Jason Blaha Powerbuilding Training Lower Body Day – 5-23-2025!

Today’s Training Session:
-Paused Back Squat: 335 3×5
-4” Deficit Deadlift: 405 x7
-Barbell Calf Raise: 315 3×7
-Hip Thrust: 405 3×5
-Belt Squat: 200 3×8
-Reverse Hyper Extension: 220 3×12
-Hanging Leg Raise: 3 sets
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Hey everybody, it’s Jason Blah here. Once again, it’s time for another leg day. But a quick reminder, if you guys will please click like down below, be greatly appreciated. If you’re not following or subscribe, please do so. And if you will be kind enough to drop me a comment down below to say hello or to give your thoughts um or ask questions, go ahead and do so. I would greatly appreciate that. Let’s get over to the training. Um obviously stuff’s going to be a little harder because I’m cutting now. I’m doing two plus hours of cardio a day, but I’ve got to make these leg days count. So, I’m doing stuff to where I’m really focusing on trying to stimulate as much muscle growth as I can. Uh, with while still going heavy, but without pushing stuff to the bleeding edge on heaviness. So, it’s things where we’re doing pause squats. We’re doing longer ranges of motion on everything, even if it makes us um, you know, reduce weight. So, in this case, I’m doing deep pause squats, right? I’m going all the way to my hamstrings to uh, sitting on top of my calves, pausing there, coming up. Obviously, it’s going to force me to use less weight. Um, on these I felt so much fatigue and it’s again I think it’s the cardio accumulating because I did three sets of squats every uh both leg days which are twice a week. Uh, this second set of squats I’m just like man I just don’t have more squats in me and I almost didn’t want to deadlift. I’m like no but I’ve got to deadlift. If I only do two sets of back squats today instead of three because it’s only going to give me five sets of squats for the whole week. I better deadlift. So we did these though. But they felt good, you know. So again, um, and this is a little more wide stance. This isn’t crazy narrow stance or any of that like I’ve been doing. This is, you know, right about shoulder width. Still somewhat narrow. Uh, so again, kind of a kind of a high bar approach with a little more a little more uh stance width, but again, focusing on the range of motion, focusing on the pause at the bottom. So again, making sure my quads are getting hammered uh as hard as possible, hammering them as hard as possible. And I actually put hip thrust back in today. I’d said I was going to put glute bridges or hip thrust in in place of the the GHRs and I go and I went ahead and did that. Um the deficits I went ahead and added like another half inch. I did three and a half inches. I’m like let’s just do a 4 inch deficit today. So again, it’s just the plates I’m choosing to stand on. And I might work that up even higher. I might look at all that and be like, can I get another inch? I might try to work two of those reds in for a 5 inch deficit. Um but I got seven reps of 405. Felt relatively challenging. I’m not doing a lot of volumes of of these. I may work these up a little bit over time as I get more used to all the cardio I’m doing. Uh mainly because deficit deadlifts are so good for hypertrophy, right? I’m a big advocate for the deadlift for brute strength, but when it comes to just getting thicker because we we take out all the bad stuff people say about deadlift, well, they’re not taking through enough range of motion, all this nonsense, right? Okay. So, let’s just go into a deeper range of motion. And that’s what I did. All right. calf raises. Uh, I did the same thing. I’ve been going on that one and a half inch plate. I was doing a one and a one and a half. I’m like, let’s try this two and a half inch plate. This is super hard. Oh my god. In the boots. So, normally I can do 500 without a plate for 10 for those who who are aware. Even on the other plate, I was able to get eights with 405 315 up on this taller plate because of that. And notice I only come up to right at a neutral position. I don’t think we have to go really high for calves. I think even that stretch is really really worth something there. Um, that was hard. It was really hard. I only got seven reps on all the sets just to put in perspective going up on that plate and that’s with only 315. So there is our context. I lost a whole plate per side. Okay, I lost a whole plate per side by adding that extra inch. And that goes to show sometimes what these really deep stretches do. Um, but it felt good, right? It felt good. I felt like my calves got a good stimulus from it. Um, of course I have jacked calves already. I don’t even have to train calves. Quite frankly, calf training doesn’t seem to do that much for me in general. But I wonder if now that I’m doing some of this these deeper stretches if they’re going to start growing. But what’s the idea? Why am I training calves? One, just that extra load up on top. I feel like it’s just training more stabilizers, my trunk, everything else. But the other the other big deal for me is uh I’m doing tons and tons of walking, tons of biking to burn their calories. Okay, see where I’m about to go? If I can add any muscle to my calves, what’s that worth? That’s worth more calorie burn. That is literally additional energy expenditure. So this matters. So it matters a lot. So, for me, I I am going to put a lot of effort into glutes, quads, calves right now. Um, even though I’m cutting and even though my upper body, my arms are getting a lot of priority, really arms and delts. But, but realistically, I need to make sure these things are growing because it’s worth a lot. So, I did hip thrust today. All right, this first set is probably the best in terms of footing. The others I went all the way up onto my tippy toes because I pulled further in. I was able to keep the balls of my feet down, the heels down. And the other two sets, I didn’t even realize I went on my tippy toes. I pulled my feet further in because I’m like, “Oh, my toes are right there on the