I remember sitting at a tikki bar with my best friend in the Summer of ’08 having a conversation about lifting. He said, “do you think you could beat Jon Cole if he were still competing?” Without a second thought I said, “absolutely, the best geared lifters would be the best raw lifters, we just choose not to do it.” The funny thing is I actually believed it.

A few years later I had retired from geared lifting and was looking for something new and so raw lifting seemed like a great way to show these raw assholes how strong multi ply lifters really were. I rolled up to Achieve Fitness like I was storming Normandy, my plan all mapped out and ready. I had figured I would hit 5’s until 600, then 3’s until 700, then singles until 800. I figured 800 would be a good start, right? I unracked 500 and couldn’t even get near parallel. Ok, no prob, I’ll bring my feet in. I unracked 500 and it felt like someone dropped a small SUV on my back.

Bodybuilding seemed like a pretty good new sport, or maybe MMA, or even sailing? I figured out shortly after that Im too fat, too slow, and can’t navigate out of my driveway and so I needed to figure this raw squat thing out. The first thing I had to do was come to terms with being a weak, high squatter. The first step is admitting you have a problem. I had gone from a 1060 geared squatter to missing weights a high school Tackle can hit. It’s a hard realization because the weights feel incredibly light on your back, but there is a dark, horrible place, that is only whispered about in multi ply circles. This place is called the hole and it isn’t something one has to think about in a suit.

That one inch below parallel is where all my problems existed. I needed to change my training and my technique to address this. The first thing I had to do was ditch all the sweet tools I had used as a geared lifters. Bands and boxes are awesome implements when you have a squat suit pushing you out of the hole. However, they don’t fix any problems associated with raw squatting. I needed to address a major problem any geared lifter will find when ditching the suit.

Quads were a muscle that I hadn’t touched in years and was completely underdeveloped. I went back to leg presses, hack squats, and leg extensions. My lower back/abs could handle the weights I was using easily, but my legs and brain could not. It felt like I was hitting the floor when I was one inch high. I started doing ultra low pause squats to completely eliminate any fear in the hole. It was like swimming with sharks at first, but eventually I couldn’t squat high anymore. I decided to keep speed work as a tool to work a quick rebound out of the hole and work on dropping faster. Suits had made me used to an ultra slow descent and I needed a more fluid bounce out of the hole.

My technique needed a little bit of changing as well. I had to learn how not to sit way back. I push my hips back to start the lift, then try to sit straight down. I brought my feet in about 2 inches and this allowed me to still use my hips and easily break parallel. I made sure EVERY rep was low. There is no need for a raw lifter to ever cut warm ups high. In fact, my warm ups are lower than my actual work sets. I used the same basic back and stomach set up I used in gear and keep pushing my knees out the entire lift. I also brought the bar lower than I did during my multi ply career. Being tight is even more important as I don’t have a suit to do this for me anymore, plus I like to feel comfortable during lifts. I want nothing else moving except for the squat muscles and a lower bar locks me in super tight.

Greg totaling 2000 raw at 242…