Widowmaker Squat (2026)

Round two. Last year I took 225 for 20 and wrote that reps 16-20 stunk. This year the bar had 245 on it, and reps 16-20 still stunk.

Same rules as always: roughly your 10-rep max, 20 reps, rest at the top as long as you need, and the bar doesn't go back in the rack until the set is done. Every rep to parallel or below.

At 160 lb bodyweight, that's a 1.53x BW widowmaker, up from 1.36x last year. I'm 5 lb lighter and the bar is 20 lb heavier. A 20 lb jump doesn't sound like much on paper, but on a 20-rep set it's 400 extra pounds of total volume, on a set that's already built to break you.

Like last year, I didn't do any special prep. I'm still running a 5/3/1 variation, and this year I've been tracking it in Brogression (https://brogression.app), a 5/3/1 app I built. It tells me what to lift each day and logs every session, so I didn't have to guess whether the squat was trending up. The numbers were already there.

Last year's attempt: https://talaga.training/challenges/widowmaker-squat

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