edge of the rack.” Like, this is the only good spot I have where I can really set up without uh the barbell hitting other stuff. And I had to put that thing up there. And I had to put a plate. So, it won’t tip. Um because otherwise, I can’t lay it all the way back against a reverse hyper there. Um it won’t actually fit because that’s at an angle up. It’s not It’s not a straight up and down. So, it’s not like I can put those legs against the base and it’ll be up against it. But I’ve got a plate wedge there. This was really stable for the thing, but it’s like my toes are right at the edge, right? So, by pulling them further in, it forced me onto the tippy toes when I locked, which was kind of funny, which also makes it more quad dominant. Um, but realistically, uh, I should use the other position. So, I’m going to make a note of that for next time. Uh, because I didn’t realize it till after I look at the footage, by the way. So, I’m happier with the first set in terms of how it looked, but they all felt really, really good. But I felt glutes and I felt quads on all of it. Um, they do work hamstrings a lot though, but the hamstrings, it’s going to be the further your feet out. So, again, I don’t feel like doing glute ham raises right now. Be honest. They make me cramp. I’m doing all this cardio, all this other stuff. I just don’t want my hamstrings cramping. I don’t want to deal with it. My hamstrings will grow from all the stuff I’m doing. The deficit deadlifts, reverse hypers, even even the hip thrusts. And hip thrusts carry over to my deadlifts really well because I tend to miss lockouts. and think about what a hip thrust or a glute bridge does. So in my case, I’m going to mess with hip thrust, glute bridges, stuff like that for a bit. But again, they also give quad development. So, but I really do want the glutes to grow also. So, it’s going to be glutes are going to be important to keep my deadlift up. And so, mainly just I’m wanting to give stimulus to these bigger muscles in the lower body for purposes of cutting. I don’t even think they need to be bigger visually, but I do need to make sure I stay strong uh as I lose body fat. So I need them to to come up for that purpose. But also that other point, fat burn, calorie burn, keeping all those big muscles of the legs in an anabolic state. Absolutely critical. Absolutely critical during a fat loss phase because again, what’s it going to do? It’s going to help me burn more calories with all the the list cardio and steady state cardio. Um so then afterwards, these were hard afterwards. I was like, man, that other stuff really fatigued. Like the the hip thrust fatigued my quads. Like these the these were like on fire afterwards. Even though I still hit my my normal stuff, it’s the same weights and reps I got last time. Yeah, I definitely felt the difference. But looking at some of it, like this last set, I could have got a hair deeper. It’s still well below parallel, but it was there’s kind of a bit of fatigue from those those hip thrusts. So, I’m going to have to get used to doing them and then I’ll focus back on making sure I’m sinking these deep. Yes, these are deep, right? They’re deep, but some of those reps I could have got a a little bit hair deeper, I think, like I got last time. So, again, want to make sure we get that. And then we finished up with reverse hypers. I took a little bit of weight off the reverse hyper. Trying to make it super super super strict. So, this is only 220 instead of the the 310. I did 12s, but I’m trying to control as much as possible. You can only do so much because it’s on roller bearings. I want them to be strict, strict, strict. Um, and then I superseted this with hanging leg raises. And I said I’m going to prioritize more hanging leg raises. Uh, I haven’t done as many of them, but I’m like, I think I can start doing three sets on my lower days. So, that’ll give me six sets a week. Want to make sure we get a little more ab work. I want the grip work from it, the free grip training. But again, the same thing. My waistline’s going to get smaller. I need the muscles to be stronger for more support to compensate. A lot of times guys when we lose body fat and our waistline does get smaller, we do lose a little bit of the support in there in terms of bracing and other stuff for our big lifts. So I do need to double down on on the ab work. I need to stay on top of it uh for those purposes. Obviously the reverse hyper I also am doing it. It’s my most important prehab exercise. You guys know why I love it. You know why I preach it. But it’s also a pretty decent hamstring movement. It’s a great glute and erector exercise. It really is king for lower back, but I honestly get glutes out. The first time I ever got glute doms I can ever remember other than maybe some box squatting after draining. Uh came from these, right? The reverse hypers. Absolutely. Absolutely. Gave me glute doms one time. And doms are not always indicative of muscle growth, but I thought it was interesting. It was just an interesting note that stuck with me years later. Like one of the times I went really hard uh early on with uh owning it, I actually got glute dos. I’m like, I don’t get that from other stuff. Of course, we’re doing all the deep squatting movements. We’re doing the uh the hip thrust and other stuff. My glutes are getting a lot of work, but again, we can never have glutes that are too strong or too big for any athletic or strength purposes. Um and even aesthetically, like, dude, no one’s ever going to be like, “Well, Mary, your glutes are too well developed.” I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, that’s not going to happen. So, it’s just all around good, good, good, good to build our glutes. Uh, so again, giving them lots of priority and like I said, making sure the abs are getting lots of work is going to be important moving forward with this. So, pretty happy with today’s workout other than a little bit of positioning on the hip thrust. So, I hope it’s been informative and I’ll talk to you guys and gals next time.