Tag: building
Creatine Pros and Cons: Cracking the Code
The sports nutrition industry is convoluted. A few years ago, most supplement companies (and social media influencers) were going gaga over glutamine, arginine, and Tribulus. However, it wasn’t long before these supplements were disproven. Furthermore, most fad supplements have one (or rather two) things in common. First, they are hotly priced and can burn a hole in your pocket. Second, the only gains seen after taking these supplements are in the P&L statements of the manufacturers, whereas there is little to no difference in the bottom line of the lifters.
Fitness enthusiasts are a vulnerable bunch. Many supplement companies exploit their users by claiming insane results.
But enough with the rant about the supplement companies; let’s turn our attention to the true protagonist of the discussion — creatine.
Creatine is one of the most popular supplements in the sports nutrition industry. In stark contrast to all the supplements mentioned above, the sand-textured white powder is one of the most studied supps on the market. Many athletes believe it is as close to performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) as we will ever get without violating the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) prohibited substance list. [1]
Contrary to what most people think, creatine is not a new supplement. Creatine was first discovered in 1832 when Michel Eugene Chevreul extracted the compound from meat. It entered the mainstream in 1992 after two Olympic gold medalists credited creatine as part of their success. [2][3]
In this article, we go over the basics of creatine, its advantages and disadvantages, dosage and safety, and the final verdict on whether you should add it to your fitness regimen.
What is Creatine?
Creatine is produced naturally in the human body from amino acids, the building blocks of protein. It is found primarily in muscle cells but is also present in the brain, central nervous system, and heart.
Creatine is also present in red meat and seafood. Creatine helps improve exercise performance and muscle mass by facilitating the recycling of adenosine triphosphate, primarily in muscle and brain tissue. This is a fancy way of saying that creatine helps shorten your rest duration between sets by replenishing your ATP reserves, allowing you to do more in a short period, which helps maintain a high training intensity.
Although creatine is produced naturally in the body and can be consumed through real food, many athletes prefer using a creatine supplement to optimize their creatine intake and get the most out of their training.
Creatine is widely used by serious lifters in supplement form; however, its use routinely generates several safety concerns. Besides talking about the pros and cons of creatine, we will also address how to take this supplement safely.
Pros of Creatine
Using creatine supplements entails several benefits, including:
Helps Boost Muscle Mass
Most people notice an improvement in overall muscle mass development within 8-12 weeks of starting supplementing with creatine.
Creatine increases adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production in the body, the primary energy source for muscle contractions. After you have built satisfactory muscle creatine stores, creatine supplements can enhance ATP synthesis, allowing for more prolonged and intense workouts, leading to greater muscle stimulation and growth. [4]
Plus, creatine improves muscle protein synthesis, which is the process by which the body builds new muscle tissue. Creatine can boost protein synthesis and increase the rate at which muscle fibers repair and rebuild after a workout. [5]
Creatine has also been shown to activate the mammalian target of the rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, a signaling pathway involved in muscle growth. This pathway regulates protein synthesis, cell growth, and muscle hypertrophy. [6]
Creatine supplements are infamous for making you retain water. Although water retention might not be ideal for an athlete on a shredding routine, others can benefit from the cell volumization delivered by creatine supplements.
Improves Strength and Energy
Creatine supplementation increases phosphocreatine (PCr) levels in the muscles, which can improve ATP regeneration. Quick ATP replenishment enhances your energy reserves, reduces muscle fatigue, and boosts recovery. Many lifters experience a sharp uptick in their strength levels after adding a creatine supplement to their stack.
A review of over 200 creatine-related studies has shown that supplementing with creatine can increase strength, power, and sprint performance by 5–15%. The study concludes that creatine supplements can promote significantly greater gains in strength, fat-free mass, and high-intensity exercise performance. [7]
Increases Recovery and Endurance
Creatine supplements can help shorten the rest duration between sets by improving your recovery. Also, it can improve your overall endurance and stamina.
The enhanced endurance and better recovery boost your overall training volume and intensity. It helps you perform more reps and sets and use heavier weights. You must ensure, however, that you are not compromising your exercise form to chase heavier weight, as it can increase your risk of injury.
