More thoughts on squats
Apr 5, 2011 at 14:13 by Carlo Buzzichelli, TBI-MPS
Technical Director TBI-International
Fred note: Many of you who have followed my blog know of Carlo the Technical Director of TBI International, Director of TBI Italy and now the 1st person in TBI to recieve the master degree from TBI, TBI-MPS. I am glad I finally got Carlo to start to give some of his years of work with Tudor's theories and put them on this blog. Of all the students of Tudor's throughout the world, I have to say Carlo is the best I have ever met.
Below are his additions to the squat article I wrote last week.
Now, how to choose the load for the squat: keeping the technique and having no sticking point. It's been proven by european powerlifters (the strongest in the IPF federation, the biggest and less geared federation in the world) that mostly lifting explosively loads between 70 and 80% of 1RM with perfect technique and no sticking point gives the highest transfer for 1RM loads improvement, especially in the medium and long term. In sport physical prepartion we are forced to use higher intensities on average due to shorter periods to be devoted to maximum strength development. Also, ideally we should use longer MxS phases: at least 8 weeks (two 2+2 macros), 12 weeks being even better. Because the longer periods are necessary for structural changes (specialized myoproteins) to happen and stabilize the functional gains that happen during the process and more rapidly so at the beginning of the phase. By using short periods with higher intensities as we do, we normally just capitalized on more transient functional (i.e. neural) adaptations. the study that shows lower testosterone levels if the maximum strength phase is kept for more than 9 weeks give that result exactly because the intensities used were too high on average and the recovery periods within the whole phase were not long enough. For this reason I use 2+2 maximum strength macrocycles, which can be viewed also as 2+1 followed by a regeneration week after the maximum strength 1RM tests that can be "attached" to the following macro (making it a 3+1 or 3+2).
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CHE BENE CARLO. AVANTI