Tell an experienced lifter to do 20 reps of curls and so they’ll say it’s too easy. Tell them to do 20 reps of pull-ups and so they’ll say it’s too hard. Tell them to do 20 reps of squats and, in the event that they know their stuff, they’ll begin to tremble.
The 20-rep squat program has an extended and fabled history within the strength and fitness community since it emphasizes the fundamentals: the classic barbell back squat, loads of exertions, and a good amount of mental and physical endurance.
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This time-tested plan is usually known as “the squats and milk program” attributable to the abundant whole milk consumption typically considered part and parcel with the huge leg exercise. Here’s a take a look at how and why this training strategy has been a reliable staple for nearly a century.
The 20-Rep Squat Program
History of the 20-Rep Squat Program
In today’s age of quick fixes and training hacks peddled by online “fitfluencers,” it could be hard to consider that one specific workout program originated within the Nineteen Thirties and continues to be promoted as a viable routine within the twenty first century. Nevertheless, that’s precisely the case with 20-rep squats. This system was first popularized back when Babe Ruth was calling his shot. It had a resurgence within the ‘80s and the plan continues to be a go-to solution for constructing size and strength relatively quickly.
Training within the Nineteen Thirties
From 1914 to 1935, Strength magazine, known informally as “America’s First Muscle Magazine,” was a monthly publication. It featured fitness and nutrition advice collectively known on the time as “physical culture,” moderately than “bodybuilding” or “powerlifting” since those activities hadn’t yet formally begun.
Mark Berry was the magazine’s editor from 1927 until the its bankruptcy in 1935. Berry was also an Olympic weightlifter and national weightlifting coach for the 1932 and 1936 Olympic teams. He used the magazine to advocate for, amongst other tactics, high-repetition barbell squatting for adding muscular bulk and strength.
The training program was built around one centerpiece exercise — the back squat — with only a few additional exercises, mainly to handle the torso and arms. One of these abbreviated training plan was performed two or three days per week, allowing rest and recovery on the remaining days.
The minimalist training was complemented by high-calorie foods to fuel muscle growth. Specifically breads, fruits, eggs, and good quaint milk. These basic staples were generally available to most households, at the same time as The Great Depression rolled across the country.
One in all the primary names related to successfully implementing this mass-building routine was Joseph Curtis Hise, or J.C. Hise, a reader of Mark Berry’s work. Hise wrote Berry to announce his results after diligently following the 20-rep squat program. Hise gained nearly 30 kilos of muscular body weight in 30 days, and would go on to be an revolutionary and influential strength icon in his own right.
Continuing Berry’s work, training advice centered around high-repetition squatting can be echoed in popular fitness magazines over the many years to follow. Most notable was Peary Rader’s Iron Man magazine within the Nineteen Sixties, where strength advocate and columnist John McCallum would proceed preaching the protocol’s advantages. The training tides might’ve ebbed and flowed, however the 20-rep squat program continued to be a mainstay in the burden room.
“Super Squats” and the ‘80s Fitness Craze
The Eighties were a comparatively wild time within the fitness world. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone made muscular physiques mainstream in Hollywood; legwarmers and leotards filled business gyms; and follow-along workout videotapes made their way into homes.
People were getting their training guidance from an array of newsstand magazines, VHS cassettes, and workout books often emphasizing aerobics and extreme calorie restriction. In a probable welcomed change of pace, one book specifically hit the shelves in 1989 — “Super Squats” by Randall J. Strossen, Ph.D.
“Super Squats” featured the eye-catching (though debatably accurate) subtitle: “Easy methods to Gain 30 Kilos of Muscle in 6 Weeks.” This was a transparent testament to the numerous gains and comparatively short timeframe commonly related to the 20-rep squat program.
In his book, Strossen recalled the teachings of Berry, Hise, and those that got here before him within the lifting world. He also re-introduced the 20-rep squat program itself, intimately, while presenting related ideas akin to the importance of proper food regimen, ample rest, and even a piece discussing the right attitude and mindset for the difficult routine.
