volume. Expect to feel like shit after the two sessions.
2) Next 7 days: Reduce the frequency of the exercise to twice a week. Reduce the volume drastically. Hit heavy singles- around 90% -95% for 3 to 5 sets.
3) Next 5 days: The second or third day after the previous session, do the exercise with very light weights for very low volume- 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps each at 50% should do. Two more days after this, attempt your max.
For a week after your max attempt, train with light weights- 50-60%. Go for another cycle if you dare.

Do not start on this routine right after a break from training. I have left out a lot of details such as warm-up, rest periods, assistance works, diet, etc.. This routine is not intended for beginners, and I expect anyone with a few years of training experience to fill out the details depending on their goals, conditioning and weaknesses.

Notes of caution:
1) There is a strong reason for not training like this through out the year- there is an increased chance of injury, and you'll hate going to the gym. So attempt this only in times of desperation.
2) When training with a team, it'll be very hard to use an exclusive routine. Adapt it accordingly.
3) In routines like this, weights must be properly chosen. They must be light enough to allow you to train continuously for 8-10 sessions, but heavy enough to stimulate growth.
4) Its very easy to give up with these kinda routines- after 3-4 sessions you may not even want to set foot in the gym. You must go through that phase and keep training.
5) Attempt this only if you can listen to your body. There is a fine line between massive gains and serious injury, ensure that you can differentiate them.

I did get injured, but about a month after the gains I mentioned. I was preparing for a competition due to be held on December 20. My training from November 25 to December 10 was unforgiving. My body was already screwed up, and I was doing 110kg cleans and 80kg snatches everyday (and training 3 times in 2 days, as opposed to 4 times in 7 days). It was just bad management on my part. But the routine I mentioned was very good.

The above is all about my routine from Aug-Nov 2012. During Jan-March 2013 I used a similar routine, plus one addition, to add 15kg to my bench press. I benched 4-6 days a week. I alternated heavy sessions (80kg for singles or 70kg for 3 reps, multiple sets) with dynamic sessions (40kg or 45kg for 10 sets of 3 reps). I hit 95kg for 2 reps and 99kg for a single during the routine itself. The difference between this routine and the one I used for squats was the dynamic work- sets of 3 fast-reps at 50%.
I didn't build up to a max as I'd usually do for a competition or as I did for my squat. The basic idea for this routine is based on what Louie Simmons uses at Westside Barbell (google it up), and the one I explained earlier (of squatting everyday).

I didn't try anything new. I took principles of periodization, high frequency training and westside barbell's conjugate training and mixed them all up. I was training with a team and hence couldn't try any particular training routine exclusively. I had to adapt, and I experimented with this routine. Fortunately, it was a great success for me.

A beginner's journey through research

With 2 more months left before I have to finish my Dual Degree Project (DDP), I am now in a restless position. I have always been interested in my work, but I procrastinate a lot. My work is computational. I have written codes for two techniques, both part of my DDP, by January. Since then I have just been debugging my codes and modifying my approach. I now have proper codes and accurate results, but the results are not what I have expected. I'm now left with only one option- to tweak my approach in whatever ways I can till I can make some sense out of my results. If this were a textbook problem, I would have had some feel for the answer and tried to work towards that. But with my DDP, not even my guide knows what the answer would be, and so goes on my search for sense.

I have taken up a decent number of projects in my insti life- a few experiments and models for course work, some simulations, hazaar codes, and three big ones -
1) An SOE (Spirit of engineering) project (sems 2 - 5)
2) Internship at GE (Summer 2011)
3) DDP ( July 2012 - present)
And all of my course projects, I did myself.
As I'm now clueless about how to proceed, and pretty frustrated for being in such a situation, I was reflecting on the way I've approached my project so far and realized that there is a common trend among my approaches to projects. In this post, I'll outline that approach. It may help other beginners who are about to start taking on new projects, and hopefully I may realize something I've been missing as I put it in words.

