 Mm-t, mm-t, mm-t. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the video, Omar Ishaf. The second most handsome, first most smartest, best calves, goat milk drinking, YouTuber to ever grace the platform. It's not a joke, guys. Not a joke. No. Today we're going to talk about squats, squat accessories, what are the best, why are we using them, when do we mix them in? Squat variations, maybe some of your favorite. People talk about weak point training, and some of that is necessary to try to address different things in the variations or accessories that you're using. But sometimes you're just going to have a slower portion of your squat, and it's time just to get stronger. And you can't always just beat the nail with the hammer and just free squat, free squat, competition squat, competition squat. So throwing in some variations and making some progress there can allow you to progress overall strength, dictate overall stimulus that you're using, maybe the general load you're using, and mix it in with your training. Thoughts, favorite accessories, why, when, how? Yeah, so interestingly enough, recently I squatted a high bar of 495, and from not squatting for a while, I was dealing with a little bit of a hip injury. Hip setback, I should say, I shouldn't say injury. But when I came back, I actually might squatted and just only squatted three times a week as we were discussing, and I went in 12 weeks from barely being able to squat 315 for five to the 495. Yeah, was it actually nothing though? Cause you had a beltless day? So yeah, so we can call it a variation. Yeah, so I would call that a variation. Yeah, I would as well. What I would say is. For the competitive power lifter or person chasing down their strength. Yep, and I would say it depends upon how far along you are and how close you are if you are to a competition. The closer you are to a competition, the more specific you need to be. The further away you are, the more general you can be. And I see this all too often where individuals will become too rigid with their training, and there's a time and place I do feel for everything. If you're first starting two lift, focusing on proficiency of the lift and greasing the groove, so squatting three to four times a week and sticking to that with the main lift is a very good idea. I think in general, but there's a couple caveats to what I'm about to say, sticking to variations that mimic your main movement is important. So as Mike just said, yeah, it's true. I squatted three times a week. I'd call it just high bar squats, but one was belted, one was no belt with sleeves, and then the third day was essentially no belt and no sleeves, and in that way, I was able to regulate the total load. So intensity remains high. I'll give you a bullshit example, but let's say with belted and sleeves, I'm doing a 405 squat five by five, so that's 80%. Then without the belt, I'm doing about 365. So that's technically closer down to 75%. So the systemic stress might be a hair lower, or systemic fatigue, but your actual perceived exertion is probably the same if not more. Yeah, and then from there, see it depends upon a couple different questions. What's the muscularity of the individual, right? And so there is a pretty strong correlation, both on the bench press and on the squat, with your muscularity and then your squatting potential. So those a squat more in the same weight class, have more muscles in their lower body than those a squat less. So we need muscles. And I honestly, Mike, I take a look, and I don't know if people have seen your quads and everything else. It's like this is a 600 pound squatter right here. That's why I bought shorty shorts. Bro, just to show it off. And so sticking close to variations, to the main movement with your variations is important. However, this is one of the caveats. There's only so much spinal loading, and this is when we talk about hypertrophy and why it's important. So you have your secondary movement, so maybe you do a calm squat, as you call it, calm squat, and then your secondary movement. You do a variation, so you'll do a beltless. So you do a five by five belted and then three by eight beltless, and you go down 15% from what you did belted, cool. But after that, if you need more volume, and some people will need a certain requisite amount of volume to drive hypertrophy. Especially the more advanced you get, or the heavier you get. Yeah, like what do you do? As an example, taking a look at it, we know there's just only a certain amount of spinal loading for most people, even if you're greasing the groove pretty damn good and you're proficient in the squat. All my back gets a little sore. Things give out before your muscles. Yeah, under the limiting factor. Yeah, and so your body shouldn't be the limiting factor, and in that way, a belt squat, right? Or a pit shark. Lunges. Lunges. I actually, Bulgarian? The only other, I wouldn't even call it, so it goes from tertiary to further, when we say unilateral movements. But the Bulgarian split squat, I squatted, and I did Bulgarian split squats, just to make sure the knees were tracking unilateral work, getting a pump in a way where my spine wasn't loaded. And so I think it's like this, depending upon the muscularity of the individual, the more muscular you are, in my opinion, the more specific you can be. So if you already have, it's like there's nothing really weak, or nothing that's not balanced, and your form looks really good, you just need a squat more. And so you can be more specific. If, however, and this happens to all of us, you learn the squat, and you've learned faulty patterns that happen over time, that's when I would throw an, in addition to the close variation, so beltless work, I'd throw in maybe a tempo squat, where you personally don't squat with clean technique as the weight goes up. So it's specific to the person, and that's where accessories, people talk about my favorite accessories, is the favorite accessories, or the preferred accessories for the lifter. But there are the general ones. So the closer to the main movement you do would be better. So the idea of doing the beltless work, the idea of doing, even if you do low bar, high bar, I actually like throwing yourself front squats, the same idea. If you're not, if you don't have that interior bracing, front squats are fantastic. And you can notice some of those, let's say in quotations, weak