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Smolov Jr

Three weeks, twelve squat sessions, and not much else.

• 4 days a week
• 3 weeks
• Barbell
• One lift

What it is

A three week block built from four squat sessions a week. The four sessions never change: six sets of six, seven sets of five, eight sets of four, ten sets of three, at 70%, 75%, 80% and 85% of your max respectively. All that changes is the weight, which goes up by a flat amount each week.

That is the entire program. Twelve sessions, four templates, two increments, then you rest and test. It is the shortest and densest block in this section, and by some distance the most demanding relative to its length.

There is a bench version that runs on exactly the same schedule with a smaller weekly increment. Everything below applies to it, with the numbers noted where they differ.

Where it came from

The longer Smolov cycle is attributed to Sergey Smolov, a Russian coach, and reached English-speaking lifters largely through Pavel Tsatsouline's writing around the turn of the 2000s. The full version runs about thirteen weeks across several distinct phases and is a substantially bigger commitment than this.

Smolov Jr is not one of those phases as published. It is a standalone block that lifters assembled from the base phase and ran on its own, and the "Jr" name is a community coinage rather than anything Smolov wrote. Like most programs that spread through forums, the details vary a little between versions, particularly the weekly increments and whether people run it off a true max or a slightly reduced one.

We have written the scheme in our own words and numbers below. It is not a reproduction of anyone's published material.

The structure

The same four sessions every week. Weeks 2 and 3 use week 1's weights plus the increment shown.

In kilos, for a lifter with a current squat max of 150 kg, week 1 runs:

• Day 1: 6 sets of 6 at 105 kg 70%
• Day 2: 7 sets of 5 at 112.5 kg 75%
• Day 3: 8 sets of 4 at 120 kg 80%
• Day 4: 10 sets of 3 at 127.5 kg 85%

Week 2 is 110, 117.5, 125 and 132.5 kg. Week 3 is 115, 122.5, 130 and 137.5 kg. After the last session, rest 4 to 7 days and test a new max on a fresh day.

Why it is built that way

133 squat reps a week, 399 across the block, at an average of roughly 77% of your max. For comparison, the Russian Squat Program spreads about 270 reps across six weeks. Smolov Jr does half again as much work in half the time.

That is the whole idea, and it is a deliberate bet. Rather than balancing training stress against recovery week by week, this block deliberately runs a large stress debt for a short, bounded period and then pays it back all at once in the rest days afterwards. You are not supposed to feel good in week 3. You are supposed to feel good on the test day, about a week after the last session, when the fatigue has drained off and the fitness has not.

The four sessions are arranged so that volume and intensity trade off across the week rather than within a session: the highest rep day is the lightest, the heaviest day has the fewest reps per set, and every set at every load is uniform. Nothing ramps and nothing is taken to failure by design, which is what makes that much volume survivable at all.

The flat weekly increment is the other notable choice. Adding kilos rather than percentage points means the jump is the same size regardless of where you are in the block, which keeps the arithmetic simple and, more importantly, keeps the increment small. 5 kg a week on a 150 kg squat is a little over 3%. Across three weeks that is a meaningful climb on top of a workload that is already near the ceiling.

The bench version uses 2.5 kg because upper body lifts progress in smaller absolute steps. Proportionally it is a similar demand.

What the evidence says

No controlled trial exists for this program, and its reputation rests entirely on the reports of people who have run it.

The general principles it leans on are well supported: accumulated volume drives adaptation, spreading volume across more sessions makes more of it possible, and reducing training stress before a test lets accumulated fitness show on the day. Those are cited on the hub article.

What is plausible mechanism rather than tested fact is that this particular dose, in this particular three week window, is a better use of the time than a more moderate version of the same work. Very high volume blocks sit at the far end of the dose-response curve, where the research is thinner and the individual variation is larger. There is a real possibility that a good portion of what people gain here comes from the rest-and-test structure at the end rather than from the volume itself, and no one has separated the two.

What is simply tradition is the specific arithmetic: 6, 7, 8 and 10 sets, 70 to 85%, 5 kg a week. These numbers work in the sense that a lot of people have run them and come out stronger. They are not a measured optimum, and there is no reason to believe a slightly gentler version would not produce most of the same result for a fraction of the cost.

Who it suits, who it does not

It suits an intermediate lifter with a genuinely current max, three weeks with nothing else competing for recovery, access to a squat rack four days a week, and a clear reason to want a bigger squat right now.

It does not suit beginners. If you are still progressing session to session, this is a great deal of unnecessary suffering for a result you can get by continuing to add weight.

It does not suit anyone playing a sport, running meaningful distance, working a physically demanding job, or training anything else hard. This is not a matter of toughness. The block assumes essentially all of your recovery, and if something else is taking a share, the weights in week 3 will not be there.

It does not suit anyone who cannot commit to all twelve sessions. A missed session in a six week block is noise. A missed session here is 8% of the program.

And it is emphatically not a way to train year round. It is a short specialisation block with an end date, and the full Smolov cycle it came from is a different and much larger commitment that should not be confused with this.

Joint soreness that builds across the block is common and is worth paying attention to. If something moves from tired to painful, stop and speak to a qualified professional rather than pushing to finish the three weeks.

How to run it well

Be conservative with the starting max. More conservative than you would be for a six week block. Many lifters run this off a number slightly below their true max precisely because week 3 is where an optimistic starting figure turns the program into a series of missed sets. If you are between two numbers, take the lower one.

Squats only. The program prescribes the main lift and nothing else, and that is the design rather than a gap. Light upper body work and easy walking are fine. Additional leg work, hard conditioning and anything that leaves your legs tired are not.

Respect the rest periods. Ten sets of three at 85% is a long session if you rest properly and an impossible one if you do not. Budget the time before you start the block, not halfway through it.

Do not take sets to failure. Every set is meant to be completed with something left. If a set feels like a maximum effort in week 1, the starting number is wrong.

If a session goes badly, finish what you can and move on. Do not repeat it, do not make it up later, and do not add the missed sets to the next day. If two or three sessions in a row fall apart, the honest move is to stop the block, take your rest days, and restart later from a lower starting max. Grinding out a broken week 3 does not produce a good test.

Sleep and eat accordingly. For three weeks, recovery is the program as much as the squatting is.

After the block

Rest 4 to 7 days completely, then test a new one-rep max on a fresh day. That single is the number your next block should be built from.

Then go and do something else. You have just done twelve squat sessions and nothing else in three weeks, so the sensible next move is a block with more balance and more room for the movements that were on hold. Push / Pull / Legs is a reasonable landing spot. If you want to stay on strength but at a sustainable cadence, the Texas Method is a better long-term home than any peaking block.

Do not run Smolov Jr back to back. Whatever the block gives you, it gives you once, and running it again on a tired base mostly produces the fatigue without the result.

Concepts used in this article are explained in how training programs are built, which also carries the reference list.