By allowing for more repetitions, increased training volume, and higher workloads, creatine enables individuals to push their muscles harder and stimulate muscle growth.
May Reduce Muscle Loss in Older Adults
Studies show that creatine can slow down sarcopenia, which is an age-related, involuntary loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. Sarcopenia is linked to physical disability, poor quality of life, and an increased risk of death. [8]
The loss of muscle mass with age results from natural hormone changes. The testosterone levels begin to drop about 1 to 3 percent a year, beginning around age 40.
Weight training combined with a creatine supplement can improve muscle health and help you retain muscle mass and volume.
Improves Cognitive Function
No, supplementing with creatine won’t turn you into Einstein or save you from flunking your math test. So, dry-scooping creatine before an exam is not a good idea.
Creatine is also found in the brain, and studies have shown that creatine supplements can help improve cognitive function by a massive 5-15% by increasing the compound’s level in your brain. [9]
A study found that consuming 5–20 grams of protein daily for a period of five days to six weeks can improve your short-term memory and intelligence or reasoning. [10]
Cost-Effective
This is one of the most underrated benefits of creatine supplements. This effective small-scooped supplement is one of the most budget-friendly supps on the market. A three-month supply of creatine costs you $25, whereas a 30-day serving of a whey protein can cost $45.
Don’t let the price of creatine fool you; they are as effective as they get. However, you shouldn’t limit your supplement stack to creatine. Combining creatine with a protein supplement will give you the best muscle and strength-building effects.
Cons and Safety Concerns of Creatine
Adding a creatine supplement to your fitness regime can have the following disadvantages:
Can Cause Bloating
Creatine can improve muscle cell hydration due to its osmotic properties, which can lead to water retention and possible weight gain as your body retains water. Many lifters do not like the additional weight gain caused by creatine use.
Since creatine is extremely hydrophilic and attracts water, you must ensure you stay hydrated throughout the day. Drink at least a gallon of water daily to reduce the risk of dehydration.
Furthermore, creatine has a chalk-like texture, which makes it hard to dissolve in water. Most people end up dry-scooping creatine, making the whole supplement experience inconvenient.
Digestive Issues and Gastrointestinal Discomfort
Although creatine supplements are generally well-tolerated, some people might experience digestive issues and gastrointestinal discomfort while taking this supp. The poor solubility of creatine monohydrate, the most popular creatine form, is often blamed for GI discomfort. However, there is no solid scientific evidence to back these claims.
Improper dosing, dehydration, and individual sensitivity can also be the reasons behind digestive issues after taking a creatine supplement. You must consult a healthcare professional if you experience any health issues while taking any supplements.
Not Suitable For People With Kidney Issues
Although many people believe that creatine use can cause kidney and liver disease, this is not the case. There is no scientific evidence to prove that using an appropriate daily dose of creatine supp can harm your organs. Creatine supplementation is safe for people following a high-protein diet.
That said, folks with impaired kidneys should always check with their healthcare providers before starting any new supplement.
Creatine Results Might Vary Depending on Your Genetics and Consumption Pattern
Like most things in bodybuilding and fitness, creatine results are not universal and can vary depending on your genetics, age, sex, fitness, and activity level. Furthermore, people that start with the loading phase might experience quicker results that folks that stick to the maintenance phase — more on this in the next section.
Omnivores naturally have higher creatine stores than vegans and vegetarians and might experience better and faster results from a creatine supp than their counterparts. Although noticeable muscle mass change might take 8-12 weeks, you’ll start seeing the strength and endurance benefits of creatine within a few weeks as soon as your muscle creatine levels reach the point of saturation.
Confusion About The Best Form of Creatine
Whenever a new supplement is launched, sports nutrition companies tend to milk the product by introducing different variations of the supp and claiming the latest to be better than the rest. It is no different with creatine supplements.
The six most popular types of creatine include monohydrate, ethyl ester, hydrochloride, buffered, magnesium chelate, and liquid creatine. Creatine monohydrate is the oldest and most-tested variation, and you should stick with it to build muscle mass and strength.
How To Use Creatine Safely
Creatine is one of the most researched and safest supplements. Nonetheless, you must keep a few things in mind to ensure safety.
Brand: You should only opt for reputable brands. Since creatine is usually low-priced, many companies enter the sports nutrition market by offering low-quality creatine, which can hamper your overall health.