Phase 1: Groundwork, reading
The most boring part. I'm very enthued to do something but I know very little about it. Sometimes, as in the case of my internship, I'm not even aware of the problem. I do know that reading some stuff will help me later. Reading things when needed has always been more appealing to me. I'd just glance through the textbooks, just to know what it is all about, without trying to remember anything. Later, when I am faced with the real problem, I come back to the textbook and read the relevant part thoroughly.

Phase 2: Let's do this s**t
The problem is introduced. I think I understand what the issue. I lay down a strategy to attack it and get to work. I would be quite sure about the outcome when I start working. This phase ends as quickly as it begins

Phase 3: Problems, problems
I get stuck. Sometimes I can't get results - code doesn't work, code gives infinity or NaN, experimental setup  does nothing, Simulation won't start, software won't install, software won't run, and so on and on... Sometimes I get results that are garbage. The strategy I was so confident about cups badly.

Phasae 4: Loss of enthu, infinite procrastination
After the initial enthu and the spectacular cupping, with no obvious route to take, I start losing enthu. I'm so pained with the cupping that I don't try to look for ways to make it work and desperately, but with huge time delays, keep trying the same thing over and over.

Phase 5: More reading, problem definition
After a lot of procrastination, I would lazily explore other options. When searching for new ways to attack the problem, I usually end up questioning my understanding of the problem itself. I would then set down to clearly define the problem itself and what I expect from it. This will be accompanied by a round of reading existing literature to see if I can relate my problem to something that already has been studied. At the end of this phase, I'd gain a better understanding of the problem and a better appreciation of the challenges it offers.
A lot of times, phase 5 is accelerated by talking to others- mentors, guides, colleagues, etc.. Most of the time, what I would realize in phase 5 is that I did not pay enough attention to detail- to the assumptions usually. Like in 11th or 12th I might have sometimes applied conservation of mechanical energy when there is friction in the system. In the context of my DDP, I usually work assuming that the system is close to a linear system without trying to verify that assumption. Or when I get results that don't seem to make sense, I do not analyze them properly.
Bad results tell a lot more about the system than results that seem meaningful. They usually tell us why the system is not ideal, or to which parameter it is most sensitive. Analyzing them is a very important part of research, but I rarely do that out of laziness.

Phases 2 to 5 repeat a few times, with each round giving me better insight into the problem (irrespective of whether I'm actually getting closer to solving the problem or not). Phase 5 usually ends prematurely. Once I realize that my previous approach was wrong and that there is another route I can take, I go back to phase 2 without completely considering the results of the previous round. That is usually a very big problem, but its very hard to fight the drive to try a new, promising, approach.
I do not know what comes after phase 5. I have just realized that in the last 5 years, I have never gotten past phase 5. I have never had problems with classroom problems or the simple tutorial questions. But I'm yet to solve a real problem. I had given up on my SOE project, left my internship before I could see the project through completition, and am still working on my DDP. There were several course assignments that were quite challenging. In my 9th sem, 2 courses required some computational assignments to be completed and another course required me to make an experimental measurement. Aerospace Engineering Department at IITM has some very good professors who give interesting assignments. My course projects gave results that were sufficiently satisfactory to earn a good grade. Throughout my coursework and with my 3 big projects, I have always ended up appreciating the problem far better than when I started working on it. But completely exploring the problem- that is something I haven't done yet.
With my DDP, I am now hopeful that I will see it to completion. I have already been through phases 2 to 5 atleast 5 times (I am using a technique called 'Dynamic Mode Decomposition'. Right now the code I'm running is called "dmd_mixlayer_ver7" - the 7th version since January). I believe I have a fair understanding of the problem. Hopefully I'll have explored it fully before I pass out.