While loads of emphasis was placed on the thrice-weekly training sessions, just as much discussion was given to realistic goal-setting, tracking progress, and constructing the self-motivation and mental toughness needed to finish all 20 repetitions.
Greater than 30 years since its first printing, Strossen’s book stays on the “suggested reading” list of many strength coaches, personal trainers, and experienced lifters largely to its continued relevance and applicable lessons.
Easy methods to Program 20-Rep Squats
The 20-rep squat program has a couple of fundamental, non-negotiable elements in addition to general principles that would allow a level of flexibility.
Respiration Squats
Performing a typical set of 20 repetitions is frequently a reasonably straightforward scenario. Whether it’s a push-up, lat pulldown, or dumbbell curl, you sometimes just lift and lower the burden consistently until the set is accomplished.
Nevertheless, with the 20-rep squat program, you’re not simply performing a set of squats for 20 reps. You’re performing respiratory squats, so named because deliberate, deep respiratory is a compulsory a part of the exercise technique.
Moderately than exhaling while exerting force and inhaling as you lower the burden, or bracing your core throughout the movement and quickly stealing a mini-breath between repetitions, a set of respiratory squats is finished with very intentional respiratory — fully exhaling and fully inhaling multiple times— between individual reps.
This extends the general duration of the set, keeping the burden in your back for minutes at a time. A protracted duration set means your body stabilizers are put through an extended time under tension which can help to trigger systemic muscle growth. (1) Interestingly, and maybe not surprisingly, modern sports science research has validated the potential muscle- and strength-building advantages of one of these mid-repetition resting protocol. (2)
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As one might expect, several permutations of respiratory squats have been attempted through the years, manipulating the respiratory patterns with the loading and repetition performance. Two primary methods have remained.
Respiration squats could be done with multiple deep breaths between each individual repetition. This can be a more traditional method, consistent with Berry’s original suggestion. After unracking the bar and establishing your stance, take two or three deep diaphragmatic breaths before performing the primary repetition. Upon locking out within the standing position, take two or three breaths before performing the subsequent rep. This pattern is sustained until 20 squats have been performed.
This approach could be very much like the “cluster rep” technique and helps to keep up performance for longer duration sets. The set of “20 reps” can almost be approached as 20 individual repetitions (without racking the bar between each repetition). This might help to make sure optimal technique and focus. It also accommodates lifters of any strength level and could be performed with any weight, unlike the subsequent respiratory squat alternative.
Perform a 10-repetition maximum lift with standard technique, taking deep breaths from reps 11 to twenty. This approach requires the lifter to load their 10-repetition max (10RM) on the bar and perform an easy set of 10 reps with a typical respiratory pattern. Upon reaching muscular failure, moderately than re-rack the burden, the lifter stands within the locked out position and takes three to 5 deep diaphragmatic breaths before performing an eleventh rep.
Upon lockout, take one other three to 5 deep breaths before rep number 12. Repeat this grueling process until you rise up with the 20 th rep, before gratefully racking the bar. For a lot of lifters, this “do 20 reps along with your 10RM” method is the tougher version since it requires taking the movement to muscular failure before continuing the set one arduous squat at a time. It’s not unusual for lifters to easily be unable to finish all 20 repetitions with this approach.
Assistance Exercises
While the barbell back squat is the training priority of any 20-rep squat program, additional movements are needed to handle the remaining of the body.
Typically these movements give attention to the upper body with little to no added lower body exercises. Performing an excessive amount of assistance exercises would increase fatigue and reduce recovery ability without contributing significantly to results.
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Within the early days of Mark Berry and J.C. Hise, the squat was complemented by the behind-the-neck shoulder press, barbell curl, and barbell pullover. This barebones plan allowed lifters to focus their energy on completing the squat portion at the beginning, with the supplemental exercises rounding out a really simplified “full-body workout” by training the chest, back, shoulders, and arms with the chosen exercises.