Use a Suitable Form: Some people react to one form of creatine better than the other. For example, you might see great results from creatine monohydrate, whereas your training mate might be a fan of creatine HCL.
Dosage: Choose your creatine dose depending on your tolerance and other symptoms.
Hydration: Drink at least a gallon of water daily while supplementing with creatine.
You must stop creatine use immediately if you experience any health issues, such as acne, diarrhea, hair loss, digestive issue, or GI discomfort, and seek a medical professional’s advice before resuming the supplement use.
How To Take Creatine
There are two most popular methods of taking a creatine supplement:
Loading Phase
The loading cycle results in rapid muscle creatine level saturation. In this phase, an individual takes 20 grams of creatine daily for five to seven days. Based on his convenience, the user can split his creatine intake into four five-gram servings or five four-gram doses.
Following the five to seven days, you must switch to consuming 3–5 grams daily to maintain your creatine reserves and optimize muscle and strength gains.
Maintenance Phase
Consuming four to five daily servings of creatine can be overwhelming for most folks. You could begin your creatine intake with the maintenance phase to save yourself the hassle.
In the maintenance phase, you consume 3-5 grams of creatine daily. However, this technique may take 3–4 weeks to maximize your creatine stores. Conversely, you reach creatine saturation within seven days using the loading phase.
Notably, there is no benefit to creatine cycling. You could stick to the maintenance phase from the beginning and will get the same benefits as the loading phase in the long run.
Most omnivores consume between one to two grams of creatine daily through their natural diet, which makes their creatine stores 60%–80% full. Even an omnivore must use a creatine supplement to maximize their creatine reserves. The loading phase, which involves consuming 20 grams of creatine daily for five to seven days, boosts muscle creatine stores by 10–40%.
People with greater muscle mass generally require more creatine intake to reach creatine saturation and get the desired results from this supplement.
FAQs
I am a beginner and only do cardio. Should I take creatine?
Creatine can help improve your strength, power, total work capacity, and muscle mass and can be used by anyone. However, this supplement works best for athletes that train at very high workloads and need a spike in their power, endurance, and stamina to take their training to the next level.
That said, research shows that creatine also has therapeutic benefits, which can prevent muscle loss in older adults, reduce the risk of vascular disease, and improve brain health. These benefits make creatine supplementation suitable for everyone, even folks that do not train.
Does creatine cause muscle cramps?
Some users report muscle cramps after taking a creatine supplement. However, there is no conclusive scientific evidence to prove a link between the two. A possible reason for cramps could be that most people usually train harder after taking creatine, which could lead to muscle cramps. Plus, a high training intensity could cause dehydration and inadequate electrolyte balance, leading to muscle cramps.
Do I need to eat meat and fish for optimal natural creatine production in my body?
This is one of the most common questions from vegans and vegetarians about creatine. The short answer to this question is — no; your body can produce the required creatine endogenously, and you do not need to eat meat to optimize its natural production.
However, taking a creatine supplement can boost your creatine stores, which can give you better results.
Note: The content on Fitness Volt is for informative purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice to diagnose, prevent, or treat health problems. If you’re suffering from a health issue, are pregnant, or are under 18 years old, you should consult your physician before starting any new supplement, nutrition, or fitness routine.
Final Verdict
Creatine is one of the most studied and safest supplements. It can help you build and retain muscle, improve your overall strength and cognitive function, boost your recovery, and reduce age-related muscle loss. While each supplement has its advantages and disadvantages, creatine’s pros far outweigh its cons.
While advanced athletes are best positioned to get the most benefits from a creatine supplement, nothing is stopping a beginner from taking it. Furthermore, elderlies should use a creatine supplement for its therapeutic benefits.
Whether you choose the loading or maintenance phase, you must build optimal muscle creatine stores before you can expect results.
Ensure that you use a good brand and stay hydrated for the best results. So, what are you waiting for? Grab that little white-powdered scoop and head to the gym for your PR. Best of luck!
References
Hall M, Trojian TH. Creatine supplementation. Curr Sports Med Rep. 2013 Jul-Aug;12(4):240-4. doi: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31829cdff2. PMID: 23851411.
