🏋️‍♂️ 4 squat challenges for next-level strength

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Today’s BarBend Newsletter is presented by MetPro. To learn how MetPro’s personalized nutrition and fitness plans can help you reach your physique and fitness goals, head here.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• The benefits of yoga for strength athletes.

• Four brutal squat challenges that’ll test your leg mettle.

• How to watch the 2023 CrossFit Games.

Exercise Tips

Yoga for Healthy Strength

Sometimes when a lift is stalled out due to your deficiencies, the best thing you can do is the thing you aren’t doing.

Powerlifters and other strength athletes interested in moving heavy weights for a single rep frequently have weaknesses in muscular endurance, overall stability, and core strength. Focusing training on creating efficiency in two or three specific ranges of motion can leave you weak everywhere else, which will ultimately limit your total-body strength.

Yoga, with its full-body lube-and-burn, can be the answer not only to your aches, pains, and imbalances but also to unlocking your gains. Don’t know much about yoga other than that you like the pants? Click below to learn how to convert your ohms to kgs the easy way.

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Workouts

Challenging Squat Routines

From the time of “Dr. Squat” Fred Hatfield and the muscle mags, to the reign of Tom Platz and VHS, to Jesse Marunde and the nascent days of the internet, squat challenges have been respected as a way to harden the body and toughen the mind.

The barbell squat isn’t called the king of lifts for nothing, and these challenges — including the dreaded 20-rep challenge — take the movement to an extreme level. You will be hard-pressed to find anything in the gym that offers more brutality per minute than gripping a barbell and hanging on for dear life until your legs and lungs can take no more.

If your training goals involve maximal strength, hypertrophy, and/or all-around badassery, these muscle-busting squat challenges will help you on your way. Just make sure to eat your Wheaties first.

CrossFit

How to Watch the 2023 Games

All sporting eyes — including every pair in the BarBend Slack — are on the 2023 CrossFit Games this week. It’s one of the biggest fitness events of the year, and this one’s got plenty of storylines going for it. Can Justin Medeiros pull off the three-peat? Who’s going to take Tia-Clair Toomey’s spot as Fittest Woman on Earth®? Will history be made at the final CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin?

The Age and Adaptive divisions are already underway, and the Open and Team divisions start on August 3 and last through Sunday. And if you aren’t lucky enough to live within driving distance of the excitement, you still have several options for your WOD-viewing experience. Remember, you live in an era where nearly every major sporting event around the world can be watched in real-time. And the Games are no different.

With a free app and several other live-stream options, watching the action this year couldn’t be easier. Check out all your viewing options in the link below.

BarBend Picks

A Wallet-Friendly Option

There’s no shortage of top-tier barbells on the market, but this one from Living.Fit packs in all of the quality you’d expect at an affordable price. This bar is a Swiss army knife, ideal for higher-rep sets and a range of exercises thanks to the rotation and moderate knurling that provides a good grip that won’t tear your hands to shreds.

Living.Fit made this bar to be durable with minimal maintenance. Aesthetically, the optional cerakote finish requires less frequent cleaning than other coatings like chrome or zinc. Overall, the composition of this bar is what you might expect to find in a barbell that’s double the price or more, making it the perfect general fitness barbell for a home gym.

Everything Else

Pre-Games Drama

• South African CrossFit competitor Jason Smith was provisionally suspended after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, meaning he will miss the 2023 Games. Smith is appealing the suspension.

• Long ignored after it was once considered a primary movement (some of the original 5x5 programs included them), the dumbbell pullover can help you widen your back and increase muscularity over your entire upper body. Learn how to do it.

• American weightlifting sensation Hampton Morris recently tested out his clean and jerk at the gym and, ho hum, just unofficially broke the world record in the 61kg class by almost 10 pounds. Not bad for a 19-year-old.