DISCLAIMER The exercises, workouts, and routines in this book are meant for people in good physical condition. Stop if you experience any pain or other discomfort while doing these, and visit a medical practitioner if you have any doubts. The author is not a medical professional, and is not responsible for injuries (or other maladies) that may arise as a result, either direct or indirect of following the routines and exercises in this manual. That said, this book is probably, along with 0 Excuses Fitness which didn’t devote near as much attention to squats as it should have – and Gorilla Grip, and Pushup Central – and my books on pull-ups – a MUST have for any serious trainee. The exercise in this book will REHABILITATE – not harm. That has been the case for EVERYONE that has followed these routines – and … Dear Reader, Man! I gotta tell you, I feel so damn ANNOYED when I write disclaimers of the sort I just did above, which I didn’t copy and paste from a template (I should have one). I gotta put it in though because no doubt there will be SOMEONE who tries these exercises, does them wrongly, and then turns around and in a typical trigger happy manner blames the author and the book for “causing the problems” when the reverse is actually true. Legal disclaimers and all that, I didn’t pay much attention to these things before, I rarely do even now, but since we’ve grown to a certain level “I gotta put it in”. And I almost done made the disclaimer into the introduction! You that is reading this likely KNOW who I am, Rahul Mookerjee, the “Stella Artois of Bodyweight Training Culture” as this shi fu is called – brutally honest to a T from day one, and continuing on in that vein now. “If you ain’t squatting – you ain’t training”. Period. In Matt Furey’s classic book Combat Conditioning, Furey once penned something similar along the lines of “if you’re not doing Hindu squats, you’re not really doing Combat Conditioning”. Maybe, maybe not, but I get his drift. To me, I’d say squats – period – not necessarily just Hindu squats. My book 0 Excuses Fitness which is the baseline for any serious fitness trainee has been called the “very best there is in fitness out there, there is NOTIHNG else that even comes CLOSE” contains instructions on squats, and an entire video (digital download) dedicated on how to do Hindu squats. And a whole plethora of pushups – indeed, if you do what I did in the workout video the rest of your life, you’ll quickly get in great shape and advance beyond your wildest dreams. But all along, I had this niggling feeling I wasn’t devoting “enough attention to squats”. I did to pushups, yes. But even then I came out with Pushup Central – another classic manual with 55 different ways on how to perform “the world’s oldest exercise” and that was both very well received and very warranted (and a classic example of DOING the thing first even though “no-one asked for it”). Sometimes you gotta DO first. The customer – YOU – sometimes has to be SHOWN the final product – FIRST. And back to squats, for some reason, a lot of the great books on bodyweight training culture don’t talk a lot about ‘em. I would be remiss to leave out Brooks Kubik’s Dinosaur Bodyweight Training here, in it he says you should do squats daily, and do ‘em for the rest of your life. He provides detail on them too, but again, nowhere near what this great exercise deserves. And again – as Rahul Mookerjee says, if you ain’t squatting, you aint training, period. I don’t care what else you do, I don’t care if you climb hills for four hours a day straight (as I did, and continue to do, and it keeps in SUPER CONDITION) – I don’t care if you bang out 250 straight pushups in the morning, and then repeat in the evening, I don’t care if you’re a stud at pull-ups, I don’t care if you can bridge for hours on end – all those things are great, you SHOULD work up to those levels, but again. If you ain’t squatting, you aint training. Sprinting doesn’t replace squats. Step ups don’t even come close (to me, they are the lazy man’s equivalent of leg training – though don’t get me wrong, they are a great SUPPLEMENT). But again. There is a reason the ancient Hindus did squats galore for thousands of reps a day. There is a reason the Gama swore by BOTH Hindu Pushups – and Hindu SQUATS. He was reputed to have done over 5000 squats and 3000 pushups daily, and while these numbers are probably not entirely accurate – the fact remains that bodyweight exercises were the cornerstone of his routine – and ultimately what brought him PHENOMENAL SUCCESS (he once lifted a 1200 kg stone that TWENTY FIVE regular people failed to budge on their “collective”). That’s an example