Butts J, Jacobs B, Silvis M. Creatine Use in Sports. Sports Health. 2018 Jan/Feb;10(1):31-34. doi: 10.1177/1941738117737248. Epub 2017 Oct 23. PMID: 29059531; PMCID: PMC5753968.
Close GL, Hamilton DL, Philp A, Burke LM, Morton JP. New strategies in sport nutrition to increase exercise performance. Free Radic Biol Med. 2016 Sep;98:144-158. doi: 10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2016.01.016. Epub 2016 Feb 5. PMID: 26855422.
Lanhers C, Pereira B, Naughton G, Trousselard M, Lesage FX, Dutheil F. Creatine Supplementation and Upper Limb Strength Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2017 Jan;47(1):163-173. doi: 10.1007/s40279-016-0571-4. PMID: 27328852.
Ingwall JS, Weiner CD, Morales MF, Davis E, Stockdale FE. Specificity of creatine in the control of muscle protein synthesis. J Cell Biol. 1974 Jul;62(1):145-51. doi: 10.1083/jcb.62.1.145. PMID: 4407046; PMCID: PMC2109188.
Sun M, Jiao H, Wang X, Li H, Zhou Y, Zhao J, Lin H. The regulating pathway of creatine on muscular protein metabolism depends on the energy state. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 2022 May 1;322(5):C1022-C1035. doi: 10.1152/ajpcell.00447.2021. Epub 2022 Apr 13. PMID: 35417269.
Kreider RB. Effects of creatine supplementation on performance and training adaptations. Mol Cell Biochem. 2003 Feb;244(1-2):89-94. PMID: 12701815.
Candow DG, Forbes SC, Kirk B, Duque G. Current Evidence and Possible Future Applications of Creatine Supplementation for Older Adults. Nutrients. 2021 Feb 26;13(3):745. doi: 10.3390/nu13030745. PMID: 33652673; PMCID: PMC7996960.
Dechent P, Pouwels PJ, Wilken B, Hanefeld F, Frahm J. Increase of total creatine in human brain after oral supplementation of creatine-monohydrate. Am J Physiol. 1999 Sep;277(3):R698-704. doi: 10.1152/ajpregu.1999.277.3.R698. PMID: 10484486.
Avgerinos KI, Spyrou N, Bougioukas KI, Kapogiannis D. Effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function of healthy individuals: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Exp Gerontol. 2018 Jul 15;108:166-173. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2018.04.013. Epub 2018 Apr 25. PMID: 29704637; PMCID: PMC6093191.
5 Tips For Building Bigger Biceps
Build Bigger Biceps With These Tips
Your pythons can become the biggest, meanest and most venomous with proper training. While most people love training their arms, only a few have guns worth flaunting. Tweaking your arm training a little can result in major gains.
How do you know you need tips for better bicep training, you ask? If you’re someone who flexes his guns in the mirror but sees nothing more than a flat pulse line, this article is for you.
Start With Isolation Exercises
Most people prefer starting their workouts with compound movements like the barbell curls. They usually start their workouts with free weights because they can lift heavier weights as they aren’t fatigued.
Starting with isolation exercises is a great way of pre-exhausting your muscles. Once you’ve exhausted your muscle fibers at the beginning of the workout, you’ll be able to get better muscle pumps without having to lift heavy which can reduce your chances of an injury.
Twists Your Wrists Outwards To Focus On The Peak
As we said at the beginning of the article, making small adjustments can take your guns to the next level. While performing dumbbell lifts, instead of having supinated palms (wrists facing you flatly), rotate your wrists slightly outwards so that your little finger is closer to your shoulder than your index finger.
The rest of the curling movement will remain the same apart from the minor twisting adjustment at the contraction point. The outward turning of the palms will put more tension on the peaks of your biceps.
You Need Volume AND Intensity
Many people get into the hopeless debate of whether they should do isolation or compound movements for building size or conditioning and if they should be performing a higher or lower number of reps?
Building your pythons needs an all-round approach, and it’s not a simple question of either this or that. You need to be constantly shocking your muscles by varying the volume and intensity.
Divide Your Bicep Training Into Parts
Biceps are called that for a reason. The biceps are made up of two major muscles, and yet many people don’t design their training around training each head of the bicep separately. For defined and stiriated guns, change your pattern of movement while performing the dumbbell exercises.