links. If your front squat is 50% of your lower bar squat, that probably will greatly help increase your front squat. So I think there's basic strength markers that could be used as a rough approximation. I also do think if you increase, like let's say you increase your lower bar squat by 200 pounds, your front squat will also go up. But if it is a limiting factor, where you just feel janky. Cause your claws are maybe weaker. Yeah, work on it then. So it all depends upon the individual, but I think we gave a good outline there. Yeah, I think there's, each squat variation can address and assist in one weakness or the other, whether it be technique or muscularity. But if those aren't the case, yeah, specific squats can help. And for the mental and physical, depending on the training block or long-term goals of the individual, variations can be thrown in. I don't wanna say for shits and gigs cause everything does have a plan and purpose, but you can't just squat three by fives, then five by threes, three times a week with the same movement, the same weights for five years in a row and expect to be awesome, right? So doing one day that's beltless, doing one day that's paused. And again, more specific or less, depending on the weaknesses you have. Some general ones that I have, most of my athletes do in some of their off season, safety squat bar is a great one. It allows the upper body to recover a little bit more while still kind of targeting your quads, low and mid-back, kind of like a front squat. The pause squat, one of the great ones. A tempo squat's one of my favorite teaching tools and something to really lower the load, similar to Omar said he did, no sleeves, no belt. No sleeves, no belt, some variation of that is also really good. I think for the mental toughness of the athlete to figure out like, yes, these are great tools, but they're not necessary. And those are kind of the main ones I use, a high bar, low bar variation, different pauses depending, something I might start to mix in soon because I'm a pretty explosive squatter and lose just out of the hole, kind of like a typical high bar squats pretty often. I might do a quarter of the way up pause, which start to mess people up or a double pause, but it kind of depends again, as Omar already said, the athlete, the individual and the goals. And I think that's what we got. Appreciate everybody listening to us talking about squats. Squats are the movement where I do feel the bench press for actually, I would say for a lot of IPF boys, I think their volume is just too low on the bench press and that's why they'll like, you'll see them squat 500, approach a six hundo on the deadlift and then the bench press, they're benching like 280. Yeah, but you can just easily just bench more often, a little bit more volume, maybe even eat a little more depending on the individual. And yes, I'm gonna start to smash. That's what really blew my bench. Squats, you kind of have to troubleshoot a little bit for most people to find your variation that works the best. Yeah, your groove, your pace, your strength. Appreciate you guys. Hope you enjoyed the video. You know where to find them. Omar, yourself, Link in the bio. Catch you in the next one. We're out. Oh, the hero spot is when someone saved your life. Everyone should listen to the song, Somebody Saved My Life Tonight by Elton John off the album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Ended on the stand. Or This Love by Pantera. That's also about us, this love. Yeah, oh, it just sits on right now. Yeah, I gotta go poop or something now. I should leave that there. So I can do a monologue for five minutes. Yeah, you can like move it around or something. So you gotta be a real vlogger and just hold on guys. So just had a sick trading session, got a great pump. What's up world, sick pump? Yeah, what's your IG bro? IG, which one? The new one. The new one? I think it's skin thin 94. Yeah. 94 because I was born in 83, but I want to relate to the young people. Is that on? So one of the things about growing social media following which is what we're talking about today is you gotta be relatable. Relevant. Relevant. With the times. With the times. Disruptor. You know what we like to say about ourselves? We're behind the times, but ahead of the curve. Leading from the front, from behind. Yeah. And that's why we do bodybuilding. So it was a very interesting training session today. Mike is doing some weightlifting and it's actually looking pretty juicy. Coach saw him do some of the pulls. Yeah. And you said? That's not a sport. Right. Lift some biceps. Yeah. Yeah. Stop doing that full body stuff and focus on the contraction. And so I think right now Mike is in a really good space where he is doing some strength training so he's still squatting. He's doing a little bit of bench. He's doing some weightlifting too which is a little bit more explosive and more like his athletic days. So a good combo of things. Yeah. So serious time now. No, I really like what Mike's doing. He's interested in being a kind of all around strength athlete I'd say. So trying to get some Olympic lifts in there and the power lifts and then just rounding out with accessory work. And I like how he's starting, he's focusing on skill based lifts with a low volume. I mean he's built a tremendous base of strength, foundation, base of muscle mass. So you know he goes in there, works up to some heavy low volume work on squats. Does some snatches. Thanks for starting. Does some accessory work. It's worked great for him. Just do five. Yeah. And then he goes and did a bodybuilding circuit with us. And you know I've competed in weightlifting, powerlifting and bodybuilding. And if I was to have a completely healthy body and not be 36 and decided I wanted to get into all, it would look similar to that. I would probably start with a snatch or clean a jerk on most days. Move to one of three power lifts and then do like the accessory work that is the least stressful. And just think about then periodizing the emphasis on those over time. So I think, I was looking at Mike's like, that's smart stuff, smart stuff. Anyone's ever watched how Stella got a groove back. That's Mike right now. So he's, baby's finding his groove. Yeah like, I was like, Mike have you seen your groove? And he was like, yeah I just got it back. And I was like, Stella. I'm gonna stop just because my arm is cramping the fuck up.