Ask most people what a squat cycle looks like and they'll picture the same thing every week. Five sets of five, add a bit of weight, repeat.
That's not how we do it.
We just finished a back squat cycle, and the whole thing was built on variety. The reason is simple: everyone's body adapts differently. Program the exact same rep scheme every week and you leave a lot of people behind, and bore the rest.
So here's some of what we ran.
Pause squats. You sit in the bottom of the squat, hold, then drive up. They do two big jobs. They help anyone struggling with depth to work into that range, and they teach you how to drive out of the bottom properly. When a squat gets heavy, the common fault is the chest dropping and the hips shooting up first, so you end up folding forward. Holding the pause trains you to push the ground away and drive your hips up and forward instead, chest tall.
High reps, low weight. We did four sets of ten at around 50% of a one-rep max to fatigue the legs, warm everything up, and build into depth.
Low reps, heavy weight. Then we backed it up with four sets of three at 75%, building as we went.
Priming the legs first, then loading them heavy, is a great way to build both strength and solid positions in the one session.
The point of all of it is this: there's no single right way to train. There's just a smarter way for each person, and that's what we're always chasing.
Want to feel the difference a proper strength cycle makes? Come and squat with us. 💪