Strossen offered two detailed workouts in “Super Squats.” The “basic routine” was quite comprehensive and included the behind-the-neck press, bench press, barbell row, barbell curl, squat, a pullover variation, stiff-leg deadlift, calf raise, and crunch.
The book also offered an “abbreviated program” for lifters who had particular trouble gaining body weight on the expansive basic routine. This condensed program required simply the bench press, squat, barbell row, and a specialized pullover variation often known as a “Rader chest pull” — essentially a standing, static/isometric exercise that mimicked the mid-point of a pullover.
The common thread with any assistance training was to primarily goal the upper body with a “pushing” exercise, a “pulling” exercise, and a few variety of pullover. The pullover, specifically, was often suggested to “expand” the lifters’ ribcage. While there’s no anatomical way for that to occur, the exercise does efficiently goal the back, chest, shoulder, and triceps muscles, making it a superb selection for overall upper-body growth.
Two to Three Workouts Per Week
The character of the 20-rep squat program — full-body workouts performing the squat in every session — allows three concentrated training days with 4 days of rest.
For lifters with a poor get better capability or those that perform significant physical activity outside the gym (akin to a profession in manual labor or playing rec-league sports), two training days could yield higher overall results.
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This generally is a drastic change of pace for those more accustomed to training 4 or five days per week with a more conventional bodybuilding-style training split. Balancing high-frequency training (working the squat in each workout) with sufficient overall recovery is critical for steadily recovering and growing in the course of the course of the plan.
This intensity of the 20-rep squat set is so high that many lifters come to understand, “for those who feel like training more days per week, you’re not pushing hard enough in the course of the respiratory squats.”
GOMAD: Gallon of Milk a Day
The 20-rep squat program isn’t designed for lifters who want to get lean. It’s not even necessarily for those trying to get into “bodybuilding shape” by targeting individual muscles, or lifters who need to move heavy weights and hit recent PRs.
20-rep squats are used, at the beginning, to realize muscular body weight. That requires an abundance of high-quality calories to maximise recovery, growth, and performance within the demanding workouts. (3)
One keys to reaching the obligatory (arguably excessive) calorie surplus is a habit promoted because the program’s inception: drinking a big amount of whole milk daily, along with three hearty, well-balanced meals. Drinking milk as an alternative of meals is a standard but extremely counterproductive mistake made by some lifters recent to this system.
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Whole milk has long-been related to constructing muscle. (4) It’s full of highly efficient protein while delivering usable carbohydrates and calorie-dense fats to round out a whole nutrition profile. It’s also a comparatively inexpensive strategy to add calories in comparison with whole food sources.
Liquid calories (those which might be drank moderately than chewed) are generally less satiating, which might make it easier for lifters to absorb enough calories when their appetite might otherwise be an obstacle.
Berry’s initial suggestion was two liters (a half-gallon) every day, delivering 1,200 total calories. Strossen took a more drastic approach, suggesting lifters begin with a half-gallon day by day and progress up to 1 full gallon per day to support significant growth.
Advantages of 20-Rep Squats
High-frequency squatting, high-calorie intake, and consistent exertions ought to be a reliable recipe for progress within the gym. Here’s what you possibly can expect if you push yourself with the 20-rep squat program.
Size
This program is inherently related to packing on kilos of muscular body weight. When the workouts are followed and complemented by an abundance of calories, the dimensions will likely be moving up.
Whether you’re trying to go up a weight class in a sport or attempting to construct a base of muscle, 20-rep squats are one of the vital difficult, and handiest, bulking routines the fitness world has seen in almost a century.
Strength
Emphasizing a single lift — the back squat, within the case of the classic 20-rep squat program — is an efficient strategy to improve strength, technique, and overall performance of that exercise. Spending 4 to 6 weeks focused on the back squat as your primary lower body exercise should carry over to improved strength gains overall.