of the power that bodyweight training can give you. Look, as I’ve said repeatedly in my training newsletters – there is nothing that beats the up and down motion of the body you get with squats – it works the core and entire body like NOTHING ELSE! Lots of folks think squats are just an thigh exercise. Wrong. Done right, they work the thighs yes, but if thats all you think you’re working – you ain’t doing ‘em right. Squats tax the HAMSTRINGS – a hugely ignored part of the body – the calves (obvious) and also the entire back and CHEST. They tax the BUTT muscles when done right! The deep breathing you do (or should do) when doing squats enlarges the rib cage and improves functioning of the entire body – improves assimilation and digestion of the FOOD you EAT – gets rid of extra fat around the midsection and entire body quicker than almost any other exercise will – and is an “all in one” exercise that you can do even when you’re pressed for time. Steve Austin “oh hell yeah” (we all know him!) once made the comment of “if you do squats, I don’t care what else you do, youre going to grow!”. For a wrestler on the road almost 365 days a year, and a beast incarnate, I’d listen when someone like him says something. Ditto for dips, often called the upper body equivalent of the squat, and pull-ups, but this book focuses on SQUATS. Again, if there was one flaw that I personally believe 0 Excuses Fitness had, it did not devote near enough space in the 300 plus pages of the book to squats. I believe it got close in terms of pushups, but I put out two more books on pushups anyway! And now, I’m doing the same with SQUATS. Enjoy! Some may get back to me at this point with “well, I squat with weights”. And thats great if you choose to do so. However, this book is about bodyweight squats, which I truly believe tax the body FAR more internally at a deeper level than simply “5 sets of the heaviest squat” you can do. Indeed, a lot of these guys that can squat Everest fall flat on their face – or butt – when asked to do 100 straight Hindu squats, for one (and we ain’t even getting to the tougher versions you’ll see in this book). If they can even do them to begin with – most flop out at 20 when they start and cannot walk properly for DAYS on end. Remember, it “aint just bodyweight squats”, there is a whole ART to squats if you do ‘em RIGHT! I cannot tell you how much it irritates and annoys me – aggravates the living hell out of me when someone approaches something with that “its just this” attitude, if thats the attitude you got, then don’t do the exercise in the first place. It doesn’t need you – you need it. Period. And last, but not least, if you have pre-existing injuries, rods in your legs – wonky lower backs and shoulders from years of either heavy squatting or lifting or (even worse) “body building” (boobybuilding) …. some of you might think “well, high rep will kill me”. No, my friend, it wont. The way I teach you to do these exercises is UNLIKE any other you’ve seen out there – those that have read my books know this “I’ve never seen anything like your books out there”. The INTENSITY is unparalleled – like with me. And all these squats REHABILITATE – they don’t tear down. If you’re currently in good shape, they will get you in BETTER SHAPE – and how? Because they tax you from the entire out. Your fasica, your BREATHING, your TENDONS, joints, ligaments, all those ignored parts of the body will be worked heavily and to the bone, not just your muscles!! In fact, done right, bodyweight squats have been proven to increase BONE density too my friend – much like upper body exercises like pull-ups etc have. Best part though, as I’ve said before ……….. You’ll FEEL like a billion bucks! NOTHING trains the body and makes you feel better than heavy duty LEG WORK! Trust me on this one, when you’re walking around with that “thighs rippling” (without you consciously doing it) … you’ll know what I mean. Lets keep the focus on fitness though, not “looks”. Those are a distant by product, and as I’ve said tons of times before, train for FITNESS, train for functional STRENGTH, not “looks”. Train for something useful, train for something that can save your life (and ass) when you really, really need it, when no-one else will help, when it’s YOU, and just YOU against all of ‘em, train to have the gumption to beat the odds even when they’re staggeringly against you, train to have WILL, train to have SOLID, superhuman POWER – and so forth. In short, training should be practical and useful, bottom line! And way too many people make it otherwise. Anyway, I could write tomes all day on this, and do on my site … But for this introduction, we’ve gone on