Lee Hayward: Hey, how was going? Its Lee Hayward here from LeeHayward.com and today I'm going to take you through the 20 rep squat program. Now this is the Kick Ass Program that you probably heard about especially if you have been following along with my website and stuff because you know I'm a big fan of this program. Its one of my, it's a lovely relationship, I hate to do but I love the results it brings. So what I'm going to do now is just take you right into the gym and breakdown exactly, how to do the 20 rep squat program.
Alright to start things off you should do a thorough warm-up and I'm not really going to go into the whole details of warming up here because I actually covered that in one of my most recent videos, so again if you search to my recent videos, if you want the full details on how to warm up properly but for the actual workout itself you want to start with the weight that you can rep out for 20 reps and I would start conservative with this weight, don't jump too heavy too soon. You want to start with the weight that you know you will be all the squat for 20 reps on your own with no help for responder because what you are going to do is each workout you are going to add 5 pounds to the bar and continue to get those 20 reps. It doesn't sound like much but those little 5 pound jumps workout, after workout, after workout, its going to add up and over the course of several week, I mean those weights are going to build up quickly so that's why you want to start off conservative and then ride the wave of momentum throughout this workout.
One thing you will notice as you do in the 20 reps squat program is that the first few reps say like the first five or ten, you can pretty much bang them fairly quickly and then the last 5 to 10 reps you are going to have to really paste yourself and probably take several breadths in between each rep in order to get the full 20 reps. Now for the sake of video time I'm actually going to cut this video clip here short because it does go on a bit. It usually takes me a couple of minutes or more to do a full 20 rep squat and like I said that I don't want to just bore with you details but you can trust me I did complete all 20 reps, I didn't cheat.
Right after you finish your 20 rep squats you want to move in and do a light set of 20 rep pullovers and the purpose of this exercise its not a heavy mass moment here but it's a stretching exercise to help stretch out your chest and stretch out your lats and to actually add some depth to your torso. So what you will do is take a light weight, I like to use the easy bar here I just find it comfortable and you will do 20 reps of pullovers. With each rep you want to hold it in the bottom for a second and so really get a good stretch throughout the chest and ribcage and the lats and to even enhance the stretch more, make sure to take a deep breadth at the beginning of each rep and hold it while you lower the weight down, keep your air in and then breadth out at the top there when you got the weight locked over and this is a great exercise like say it's a stretching moment not a mass building moment.
For the rest of the workout what we are going to do is a circuit routine of body weight exercises. I personally like to do pull-ups, dips and sit-ups. I just find these are awesome exercises, they work at all your major upper body muscle groups and it really complements whole 20 rep squat program because its comprises of mostly bodyweight exercises. The key with bodyweight exercises is that you are moving your entire body through space and you are activating a higher level of neuromuscular activation, that's prior to the reason why this program is so effective. You'll notice here with the pull-ups that are actually alternating my grips, so I'll probably start with like wide grip and then I may do like an alternative grip or I'm like do like underhand grip, parallel grip whatever but I'll just mix it up with each set.
After the pull-ups I move into doing a set of dips and this is a great exercise really targets the chest, shoulders and the triceps and again it's a bodyweight movement, where you are moving your entire bodyweight through space. So I do these again pump out as many reps as I can, probably rest about a minute or so in between each of these exercises, just so you can get your breadth before moving on to the next one. And finish things up we are going to do some decline bench sit-ups and this is a fantastic abdominal exercise really works the entire abdominal wall to your upper abs as well as your lower abs, so what we are going to do is just do a set of these and then rest and repeat the circuit again. So you do pull-ups, dips, sit-ups and keep going through that.
Keep track of your sets and reps that you are doing and each workout strive to get at least one more rep than you did for your previous one, so you can have some progressive overload in terms of increasing the actual reps that you are doing there. And to recap the entire workout, you are going start off with the 20 rep set of squats, each workout strive to add 5 pounds to the bar and continued to get all 20 reps. Right after you finish your squats you are going to move into a light set of 20 rep pullovers to really stretch-out your chest, lats and help to expand your ribcage. After that, you are going to finish off with the circuit routine of pull-ups, dips and sit-ups. Keep track of the sets and the reps that you do here and strive to get at least one more repetition on each of these exercises each workout.
You want to do the 20 rep squat program three days per week, so for example it could be a Monday, Wednesday and Friday or any three non-consecutive days that fit your schedule and you want to stick with the program for at least six weeks. This will give to you chance for your body to actually adapt and grow from the routine. A problem that a lot of people have is they switch up routines too quickly. So you don't want to do that here you want to give it at least six solid weeks in order to let those little 5 pound jumps add up so you can actually make some solid games with this program. And if you would like to read more about the 20 rep squat program, I have a full article on this on my website at www.LeeHayward.com/squats.htm. You can go in there and read it out I have it in the lot more details just outlining exactly how to flow this program and I even get some nutritional tips you can follow as well, it help you to make the most of the program. So again you can check that out at www.LeeHayward.com/squats.htm.
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