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The supportive muscles of your core and lower back also get recruited for high-frequency training. As they adapt, you’ll construct strength and endurance together with the capability to tolerate a greater workload, making them stronger stabilizers to hold over to other lifts.
Mental Toughness
This profit may not seem as apparent or objective as muscular size or strength, but respiratory squats are notorious for constructing mental toughness with each consecutive repetition. If you’re standing at lockout, supporting the burden across your upper back and taking each deep breath, you’re convincing yourself you could complete just yet another rep.
Repeating that positive self-talk rep after rep, and workout after workout, and week after week can have a net-positive effect in your overall mental approach to challenges, within the gym and outdoors of it. After some weeks of performing 20-rep squats, a “regular” hard set of deadlifts or bench presses likely won’t seem as daunting in comparison with the struggle of high-rep respiratory squats.
Drawbacks of 20-Rep Squats
While the 20-rep squat program has survived and thrived through generations of lifters, it’s not with no few inherent issue. Here’s what to observe for before tackling this long-established training plan.
Body Fat Gain
Any variety of “bulking” routine is usually related to a level of body fat gain. While you possibly can’t necessarily rush the strategy of muscle-building, you possibly can encourage it by providing your body with an abundance of nutrients — particularly calories and protein — to create recent muscle tissue.
Once the speed of muscle tissue has been met, additional nutrients will likely be shuttled toward stored body fat. This is usually seen as a “obligatory evil” when the goal is overall muscular growth. While the body may only give you the option to accumulate to 2 to 3 kilos of muscle tissue per thirty days, a caloric surplus is an efficient strategy to achieve the final result. (5)(6)
Before starting the 20-rep squat routine, understand that lean ab definition is neither the goal nor the final result of this system. Which may be a goal for a later date, however the 20-rep squat program itself isn’t a way to that specific end.
Limited Development
Any variety of minimalist program — one which uses few exercises and/or few training days per week — will knowingly compromise on overall potential development as it really works along a more generally efficient training plan.
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The 20-rep squat program isn’t for lifters trying to develop a necessarily fine-tuned, entirely symmetrical physique. It’s also not for lifters trying to goal muscle groups with multiple exercises per session for max growth in a selected body part. Actually, certain muscles may go under-addressed within the short-term attributable to the relatively limited exercise menu of the workout plan.
That is obligatory by design, because the 20-rep squat plan focuses on the squat itself and only a handful of additional exercises for several weeks. It’s acceptable that the triceps or the abdominals or the calves don’t receive direct training in the course of the course of the plan because the main focus is on successfully completing 20 reps of the squat, several times per week.
Were this system to be continued for a long-term, this might potentially raise noticeable development issues. One good thing about the training plan being intentionally a short-term training phase is that those developmental issues never come to pass.
Sample 20-Rep Squat Program
Able to tackle this time-honored training program? Here’s a plan that’s quite consistent with Berry’s original routine. Use the unique respiratory squat pattern — taking two to 3 deep breaths between each repetition within the standing, locked out position. Repeat the workout three days per week, with at the very least someday of rest between each session.
As a consistent technique of progress, add five kilos to the squat each workout. For instance, for those who perform 20 reps with 185 kilos on Monday, use 190 kilos on Wednesday, 195 kilos on Friday, 200 kilos the next Monday, etc. In the event you fail to realize all 20 repetitions in a workout, repeat the burden for the next session until successful.
The Classic Workout
Back Squat 1 x 20
Pullover 1 x 15-20
Romanian Deadlift 2 x 10-12
Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press 3 x 10-12
Reverse-Grip Pulldown 3 x 10-12
Hard Work All the time Pays Off
With nearly a century-long lineage, calling the 20-rep squat program “a novel experience” is an understatement. For some lifters, the routine is a rite of passage marking full-fledged entrance to intense weight training. For others, surviving a couple of weeks of 20-rep squats is a bucket list item to be done for bragging rights, if not size and strength. While some fitness trends come and go, this dependable training plan will proceed delivering gains for generations to come back.