all enough, so I’ll stop here. Hehe. But as a last reminder – – remember, if you ain’t squatting? Then you ain’t training, period. Onward! LEG RIPPLING SWAGGER! Without you even trying, my friend. I dont know if you know what I’m talking about, but maybe you do … In 2002, I went to China for the first time – at the age of 23, supposedly my “best time” when I was supposed to be in the “best shape of my life”. Yet, for me, it’s been the opposite most of my life. When young, I was never in good shape – though I wanted to be – and got ridiculous advice from all and sundry in terms of training such as “lift pink 10 kg dumbbells” for half an a hour day, thats how the big guys build muscle! Or, the “he thinks he’s so strong” comments made by family members who did not know any better that tore me down mentally. This isn’t me castigating family here. This is me being brutally honest with you about my LIFE and fitness – and ME – in general as I always am, and telling you a story as I always end up doing – all true, hehe. REAL LIFE! Perhaps no other book fits the “real” (keeping it real) category better than THIS one, the words BE flying out of my mouth as I speak – phew! Deep breath. But anyway, so I went to China, climbing the stairs to my fourth floor apartment left me dizzy (almost) and breathing hard, when I had to lug suitcases up there? My! It was like I had to climb Everest! And dont get me wrong. I did other things back then – I was a weight lifter – I lifted real weights, not 10 kg dumbbells! People in the office would squeeze my forearms and say “he’s STRONG!” I still remember my mother, who once made the “he thinks he’s so strong” comment when I was young say the reverse when she saw me lug their suitcases up – heavy ass 25 kg suitcases, one hand at a time up to my apartment. “I’ll never forget how you did that”, she exclaimed. But even with all that, a lot was missing. I was strong, but not anywhere NEAR fit. And I could use my strength ONCE – but nowhere near what it needed to be ie. “repetitively”. It was really in the September of 2003 or I believe 2004 (I Think I first went to China in 2003, not 2002 as I said up there) that my life changed … Anyway, I’ll get the dates clear later. … when I met a certain Ann Lee! The first time I dated her in the park – right smack next to my house, with a huge mountain in it I could SEE from my apartment, yet for some odd reason I ignored this free fitness tool right in front of me (we often do that!) … the date was her idea, the park? I didnt even know it was there! – and we climbed the mountain, I remember what a MESS I felt like when doing it! I remember STRUGGLING up that damn hill like it was Everest (right now I can slink up it easy peasy five times a day, and it ain’t an easy hill to hike, trust me!) … I remember how out of breath I was, I remember my legs turning to jelly – my lower back wonking out – and calves burning … and all along, I remember a PUMP, a massive PUMP in my forearms of all things I had NEVER felt with anything else! I still remember the girls there giggling in that cute Chinese way and pointing at the fat lao wai (foreign devil, or “wai guo ren” – old man from from foreign land) climbing the hell …. Or was it hill. Hehe. It felt like the former! I remember thinking “when will this damn torture end”. Hehe. That hill felt interminable! I was going to put the picture from Advanced Hill Training here too, maybe someday. For now – back to it – THAT, as a certain Kelly was to say “years later” – is REAL TRAINING! REAL HILL climbing! I had experienced it before when climbing the Indian Himalayas, so steep that when I asked my father to do it again once after a day the very vehment “NO WAY!” was all the answer I needed Hehe. Anyway – where was I. Swashbuckling thighs, eh. The hill caused a revolution in my life, fitness wise, most of it is here for you to see! It CHANGED my life – till this day, I credit Ann Lee for doing this. If she had not come into my life, none of this would have happened. Of course, I credit my work on a certain Dongguan Expat website as well for that, but thats another story! Anyway, I quickly got in better shape climbing that hill on the weekend, then after Ann Lee kicked my rumpus again (I was making excuses about not climbing after work “it’s too late” or something) – I started doing it daily, and a fitness machine emerged. The lower back that had felt so wonky for DAYS after that first climb – became STRONG. The legs – thighs especially turned into rippling pillars of STEEL from that climb. My upper body fat disappeared, my strength improved, my PULL-ups shot through the roof, most of all, I was seeing my GRIP strength improve by leaps and bounds which amazed me! An idiot once wrote back on Gorilla Grip saying “he claims he’s improved his grip by NOT doing a single pull-up for months, but he doesnt say how he’s done it!”