 Ladies and gentlemen, Salah Mike today, I want to talk about one of the guys I've been working with a little bit, Tom Callis. Now over the weekend, Tom Callis broke the 198 all-time squat record in wraps, which means by all federations and all years, squatted 815 pounds at a body weight of 198 pounds. Before we get into the video, be sure to smash the thumbs up, be sure to subscribe. I don't really want to talk about whether you guys think he hit depth or not. One, we only have a video from the front. Judges often from the front are just worried about the commands and they're also just worried about bar path going up and down on the squat. The depth is from the side. We don't have a video from the side, so all I can do is trust the judges there and that's all Tom can do as well. So I guess in this case, we're just gonna ignore any negative comments you guys have. That's part of powerlifting in every federation. There is human error in all sports. Every NBA referee, referee in the NFL make bad calls or they make wrong calls or they make right calls. The difference is there's a lot more calls being made in the NBA so they can skip over one in powerlifting. You know, there's only nine per lift. Lift your every session, beside the point. Tom was once a world record holder, I believe, in the squat at 165 pounds back in the day and I've been buddies with him for a couple years now, maybe four or five years and I kept seeing, one, his potential and two, that he kept bombing out of meats. Tom, talking to you, pal. He was bombing out of meats for about a year or two straight there where he was trying to take the 181 and also the 198 record and I analyzed his training. I talked to him for a while and then I convinced him just to try something a little different. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about what we changed in his training for him to go from about a 700 pound squat to a 815 pound squat in the course for about two or three years. One of the things, I guess, to start with is he did go up in weight class from 181 to 198, but the main difference was he just wasn't cutting. He was kind of always weighing 198 and they would cut to 181, I believe. Don't quote me on all this. Tom can comment below. You guys can go ask him specifics, but that's one of the problems. And so then we told him to chill out, stay in the weight class and so we weighed about 200 pounds and trained there. Staying in your weight class, whether you're advanced going for a world record or not, not cutting weight is always going to allow you to perform better. You may be able to break this record or Wilkes might be slightly better, but you'll always perform better when you don't have to worry about cutting weight and that stimulus and stress on your body leading into a meet. That's just fact. So if you want to get up a weight class or down a weight class, I suggest doing it in your off season, then having a good eight or 12, 16 weeks, preparation period or peak, being at the body weight you want to compete at. Two hour weigh-ins is even more difficult and so that stands even more true. He competes in federations with 24 hour weigh-ins so it's a little bit easier but I still suggest it for everybody. With Tom's training, before I worked with him, his training was almost too specific where we talked about this in the past. Singles are great if your technique is efficient, heavy singles and training allows you to really dial in the specificity of powerlifting, get used to heavier weights, but if you're only doing singles, you're kind of negating one of the main factors that help in hypertrophy and strength over time which is volume, sets times reps times weight and so there's a lack of volume in Tom's training as well as just building phases. He didn't really have a periodized plan and so what we first did is just kind of broke him down in the off season and we started getting him a little bit more hypertrophy and a little bit more training in general. His form in the squat is really good. His form in the deadlift is pretty damn good as well and so we just plugged him full of some volume. To clean up his technique in the deadlift, we basically did kind of a pause cycle. Most of the cycles I implement are either to fix a weakness, help technique or grow hypertrophy or strength in the off season. So we would do four to eight week cycles of different type of exercise variation to build him back up. So we did some pause squats. We also did higher rep squats which is something he's never really dove into too much. So we hit multiple sets of eight and 12. Very loosely it was based on the infinite off season by Kaizen which is a free program. Again, if you guys always want to check it out and grab it and you can kind of manipulate that to yourself. That's a basic template I have in my head that works for many not all and then I add frequency or I take away volume or I add volume depending on the athlete and in Tom's case because he's so strong the frequency can't maybe be as high as some other people squatting twice a week is plenty pulling one kind of real pull from the ground and then maybe a supplemental pull or a stiff leg or something we went with. And then going into a meet the only real difference from you know again kind of Kaizen power lifting program which we have which is a 12 week peak and Tom's is that because he's a more advanced lifter and because he's handling such heavy loads the heavy even though you're getting stronger the heavier loads still drain you more than if you were weaker. You know 600 pound squat the actual tonnage you're moving is just less detrimental or less you need to recover from than 800 or 900 pound squat. So we had him handle some heavier singles four to eight weeks out is one difference from the Kaizen power lifting program and then another one is I had to take away a little bit of volume again you know we break into real specific as we're getting peaked and we handle a lot of doubles a lot of triples a lot of singles to