Yoga and Meditation

                A yoga workshop was conducted in insti on 3rd March. It was announced in smail and I registered for it (it was free). I went to the place and there were about 30 people there. The instructor asked each of us why we were there. People had different, but related, reasons - to learn yoga, to get toned, to lose weight, to get healthy, for a change in their usual physical exercise, etc.. I wasn't there for any of those reasons. I was just curious. Yoga has been around for a millenium may be. It has spread to the west too and quite a lot of people practice it. I wanted to know why so many people believe in it, and maybe pick up something interesting from it. There had to be something in it if so many people approved it for so long (but then people blindly follow religion too, so I was skeptical). When I was in 6th grade, I practiced yoga for a couple of weeks in my school, before karate appealed more to me and I switched to it. Unfortunately, the karate classes in that school were packed after some 6 months after I joined.

                In the yoga workshop, after the usual "we all have problems, yoga will help you to fix them, it will help you with this, it will help you in that, etc..", the instructor started us up on some warm up exercises - stretching and rotating wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, etc... Then came the famous Suryanamaskara. With all the tightness accumulated from weight training and the loss in conditioning due my laziness in the last 2 years, I found the asanas a little uncomfortable, but I went through them. After 2 hours, I felt I understood what this was all about. I know its not fair to judge an art based on just a 2 hour intro session, but I believe the rest is all an extension of whatever was taught in those 2 hours.

Apparently, yoga is a series of exercises involving static stretching and bodyweight isometrics performed with synchronized breathing. In addition to that, the practitioner's mind becomes peaceful due to the slow pace and focused stretching and breathing. And there are a lot of asanas and mastering them all is quite challenging. There seems to be a spiritual side to it too, but I'm not really interested in that. Ofcourse, as with any such art, a lot of discipline and rules for lifestyle are involved.

                So, after the 2 hours, I decided that if anyone ever asks me about yoga, I'd definitely recommend it. It involves a fair bit of exercise, good breathing and gives a peace of mind. A pretty decent package. For a guy who's just lying in his room for most of the time, it must work wonders. But I didn't find anything that may be useful to me. At some point or the other in the last 4 years, I had already done all of the stretching that was taught. There are a lot of exotic asanas that involve a lot of flexibility and strength at uncomfortable positions, but I do not expect them to carry over to any of the things I'm interested in. So, for a committed sportsman who knows a fair bit about stretching, muscle mechanisms and injuries, yoga won't be very appealing. It is okay to try it for a change of pace, but I do not expect any significant returns. Ofcourse, there is the improvement in breathing and the peace of mind. But then, I get these from a set of heavy squats or an all-out sprint too, and they make may stronger and faster.

                Then we had a break for lunch. After the lunch, we had some breathing exercises (go for a long run, or put a sprint. Nothing beats that). A lecture on healthy diet (I don't care much for that, I'm okay with eating whatever I can find, unless I'm on a strict diet aimed at something). How asanas can affect your behavior and thinking (I felt the claims to be greatly exaggerated). Then some general discussion which I didn't find interesting. Finally, we came to meditation. The meditation, according to the instructor, is not a part of yoga per say, but she wanted to teach us.

                Meditation has always intrigued me. I hear a lot of claims on it and always wonder how it can be so effective. So we all sit down and close our eyes. The instructor says things that usually hypnotists may say, like "you'll feel relaxed now, you are fully stress free, etc...". Before we started the meditation, the instructor told us that the mind has a frequency - 6 corresponding to our normal life, 8 to a stressed state, and 4 to a time when we're consciously not very aware, but are in sync with our subconscious. I understand that the mind may be divided into the conscious and the subconscious (the intuitive part as I understand it, nothing magical/spiritual). The instructor said that if we can tune down our mind to the frequency of 4, we can get into contact with the universe around us and reach wherever we want to. I didn't believe the theory, and as an engineer, was itching to ask for how this frequency is defined and also the units in which it's measured. But I decided not to argue, so I just listened.

