How To Become Your Strongest Self With Dense Strength

Poor squats perfect your squats.

When you feel comfortable to go down slowly, sit in the bottom, and then stand up, you know that you're in a better place.

These are the two top singles today.

110 was the evening squat and that was 100 this morning.

You can see a difference in speed but they both moved okay.

Now I'm going to share with you what I believe is the best training system that I've ever come across, it's called Dense Strength.

I created it so maybe I'm biased but I don't think so.

I think you'll find the same if you choose to experience it like I have.

So here I went for 70 kilos for singles on the minute and actually felt quite tough but that first one probably actually moved really really fast when you look at it.

The thing with dense strength is because there's a short period of time in between your sets, it builds your confidence, it builds your belief in yourself and the ability to dominate a weight.

So if you can get it for singles over and over and over then that that weight is “I own that weight”, that's a comfortable weight.

The truth is that we only really need to train with those sorts of weights.

The weights above that are only really necessary if you're a competitive powerlifter.

If you really really care about what the one weight is that you can lift in a competition but for anyone else even for strongman competitors the game is to be able to dominate something, to be able to repeat it.

Almost all sports are intermittent efforts.

You could probably make a case for it for discus and shot put hammer that you only need that one big effort as well because there are such long rest periods in between efforts.

But for most of us, for most people, I believe this is the best way to train.

Any longer with the rest periods and it's very easy to lose focus and training efficiency is lost.

Shorter rest periods are also fun clusters.

You can alternate movements if you really really think you need a bit more time.

You could go press on the first minute and then chin up on the second minute or press on the first minute and calf raises on the second minute.

You could do something completely different but I really like this way of staying focused on one movement.

Now with 70 kilos for five singles, it gives me that sense of achievement of “okay I've ticked that box, what's the next box I'm going to tick? is it going to be 70 for doubles? Could I get that at the moment? I don't know.”

So that's the fun of it.

It becomes a game. Every session becomes a test and you can also play around with “okay what about if I did the same thing but if I really slow down the eccentrics”.

So it's gonna be more time under tension, it's going to be more work.

Could I still get the repetitions?

So I could make it harder by adjusting the repetition type.

I could pause every rep on the way down in front of my eyes.

I could pause every repetition on the way up would be even harder.

Here we go.

So it's moving fast.

that looks like that's not even a serious weight but to me, it felt still like “I didn't know if I was really going to be comfortable for doubles”.

I thought “yeah I could probably get two here but like it feels heavy”.

It does feel heavy.

That's smooth.

So maybe there are 80 kilos there by looks of that, there may be 80 kilos there in the not too distant future.

My best ever is 82 kilos so it's pretty good.

It'd be good to get in the territory of hitting personal bests again.

The standing press is probably the one that I thought would be closest because my I've been doing freestanding handstand push-ups and they've been the best ever but when I first came back to pressing, I wasn't really that impressed with the weight I was able to lift but it is starting to feel smooth again.

I've had the barbell for just under a month now.

Here we go.

That one's a bit slow.

I went for the double-second rep it's a bit easier.

Often the second rep is a little bit easier because you get the down-up phase.

So you get the amortization, you get the spring out of the bottom as you would on most lifts, like a bench press, you lower it and then you lift it.

The standing press is a bit different to most lifts, that you start with the press but this is dense strength.

I highly advise you, highly recommend testing it out for yourself, playing the game, and adding a little weight each session and you might just find that you become addicted to this method of improving yourself in the way that I have.

Dense strength, five minutes.

So simple. Any time.

Just get into it.

Singles. Triples. Fives.