“Done correctly, the squat is the best exercise in the weight room that trains recruitment of the entire posterior chain in a way that is progressively improvable.”
Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength
Squats are generally lauded as the supreme compound exercise, working many muscles and triggering anabolic processes to generate all-over strength and muscle growth. But if you spend a lot of time in the weights room, you don’t see a lot of people doing heavy squats.
I get it to a point; squats look scary, like you could actually hurt yourself – and of course, if you don’t take it seriously, you can.
When I first started lifting, bench presses, rowing and even deadlifts seemed straightforward. I later learned that there is a lot more technique to deadlifting than I realised, but that is a story for another time.
I gradually worked my squat up to 10x100KG but finally got a coach to teach me how to squat properly and safely. That was probably the smartest thing I have ever done in the gym and continues to pay dividends today.
You can always recruit some random gym-rat to spot you on bench press, but for squats (and deadlifts) you need to be taught to move safely and effectively by a coach who knows what they are doing (easy test: can they explain the difference between high bar and low bar squat? If not, find someone else.)
By the time I was reading Brooks Kubik circa 2013, my 1RM was at 150KG. Kubik focuses on old-school weightlifting from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, before steroids distorted our image of what “strong” looks like. He also focuses on the older lifters who are maybe underserved in mainstream media.
His books introduced me to the Hise 20-rep breathing squat. The basic idea is to take a weight you can manage for 10 reps, but drag it out for 20 reps by taking multiple deep breaths into your chest before each repetition.
Joseph Hise developed a full-body routine that he performed three times per week to achieve massive growth. I never tried it – that would be insanely too much volume for me, and I would never recover properly between sessions; Hise was in his mid-20s when he was training this way.
A supposed advantage of the big, intercostal breathing is expansion and growth of the rib cage, creating a bigger frame that in turn provides a foundation for more muscle. I love this idea, although I struggle to believe an adult can actually grow bigger bones. The only intuitive supporting argument I have is that if I break a bone, it will mend and possibly thicken. Bone is a living tissue and living tissues can adapt, so…maybe?
This is actually an old concept. Back in 1941, Bob Hoffman noted that…
“Writers of the past have been divided as to what is the best exercise to enlarge the rib box, whether the two hands pull over practiced as a breathing exercise or the deep knee bends with enforced breathing is the best exercise.”
Bob Hoffman, The Big Chest Book
Intrigued, I started working on 20-rep breathing squats. Every Wednesday evening, my main lift would be one gruelling set of squats. I started at 80KG and added 5KG per week. I would start with 10 normal reps, then introduce the three deep breaths, keeping my knees slightly bent so that my muscles were under tension for the entire set. After the squats, I would bang out a set of 20 pull overs with a 25KG dumbbell, as prescribed in the program to maximise chest expansion. That was typically enough for the session and I would stagger out of the weights room.
I kept it going until I made 130KG. In the end, it was more an exercise in mental toughness than it was about physical strength. I would go to bed on Sunday night thinking about (i.e. dreading) a lift I was planning to execute three days later! After 10 weeks I just couldn’t keep it going and decided it was time for a new program.
By then, my quads were like iron plate, and while I was relieved to end the experiment, I had four or five consecutive weeks’ experience of demanding more from my body than I was sure it could actually deliver. I might not have developed maximum strength in this process, but for sure I learned a special kind of stubborn.
I would not come back to 20-rep breathing squats for nearly a decade, when I decided to test myself again after having spent several months building up my squat.
I took a different approach this time as my target weight of 20x140KG was defined and fixed.
Instead of starting with 20×80 and increasing the weight each week, I started at 10×140 and added a rep each week. This was mentally easier, although of course knew what to expect, which also helped.
After six weeks I performed 16x140KG and it was again starting to take its toll. I had no intention of backing down, but I was looking forward to the experience being over.
The following week, I hit the gym after an unusually annoying day at work and turned that frustration into useful focus as I ground out the full 20 reps. At around the 16th rep I started to smell blood in my mouth, but I was not interesting in stopping even as the smell got stronger.
After the set, I staggered through the pullovers, then sat on the floor for a good 10 minutes before I could do anything else. That really is the definition of a maximal effort.
So would I recommend the 20-rep breathing squat?
I do like testing limits and this is an effective way of doing exactly that. I don’t believe that my rib cage grew from this exercise as I performed it, and I think lower rep ranges with higher weights are superior for strength and hypertrophy. On the plus side though, I have not come across anything in the weight room that builds mental toughness as effectively as the 20-rep squat protocol.
I have never seen anyone else do it live, although there are videos out there on YouTube. My respect to anyone that tries it.
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
Edmund Hillary
Hoffman actually says “…a weight of not more than body weight will be sufficient”. So I did not really test the chest expansion idea properly. I guess 20×108 might be repeatable for a several weeks, and might have the desired effect.
…and now for something completely different!
While I was working on this piece, I realised that I had somehow deleted the video of myself performing the 20x140KG set. Eventually I was able to take a screen capture from Instagram, with the corresponding loss of fidelity, audio and editing options.
I was not amused.
Of course the problem is that we capture and exchange dozens of pictures and video clips each day. They are all backed off to cloud storage to be forgotten until we do a frantic search, or deleted as part of some spring cleaning initiative. The tech is good enough now that the default action for dealing with media – do nothing – works well. Until it doesn’t.
Most of the pictures and clips that we horde in our digital jungles are valueless and instantly forgettable, but clog our search results and choke our cloud storage quotas. It is baggage that slows us down.
The solution of course is trivial, and only marginally more effort than doing nothing!
Create an album for valuable media and move stuff there as it is recorded. Keeping life simple does require some structure and process, so in the short-term, is not as easy as doing nothing, but a few wasted hours looking for that needle in a haystack, and the effort of maintaining simplicity will be paid back in spades.
Caveman Musings 
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