Smolov Squat Cycle Week 1 Recap

I heard some things about Smolov. The program that is supposed to be brutally hard. So tough that there's review with titles such as "Surviving Smolov" or "How to make it through a Smolov Cycle". So with my current situation of having a bum wrist I needed a legit squatting program to get me through these next few months. Enter the Smolov Squat Cycle.

If you are just tuning in I recently banged up my wrist pretty good. A torn SL Ligament in fact. It's pretty rough. I am meeting with the surgeon this coming Monday and will have him go over everything but long story short is I'll be needing surgery. Heres the pic of my MRI-

So if you take a gander at that little arrow there should most certainly not be a gap right there. Here compare it to this pic I dug up from google-

Notice the even spacing? And I am not even sure what the hell that spider web looking thing is. Hopefully nothing. Knowing my luck I got cleated sometime during season and that's actually some crazy fracture that hasn't healed.

But I digress...

In order to kick off the new workout I needed a max. So that was Monday. Turned out I can still hit 380. Not bad I guess. BUT there is one thing I also need to mention which I will likely discuss in a separate blog; my new VS Lifting shoes. Holy damn why have I not bought these sooner? Or any lifting shoe sooner. Good stuff.

Anyways, Smolov is a percentage based program that runs off your 1RM. In fact heres the orginal website I picked up the spreadsheet from-
http://www.allthingsgym.com/smolov-squat-routine-spreadsheet/
He did a well enough job running through the program. But it's simple enough. Just punch in your current 1RM and be a little conservative. Then the program spits out your numbers for the next 6 weeks. Easy, right? So far so good.

Now I will say after the 3rd day of squatting I was getting pretty sore. There's a fair amount of volume in those first few days. It's nothing extreme but it'll be a slight challenge. Frankly, I thought the first few sets were the tough ones and then it gets much easier in the low rep sets. By day 4 (Im counting my test day as well) my soreness was about gone despite 3 straight days of squatting and that last set at 90% felt damn good. Almost too easy for the weight being moved. Well, for me at least.

Week 2 actually looks fun. A lot of dynamic effort work with jumps. Shouldn't be bad. Just 3 days of speed work. Fun stuff. Which is good since next week also starts 'peak' season at UPS and working 3rd shift AND running Smolov may just actually kill me looking at the "Base" weeks following week 2.