FAQs
Do I even have to perform back squats or can I exploit a unique leg exercise?
If you desire to follow the letter of the law, then yes, barbell back squats are the standard selection for 20-rep squats. If you desire to adhere to the spirit of the law, then any squat variation that permits you to safely push yourself to your limits, and beyond, could be used without sacrificing much (if any) progress.
Actually, J.C Hise didn’t use the classic barbell back squat for his impressive transformation. He machined a slight curve to his barbell so it could sit more comfortably and more ergonomically along his upper back. Several many years later, the same “buffalo bar” or camber bar would turn out to be a somewhat commonplace barbell design allowing squatters to scale back shoulder strain and increase upper back stability.
Following his lead, using a security squat bar or cambered bar for 20-rep squats would absolutely be acceptable. Exercises just like the front squat could also be problematic because holding the rack position for the prolonged duration will likely make upper back and core fatigue a limiting factor moderately than lower body strength.
Similarly, deadlift variations would likely cause your grip and/or lower back to be the primary muscle groups to fail, limiting your ability to securely achieve all 20 repetitions. Machine exercises just like the leg press or hack squat virtually eliminate your upper body entirely, making them generally less efficient as the main focus lift of the plan.
Do I actually need to drink a gallon of whole milk a day? Would skim milk or a non-dairy alternative work?
Do not forget that the aim of the milk is a cheap, nutrient-dense, food that’s extremely easy to get down. A full gallon is actually not obligatory — Berry advocated for half as much.
Low-fat milk options might be considered, so long as you think about the relatively reduced calories they deliver. A half-gallon of skim milk delivers 720 calories in comparison with 1,200 calories of whole milk, without trading the standard protein content.
Non-dairy alternatives akin to oat milk, almond milk, or soy milk would also provide significantly different nutrient levels — most notably, the standard protein that’s indispensable for muscle growth but severely lacking in lots of nut-based milk alternatives. Without enough high-quality protein, your body won’t have the literal constructing blocks needed to repair and construct muscle. (7)
References
- Burd, N. A., Andrews, R. J., West, D. W., Little, J. P., Cochran, A. J., Hector, A. J., Cashaback, J. G., Gibala, M. J., Potvin, J. R., Baker, S. K., & Phillips, S. M. (2012). Muscle time under tension during resistance exercise stimulates differential muscle protein sub-fractional synthetic responses in men. The Journal of physiology, 590(2), 351–362. https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.2011.221200
- Tufano, James J.1,2; Brown, Lee E.3; Haff, G. Gregory1. Theoretical and Practical Facets of Different Cluster Set Structures: A Systematic Review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 31(3):p 848-867, March 2017. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001581
- Slater, G. J., Dieter, B. P., Marsh, D. J., Helms, E. R., Shaw, G., & Iraki, J. (2019). Is an Energy Surplus Required to Maximize Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy Associated With Resistance Training. Frontiers in nutrition, 6, 131. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2019.00131
- Roy B. D. (2008). Milk: the brand new sports drink? A Review. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 5, 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-5-15
- Thomas, M. H., & Burns, S. P. (2016). Increasing Lean Mass and Strength: A Comparison of High Frequency Strength Training to Lower Frequency Strength Training. International journal of exercise science, 9(2), 159–167.
- Brett A. Dolezal and Jeffrey A. PotteigerJournal of Applied Physiology 1998 85:2, 695-700
- Tagawa, R., Watanabe, D., Ito, K. et al. Synergistic Effect of Increased Total Protein Intake and Strength Training on Muscle Strength: A Dose-Response Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Sports Med – Open 8, 110 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-022-00508-w
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