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Love your advice bro.
Just to clarify, the concentric part of the squat is going up correct? So i'd go down slow then explode as much as I can.. the same goes for a bench press, military and deadlift?
What do you recommend for sets? i've been on 5x5 for most of my major lifts for the past 1.5 years
Concentric is when the muscle shortens, like coming out of the hole in squats. Using a deliberate tempo to lower the weight, anywhere from 1-10 seconds can be used, depending on the stimulus wanted.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I don't recommend keeping a particular rep/set scheme for too long. After you adapt to a routine, gains stop/slow down. Change the program regularly, and this includes alternating between intensification and accumulation cycles. No, I don't advocate 'muscle confusion' a la P90X or any of those gimmicks. I'm talking about strength training.
There are so many variables and you need to vary the stimulus in order to continue to make gains. If you can't figure out how to do it, educate yourself or hire someone else to do it for you. I've recommended Charles Poliquin's "Modern Trends in Strength Training' in the past. A new edition recently came out. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, but the previous edition was a VERY good read. HIGHLY recommended book that spells out the basics of program design in a simple, easy to digest manner.
Here's a post I wrote a few months back:
The one thing I hate seeing is that very few people get away from 3-5 sets of 5 and 3 sets of 10-12. If you want to make progress, you need to work through more rep/set combinations. 6 sets of 2-4, for example, works well. As does 10 sets of 1. So does 7 sets of 5 and 8-12 sets of 3. Very few people pay attention to tempo, and a lift with a 4 second eccentric will elicit a different response than a lift with a 1 second eccentric and bounce at the bottom. I'm not saying one is necessarily better than the other, but that you need to vary your stimulus in order to keep making progress.
Exercise selection, time under tension, grip width, tempo, reps, sets, weight, pauses, extra ROM, equipment used, rest periods, order of workout, frequency, etc. are all variables that can and should be changed. There is no 1 magical lift to develop a particular characteristic. Back squats alone are not the undisputed king of leg training. Front squats are great and better than back squats in certain instances. Olympic lifts are great too. So are deadlifts. Too many people close their minds in a bad way, limiting the amount of progress they can make. As Bruce Lee said, “"Absorb what is useful, Discard what is useless."