. Actually, I did say. He was just too dumb to read between the lines. My core strength increased x 10, my digestive issues went away, but all of that is different, another story, what I’m going to tell you about is one night I was walking to the bank to get some cash for a trip out of China, and the way I was walking, with my thighs bulging out naturally – well, I dont know if you guys have ever experienced that, but it makes you feel like a BILLION BUCKS! I repeat, a billion bucks, untouchable, confidence like nothing else, and it usually comes with a toned swagger to your CORE too, strength you will NEVER lose! I’ve often tried to replicate this “without having it”, and it showed. People told me “dont splay your legs out like that!” But when you have it naturally, it shows too! In the movie Get Carter, Sly Stallone walks into see the owner of the pub where his brother Richie died – now, he’s dressed in a full suit, typical “mob enforcer”, calm, menacing, quiet, viper ready to strike if need be … goateed to a T, and so forth, as my friend Lily once said, “looking like a bad ass!” He was. But that walk to the desk, much like my walk to the ATM that night, the way the thighs rippled, that understated SWAGGER that comes from being in SUPER SHAPE – I’ll never forget that! You have to FEEL IT to UNDERSTAND! And squats, my friend, are the ONE exercise that will give you this x 10000! Sure, you can climb stairs, you can hike hills – all of that is great. But like I’ve said above, nothing replaces squats. You that can hike hills for hours might be amazed when you first get on some of the squats in my program, you might not be able do more than 25, and you might not be able to walk for days after wards either. Trust me on this one! Squats do what NO other exercise does, my friend, and back to swashbuckling SWAGGER, and machismo, and feeling great… well, thats the icing on the cake, but also the reason you should be DOING these in the first place! On one last note – some of you might ask though, “why do I need squats” (given what I’ve said about other forms of training). You might as well ask me “why do you need to breathe – or train – or live in the first place”, it’s that obvious. Look, like I’ve said before, nothing beats the up and down motion your body makes, and the internal changes that go on your body, the strength it builds, the functional strength it builds throughout the whole body that you simply cannot get from any other movement. When you wrestle, for one, what sort of positions do you have to constantly fight your way out of ? I dont think you’re climbing a hill or stairs in that motion, are you? Squats have a CIRCULAR sort of motion, my friend, not just Hindus, all squats, that ensure you return back to where you started, “full circle”, a motion used in EVERYDAY life, fighting, walking, all of it, and again, you have to squat first to truly understand it. Sure, the other methods I’ve mentioned work, but they dont work nearly as well as squats, and NOT in the same manner. Does that mean you dont do them? Of course not. You do BOTH. You have ALL the fitness tools you need in your fitness toolkit, not just one, but you dont neglect the most basic and important one as most people DO. Squats build EVERYDAY strength and functional fitness – and I’m talking BODYWEIGHT squats in a way nothing else can, that is the most simple and concise answer I can give you. There is a reason the old timers did these daily without fail and in high reps, and if even that isn’t enough for you, you’re at the wrong page, and probably better off pumping and humping the leg press at the Jim. FEROCIOUS SQUATS! Way too many idiots and morons think and will say the bodyweight squat – or the Hindu squat or any of the variants I’m going to be teaching you in this NEVER SEEN BEFORE COURSE “just a warmup”… Or, it doesnt build muscle. Or, the real deal is weighted squat, and those should really be focused upon, while the others? Blah. “Just do it” to get them over with, and usually in a haphazard half hearted manner. I’m here to tell all these sort of people that they’re grade A buffoons. Not only are they choosing the path of most injury as opposed to least, but they’re also depriving themselves of the valuable tendon and ligament benefits you get from bodyweight work – not to mention strength, that can be used repeatedly without your legs giving out as opposed to 5 reps, or 20 reps while squatting a cow or what not. Dont believe me, take