really hone in that technique and we raise the sets up to still get that volume to still get that kind of overreaching phase. But in Tom's case he probably couldn't handle 8, 10, 12 sets of three at whatever 700 pounds it just becomes too heavy and too detrimental for him to recover from. So we took those sets away a little bit but if you're a lighter lifter you know even myself or excuse me a little bit less advanced or not as strong you know I'm handling 400, 500 pound squats I might be able to handle 12 sets of three or something and still recover just fine. He has someone help him with his nutrition so that was one thing I obviously made him lock in on eating in a slight calorie surplus for anybody trying to really push their strength is going to be of large benefit for your recovery. So again I think I've helped Tom now with about three different meats handling you know about six or eight months apart so then in between again we have those good phases of a little bit of recovery you know so sometimes we're handling right after a meet we'll have four to eight weeks where he's just getting back into flow maybe he's doing some front squats and pause squats and beltless work and the beltless work isn't necessarily to build up his belt work which I think a lot of people believe in I don't personally believe in that the beltless work is just to have him handle less of a load to give his spine a little bit of a break knees legs mind a little bit of a break to not worry about his overall numbers. Same thing is when he competes in wraps we do a couple cycles of just sleeved work just to keep building up the raw strength and it's mostly just so he doesn't have to squat six seven hundred every single week year-round he can now handle four or five hundred for pauses or beltless and still make cause enough stimulus to adapt and grow and continue to make progress. Having six or eight months breaking between a meat is a little bit more necessary when you're more advanced or stronger more experienced so again we'd have four to eight weeks a little bit chill some beltless work some different variations some paused work and then we would go into another four to eight weeks maybe a little bit heavier or more competition style slightly more specific and then we get into the 12 week peak again and the peak is really just kind of a four week phase of kind of base volume getting you really specific and adapted it's another four to maybe four to eight weeks or four to six weeks really pushing the volume hard kind of that overreaching phase and then it's another you know at the end kind of overlapping but four weeks of kind of a taper and the actual peak itself where you're handling heavier loads eighty five eighty seven ninety ninety two ninety five percent and then and then a hard crash on the taper I think again for Tom because he's a little bit stronger his heaviest deadlift was about 10 days out from the meat his heaviest squat was about eight or nine days out from the meat whereas again maybe a lighter lifter a less experienced lifter or someone handling not a world record type numbers we can keep that frequency up and the volume up keep that taper till the very end and you might be able to squat five four perhaps even three days out from the meat a little bit heavier to really keep that volume and adaptation and peak to the last taper until the last couple of days so this Tom said we did it when he texted me and I never ever would take credit to that I've talked about this in the past you know coaching some some really good athletes and some strong people that you know maybe I open a door maybe I lead someone to the way but it's all their work and they did I did nothing to do with any of this you know my boy Dan storm cloud fat Dan squat 800 pounds is a big goal of his Dan was going to squat 800 pounds at some point in his career me programming and maybe helping him maybe got him to do it a little bit sooner than he would if he was just free-balling it and I believe the same with Tom Tom's super strong he's insanely dedicated to his craft he wants to be the best he wants to train hard he wants to train heavy and I just gave him a little bit of a road path there by no means is what do I do super secret or super proprietary or anything once you understand some of the basic concepts of programming and you've worked around enough athletes and I've been really lucky enough to talk to guys like Ed Cohn, Chad Wesley Smith, Joel Jamison and a bunch of really good minds in the strength and conditioning world over the years that I've got to learn a good amount and I've also had the opportunities to apply it to many different types of athletes from ladies of lighter and heavier body weights guys young old middle-aged world world-class lifters brand-new lifters I've just coached a lot of people over the last 10 years so I'm just pretty lucky to that that someone like Tom trust me to write out their program is pretty exciting to be honest I've talked about a lot why don't compete in powerlifting doesn't really get me excited but once I saw shout out to our guy Huck Finn once I saw Huck Finn's story and how excited Tom was to hit that squat it got me really excited just I like seeing other people happy and I'm not a saint or altruistic it's just it makes me happy to see other people happy and I think that's a little bit of human nature so to play one percent part of the success of Tom's squatting is really really cool so shout out to him give him a follow on Instagram if you guys want to get programming that's similar to his check out kaisentraining.com the powerlifting 12 week is very similar obviously I customize it and tapered it a little bit just to him but generally speaking that's what I would write myself up if I was going to compete in 12 weeks from now I appreciate you guys in the support give this video a thumbs up if you want to hear more about some of the people I coach and how I coach them over the time and I'll catch you guys in the next video