For example, while doing the dumbbell hammer curls, keep your elbows planted to your sides and point your lower hands away from your body to target the inner head of your bicep. To train the outer head, follow a range of motion where the dumbbell will be in front of your torso at the top of the movement.
Do Banded Work
Using resistance bands can be an incredibly effective way of gaining muscle mass and conditioning in your pythons. The bands are effective because they give you a different amount of resistance depending on where you are in the range of motion.
Your guns will be under the least amount of resistance at the resting position as the bands will be retracted. As you perform a curl, the bands will start adding resistance to your arms and the highest resistance will be experienced at the top of the movement.
How often do you train your guns? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
*Header image courtesy of Envato Elements.
8 Worst Exercises For Building Muscle
The Most Useless Exercises
We recently did an article about the best exercises you could do to build muscle mass. The article got us thinking about the exercises people love doing but which don’t help in budging the needle in the right direction.
Most of the exercises on the list are here because people don’t take out the time to learn the proper form of performing them. You could save yourself time and energy by performing substitute exercises in place of these exercises.
Any Resistance Exercise Done On A Stability Ball
The stability ball came into the limelight with the focus on core training. It’s believed that doing strength training exercises on an unstable surface is going to build muscle and core strength, but no studies have been able to prove it.
Performing exercises involving additional weights are safer done on the floor than using an unstable surface. There is a reason why football games are played with athletes standing on a field of some type, and not a ball or moving surface. To be a pro, train like one.
Ab/Oblique Rotation Machine
Many gyms have a machine that has a revolving base which can be used to train the abs and obliques. People need to stand/sit on it and twist their torsos to train the midriffs. Some people take it to the next level by using weights on the base to add resistance.
The basics of biomechanics state that you need to avoid moving through the terrible triad of lower back movements: simultaneous flexion, rotation, and side bending, especially under loading. Reading just this one line about biomechanics should be enough to make you stop using the rotation machine.
Dips
Although the dips are a great tricep exercise, many people don’t get anything out of it because they can’t establish a mind-muscle connection with the muscle, and can feel no contraction.
Romanian Deadlifts
It’s harder to train the posterior muscles as you can’t see them in the mirror directly. To perform the RDLs correctly you need the right amount of range of motion and bend in your knees which is sometimes too much to ask off a beginner.
Lat Pulldowns
Many people make the mistake of using momentum by swinging back and forth while performing the lat pulldowns. Using the jerking motion takes off tension from your back and puts it on your arms and shoulders.
Upright Rows
The uprights rows need the strictest of forms to optimally work the traps. If you use weights that are too heavy and need to swing back and forth to lift them, you’ll end up performing a weird variation of overhand barbell curls.
Tricep Kickbacks
Even though bis and tris are antagonistic muscles, the triceps don’t get the same love as the pythons. Elevation of your elbow, shoulder, the bend in your back, the distance between your feet, there are too many variables connected with performing the tricep kickbacks correctly.
Lunges
Only a few people perform the lunges correctly. The others either don’t take long enough steps, lunge too shallow, bend at the back or lose their balance. The lunges are best left to the pros.
Which exercise do you hate the most? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Header image courtesy of Envato Elements
Let’s Revive This Forgotten Way of Building Monster Legs
Let’s Revive This Forgotten Way of Building Monster Legs
Remember when legs were everyone’s favorite muscle to train? We neither. Training legs, if done right, can be taxing. One big reason for exhaustion while hitting your wheels is that your legs are half of your body, and most of your blood and oxygen are pumped into them while training, leaving your brain and lungs running on fumes.
With the introduction of fancy training equipment like the seated hamstring curls, abductor, and adductor machines we have seen a big change in the leg workout routines. Make no mistake, we are not implying that people these days don’t have great legs.
Heck, pro bodybuilders on stage these days are arguably the freakiest since the advent of bodybuilding and we don’t mean this negatively. Most people attend bodybuilding shows to watch the freaks of nature in action and the guys on stage deliver on those expectations.
This article is not a comparison between the golden day and today’s bodybuilders. It’s aimed at pointing out the change in the leg training style over the years and to see if going back to the old ways can improve leg development.