the cow squatters, ask them to pump out 100 – hell, 50 ferocious squats, and we’ll see. FEROCIOUS SQUATS. Maybe I should rename the book that … Hehe. Or maybe I’ll leave it the way it is! But really, my friend. When you do these, remember too many people go through the motions and nothing else, do NOT be one of those people. I was resting this afternoon, then I said to myself – lets do some squats, and let’s AMP THEM! FEROCITY! You really put all you got into them, you dont pause for long breaks either to catch wind, you … are a man – or a woman – on a MISSION basically. The sort of mental strength this sort of workout builds is beyond comparison, you cannot get it from anything else, weights or not included, but why just believe me? Take it from the old time strongmen, all of who had legs of pure steel. Not all squatted an elephant, or even bothered, but they all, right from the Gama, to Bruce Lee, to modern day legends like Herschel Walker were DAMN good at the bodyweight squat, and did tons of reps daily, often throughout the day. There is a reason to the so called madness, or a method, and a reason behind doing what they did. REALLY put all you have into it. FOCUS – I repeat – focus on breathing in and out with every repetition consciously, this will make the workout far tougher, and bring way more results than if you do it without focus on the breath. You should REALLY feel the heart thumping after around 100 reps or so, if you can even get that far. Ass to grass – on every rep. No excuses, pally. And STRAIGHT back up, no bent knees on that one. And there it is. FEROCIOUS squats, and boy do they bring results and then some. Anyway, enough on that. On to the … (and yes, thats one of the secrets to squats getting you in ferocious, awesome shape, but there’s plenty more in the BOOK) BENEFITS you can get from this course – I think we’ve covered a lot above already! But here they are again in bullet format for you … Build a BULLETPROOF, rock solid body with squats, a “son of the soil” look that comes only from having a sturdy foundation beneath you, a foundation that cannot be ROCKED. Build the sort of SWASHBUCKLING “thigh” swagger (and swagger in general) feeling you get when you have those ripping, FIT legs and a toned midsection (they go together). The feeling cannot be beat, it cannot be replicated, and it, or the lack of it SHOWS when you walk – or STRIDE around the place – and believe me, THIS feeling alone is worth a BILLION BUCKS and the price of this course MANY TIMES OVER!! Build massive thighs that ripple with functional muscle by doing this course – NO, “rippling” with muscle is NOT an exaggeration! Build MUSCLE on your entire body and lose weight quicker by doing squats, yes, just squats, I repeat, JUST SQUATS!! and nothing else quicker than almost ANY OTHER EXERCISE. If you ain’t squatting, you aint training, and thats a maxim that holds true my friend – so does the maxim of “if you squat, I dont care what else you do”, youre going to GROW! Increased lower back strength without doing a single exercise for the lower back, the squat taxes EVERYTHING when done right. Improved – VASTLY improved performance on all your upper body exercises, including pull-ups. (especially pull-ups, I should say). Perhaps the most amazing benefit of this sort of heavy duty LEG training is the indirect gains you see in GRIP Strength – writing this makes me feel literally light headed thinking about it, trust me on this one. You can forget about digestive issues like IBS, constipation, flatulence and such the general population is afflicted with – squats are the best medicine ever, natural, and you dont need no doctor for them either (and neither the bills, hehe). A sense of calmness and sang froid when you get good at this that will translate over into your daily life, work, relationships, all of it. Improved performance in the BEDROOM – especially when you combine squats with isometrics and pull-ups. You’ll build mental focus and gumption like NOTHING else. A lot of lazy fools will tell you high rep squats are boring. When you hear that, think “ah, yes. They require FOCUS and dedication, so these idiots think it’s boring!”. You’ll build FEROCITY from the inside out like nothing else you’ve done before, you’ll truly understand, comprehend the meaning of being a TRUE BEAST! And many, many more that I have not mentioned here as yet, but will as I go along. This course is worth its weight many times over in GOLD. And if you're IN ANY way serious, or even CLAIM to be serious about physical training done right, you'll want to get your mitts on this nigh invaluable course NOW. Just do it, my friend. NOW! Best, Rahul Mookerjee