 Hey guys, Omar Yusof here, part of the Kaizen team, happy to finally announce our squat specific program is released and we're really damn proud of it. I think you guys are going to enjoy it. Before I go on, however, I should make something clear, there's nothing magical about this program. You're not going to get superhuman powers. You probably won't even grow calves, but what this is, it's an effective program by three knowledgeable coaches that have collectively over three decades of training experience and training other individuals. Ladies and gentlemen, silent Mike back with another video. Today, we're going to talk about the ever argument, which I think is dying. Thank you to all my fitness friends on the internet. I'd like to think I played 1% part in this, the sumo versus conventional conversation, but we're going to put a little twist on it because I'm getting a lot of questions on not only sumo versus conventional and what muscles do they work? Maybe your goal isn't powerlifting to lift the most amount of weight. Maybe it's a more aesthetic base. Maybe it's a balance. It's athletic based and you're trying to get better at your sport. Which lift should you do? But also within people that are taking training seriously and maybe not competing again, which one should I do for my program? Maybe you bought the Kaizen program or anything or any other program or you have a really good coach online or you found a really good training system that fits you and your lifestyle and you're wondering which lift should I do when and why and we're going to dig right in. A lot of you guys have followed my training, I guess on the internet now for eight years or so, but I've been training for strength in particular for over 10 years and throughout, depending on when you joined my journey, I've trained both an extensive amount. My biggest pull ever is seven hundred and five pounds in the sumo deadlift kind of a deadlift only competition ran by my boys at the caffeine kilos. But I've also pulled conventional in a meet around six thirty and in the gym like six fifty for two or something of that nature. So for me personally, they're very close and in my training, I tend to use them as tools to kind of balance each other. One, depending on how I feel, depending on what else is going on in my training, depending on injuries or how I beat up. And then besides that, the performance of it is I use them as variations because for me and how I'm built as a human, they do balance each other out well. So I'll do different blocks and different phases of each method. Now, for the majority of people, I think, especially a beginner, early intermediate or even sometimes an intermediate, if you've been training anywhere from zero years to two or three years, it's probably really good for you to hop in on the conventional deadlift. I think learning the hip hinge is something that a lot of people struggle with and it doesn't come very naturally. And the conventional deadlift shows that teaches that and builds a proper musculature, the hammies, the low back, the glutes, obviously, your traps, your grip and teaches you how to get tight in that position. From there, if you want to experiment with the sumo, it is still a hip hinge, depending on how you're built. There are some people that are a little bit longer in the arms, a little shorter in the torso that can kind of sneak away with a squatting the weight up, but either way, the sumo does work slightly more quads. And it does work your low back a bunch, just like the conventional, but it can take the load off of that a little bit. It's a little bit more of a squat in terms of musculature than the conventional deadlift. Now, which program you're running and which form you should use for that program kind of depends. Right now I'm running a couple blocks of conventional poles. I want to push my low back a little bit as I'm getting healthier and I'm pushing my weightlifting to continue to build that to assist my other goals in the squat and the clean and drink and the snatch. But for you guys, it kind of depends again. If you're early in your training, I would do again a year to maybe three years of conventional really build up that musculature in the hip hinge. Again, if you're a little bit further down the road and you're competing in powerlifting and you pull sumo or you've practiced sumo and you're more technically proficient there in your body, your anatomy, your physical attributes allow you to train or lift a little bit more weight that way. I still think there's a large portion of you that can benefit from the conventional as an accessory, whether it's from the ground to build up again your hammies and your low back, maybe even from blocks to build your glutes and low back that will transfer over well once you get back into the specificity of sumo polling. If you do compete, I always recommend the last 12 to 16 weeks into a competition, be the movement or the style or the specific way that you're going to compete in. And that goes obviously extreme for the sumo and conventional as they are almost different lifts, but that's the same as squat. You know, if you put the bar a little bit higher in the off season to build your quads and stay a little bit more upright, as soon as you get to the last 12 to 16 weeks, deadlift, bench, whatever it might be, you want to be as specific as possible and try to emulate exactly how you plan to lift the new PR one rep max in the competition. If your goals are more aesthetic based, I do think that any hip hinge will probably do, depending on the general program, as I can't say for every individual, their goals and their history, but even a stiff leg deadlift, I know there's a lot of bodybuilders, natural bodybuilders and otherwise that will use any kind of deadlift. So you could do, you know, a dumbbell, RDL, a stiff leg, a trap bar, all of these, even some type of machine on like a shrug machine to hip hinge to get your glutes, your hammies and low back. There's a lot of variations you can throw in, um, in different blocks and different training cycles that allow you to continue to progress. At some point, we can't just deadlift conventional once a week, one rep maxes threes or fives and expect our progress to be great. You're going to have to up the volume and frequencies so you get more practice in or throw in a variation. Again, there's multiple variations within those lifts as well, and that depends on the training program, your goals, but in an off season of like a powerlifting or even a more aesthetic based, hypertrophy based program, there's room for some pause work, some block work, elevating the plates, um, on both the sumo and conventional and a lot of ways you can mix things up to not only keep progressing because when we keep progressing, adding either volume, a set or a rep, a week, a month, a year, more weight, a week, a month, a year. Again, these small progressions will allow for more hypertrophy and more strength in the longterm. Uh, and obviously that's the goal for all of us here. The goal of our community, the goal of this YouTube channel, the goal of my personal lifting and my coaching to you guys is to continue to progress. I appreciate you guys, man. Uh, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Got a little something from it. Comment below what questions you want me to cover in the upcoming one. This is probably our main format of our YouTube videos right now. We're going to be going with kind of an instructional. I'm taking topics that I get often either in my DMs or on these YouTube videos itself. I'm going to talk about them in regards to how I can help you guys progress in your training as well as showing my journey, weightlifting, powerlifting, whatever it is, my progressions in the gym and relating these topics, questions to you and hopefully my own training. I appreciate you guys. Give this thing a thumbs up. So I'll be out of here.