Building Monster Legs The Old School Way
Our old-school quadzilla idol is none other than Tom Platz. If you’ve ever seen videos of Platz training legs, you’d realize it’s nothing like what we see in today’s YouTube leg training motivational videos.
Tom Platz’s leg workouts were so brutal that people attended his leg training sessions to learn his techniques and most people looked in awe when he got under the bar or sat on the leg-extension machine.
If you’ve ever watched the critically-acclaimed movie, Pumping Iron, how many bodybuilders did you spot using the abductor or hip-thrust machines? Could you complain about the wheels of any of the bodybuilders shown in the documentary?
Going Old School – Higher Reps
Coming back to Tom Platz. One of Tom’s biggest pieces of advice is, “the quads need higher reps than other muscle groups, like 15-20 or more to grow.” When was the last time you performed 15-20 reps of something while training legs?
These day’s we see a complicated system where people use a percentage of 1RM to determine how much weight they’d be lifting in a set. Don’t get us started on how to calculate a one-rep-max.
Most people deliberately underperform on a 1RM to set the bar low so that they can post fancy numbers on social media. Calculating 1RM can be complicated, and if you don’t want to open an excel sheet or a graph chart, you’d be better off doing what Platz did, perform higher reps.
Benefits of Higher Reps
Some people think that higher reps translate to lighter weights. This isn’t exactly true. Many lifters on a gaining program think that lifting light for higher reps is for people on a ‘cutting’ schedule.
On the contrary, lifters on a shredding routine think that lifting heavy for a lesser number of reps will make them bulky. Both these approaches are as far away from the truth as they can be.
Time under tensions (TuT) is one of the most important factors in adding muscle mass as it leads to the breaking of muscle fibers while training. With proper rest and diet, these broken muscle cells grow out to be bigger and stronger. The shorter your sets are, the lesser will be the tension on your muscle fibers.
Lifting Heavy is IN!
In today’s internet age, squatting 405lbs for 2 reps is way sexier than lifting 225lbs for 20 reps. Don’t believe us? Open your Instagram and look for an internet fitness celebrity who lifts moderate weights for higher reps.
Most of the content creators these days are chasing strength while undermining the importance of endurance. It maybe has something to do with the “go heavy or go home” mindset, which has its place but kills the benefits of time under tension.
Lifting super-heavy is undoubtedly hard but bearing the pain of high-rep quad exercises is not for the weak-hearted. 20 repetitions of squats will introduce you to soul-grinding, hypertrophy-inducing pain.
The Golden Age Leg Building Technique
Enough with the chatter, let’s get down to the business of building monster legs. Although we have spoken a lot about squats in this article, leg press, hack squat, leg extensions, and leg curls machines are great leg-building tools.
Quad Focussing Leg Press Workout:
1. Place your feet close to the bottom of the sled. Use a close-feet stance and push mainly through your toes rather than your heels to focus on your quads and limit the involvement of the hamstrings.
2. Close your eyes, shut your mind and go for 25 reps. Make sure you follow a full range of motion. Partial reps are going to do you no good. If you fail at around 15-20 reps, lighten the load and complete 30 reps. Getting the weights right for 25 reps is going to take 2-3 trial runs.
3. Perform three sets of these “sissy” sets. But it doesn’t end here. Put on some plates on the sled and do one final set of 8-10 reps. We’re here to get the best of both worlds, remember?
You can follow this same technique for all your leg exercises like squats, leg curls, extensions, and hack squats.
Leave Your Brains at Home Technique
There is another Tom Platz technique for building monster legs that are hidden away since the Instagram fitness models took over – the ten-minute sets. Tom Platz once put 225lbs on the bar and performed squats for 10 minutes straight – without stopping.
Before you lose your shit, we’ll be the first to admit that this technique needs some tweaking. How about we turn the ten-minute sets into two-minute sets? We knew you’d like that.
P.S – you don’t have to stick with the lighter weights for higher reps philosophy. You are free to test your mettle by squatting heavier weights for higher reps.
P.S.S – by higher reps, we mean up to 50 reps.
P.S.S.S – maybe it’s time to change the conversation from “how much can you squat?” to “for how long can you squat?”
For how long can you squat, bro? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.