                Towards the end of the meditation, she (the instructor) asked us to tell ourselves, not out loud, that we will make whatever changes we wish to make in ourselves. She asked us to fix this deeply in our subconscious. She said that if we did this kind of meditation enough times, it would get strongly fixed in our mind. I didn't find it new at all. We tell ourselves the same thing enough times, we start to believe in it. And belief in ourselves can be very effective. An incident from the summer before last comes to my mind. I was in Bangalore, training in my office gym. My squat had hit a plateau at around 100 or 105kg. A friend of mine, who dropped out of insti, was telling me about a training routine he was following and in the conversation he said something like, "squatting is all in the mind. If you believe you can't squat more than your old max, you won't. But if you believe you can push your max, you definitely will". After 3-4 days I decided to squat heavy. I was a little scared but decided to to give an all out effort and not back down - I pushed my max to 115kg, an improvement that would usually take me about 3-4 months. So what we were asked to do as part of meditation is nothing new, it is a very old principle- if you want to do something, you must start believing in it. Half efforts rarely succeed.

                This brings me to the very last part of the meditation. The instructor asked us to visualize white light all around us, and I did. Then she asked us to think of "a lot of positive energy coming into you from the universe, the universe is helping you to get strong". All my focus and peace of mind broke at that point. I tried hard to regain focus, but the best I could do was think about dragon ball Z, how the characters in that anime get very strong by taking in stuff from the universe. After a while, the meditation session ended. The instructor went on telling others how the universe cares about each of us and will help us if we can connect to it through meditation.

Some time last year, I was in full mood to watch documentaries and started downloading a lot of them on LAN. There was someting called  - 'The secret'. Expecting some kind of medieval conspiracy, I downloaded it. It started with mentioning the names of a lot of thinkers, scientists and politicians and claimed they all knew the secret, and the documentary was going to give it to me. Then came a series of people claiming to be quantum physicists, psycologists, etc... who reiterated the power of the secret and how the life of the audience can change by the knowledge of it. I was curious. After watching it for 10 more minutes, when the secret was slowly being revealed, I closed the video, unable to watch any further. It was the same thing that was told to us at the end of the meditation - if I want to do something very badly, the whole universe conspires to give it to me. I only have to wish for it very hard. Though this was not mentioned in the meditation session, the documentary went on to say that our thoughts attract things towards us, so whatever we think about too often, it just happens- good or bad. So they say we must always think positively.

                All the time, when watching that documentary and during the meditation, only 1 thing kept flashing in my mind- 'The universe is like 300 billion years old, many billion light years wide. Why does it give a damn about any of us?' I was very tempted to say this to the instructor, but decided against getting into an argument in her workshop. I did get into one though. She asked if any of us believed that we were not controlled by something outside ourself. I said I believe I have freewill, so I did not believe I was controlled. Then she went on to give examples of luck, failures despite best efforts, etc, trying to show that I don't have full control of myself, or atleast that's what it seemed like to me. I decided not to argue further. Actually, I wasn't even listening. That was the end of the workshop and I was trying to address the reason I attended the workshop. What is this all about? Why do so many people believe in it? After some thought, I reached a conclusion.

                The exercise and breathing part, it obviously benefits all those people not involved in a lot of physical activity, or those that don't know how to stretch in case of spasms and injuries. The meditation, well it gives people some peace of mind. A little time to reflect on life, make resolutions and keep telling themselves what they want to do. The thing in the end, about the whole universe trying to help us, I didn't buy that. But then, people don't care for reason. People who meditate are usually those who are stressed out. Spiritual gurus and saints meditate too, but then I think they are just jobless people not contributing to society at all, and instead living off others' hard work. If someone tells a depressed or a stressed out guy that there is hope for him and that the entire universe wants him to succeed, that's a lot of good news. They'd probably become more confident and work better, believing that they have the whole universe helping them and hence their problems can be overcome.

                So, bottomline, for a normal person who isn't skeptical and believes everything their instructors teach, yoga and meditation can do wonders. For a person who already knows his stuff, they don't make any difference and are just plain old principles given in an illusive package with lots of exotic names. If anyone asks for my opinion, I'd definitely recommend yoga and meditation to them.