Squat Every Day Day 3
For Squat Every Day Day 3, I got my homie @QimmahRusso to join me. If you’re not following her already, let me be the first to tell you you’re missing out. She’s the real deal.
Ok, before we get started, I wanna make this clear again: Squat Every Day doesn’t mean leg day every single day. That would actually mess you up badly. What I’m doing is a squat progression—doing half of a pyramid on the way up.
Typically in a full progression, I would start light, and I would be somewhat conservative on my reps going up. Once I hit the top set, I’ll start descending in weight and ascending in reps looking to burn out. That’s when I’m training my legs.
But Squat Every Day is just a progression, and what I’m looking to accomplish is strengthening my muscles and conditioning my central nervous system. I’ll do this by squatting every day, as many days as possible, with no less than 5 plates on each side.
What’s The Benefit Of Doing This Crazy Stuff Mike Rashid?
We work a couple different systems in our body when we’re training. You can train for strength and aesthetics—that’s your muscle and skeletal system. You can train your nervous system—that’s strength and power. These two don’t always go hand in hand.
You can get big without going heavy or really getting that strong. Just look around, and you’ll see many strong people who aren’t the biggest and a lot of really big people who are not as strong as you’d think.
Now, every person’s training varies depending on their goals. If your goal is just to get big, you don’t have to lift super heavy. My goal is to be as strong as possible and maintain my size, which I’m satisfied with—I don’t desire to be bigger. That’s why I train the way I train.
Why Should You Condition Your Central Nervous System?
I want my central nervous system conditioned to this kind of stress because I want it to always be ready for any threat. This is how that works: our species, homo sapiens sapiens, has been on this planet for approximately 200,000 years, according to general scientific consensus.
Now, we’ve been somewhat civilized for approximately 10,000 years. Before that, our life was essentially a struggle to survive—kill or be killed. So, the majority of the time we’ve been on this planet, it’s been about survival.
When we’re training in the gym, lifting heavy weights, and stimulating our nervous system, we’re activating that fight or flight response. So, what happens is, you stress yourself with these heavyweights, and your body perceives it as a threat. Your body doesn’t know that you’re just working out!
So your body, under this threat, starts repairing the muscles you’re tearing apart while lifting to make you stronger so that you can survive the next time around.
In nature, maybe you were fighting off a bear or had to face some other kind of strenuous threat. If you survived, your body would try to repair whatever was damaged to survive that type of stress the next time it encountered it.
When training, we are artificially strengthening our bodies so that our central nervous system stays prime. Now, there are many reasons you’d want your CNS in optimal conditions—especially for athletic reasons (lifting, boxing, etc.).
This Is How I Think
I always wanna be at the top of my game physically and mentally, you know? That’s just me. That’s how I am. Listen, we only live once. And, we have the opportunity to architect our lives and live how we want to. And this is how I choose to live—as a savage.
My model is to civilize the mind, make savage the body. So, I’m putting myself through this kind of stress every single day, alright? Today was Squat Every Day Day 3. I did something crazy today. I did my whole progression in my easy slides. I wanted to be comfortable.
And, as I said in Squat Every Day Day 2, you wanna throw in different variables so that your body doesn’t get used to doing stuff the same way every time. It’s just like varying the way you throw your jab so that your opponent doesn’t get used to it.
Alright, onto Squat Every Day Day 4.