Back when I was in college, I mixed a couple different lifting styles together, added my own flair to it, and was paid off with a big reward... Or, if I'm being a little more honest, I completely screwed up one of the best bodybuilding routines of all time, and still managed to achieve success.

Ever heard of the 20-rep squat program? If not, you should have heard of it, and if so, you know how effective it claims to be. They say you can gain 30 lbs of muscle in six weeks. In fact, articles have been written by folks (such as Dragondoor's Marty Singer RKC) who actually HAVE done this.

So what does my college self try to do? Take a perfectly good routine, and add my own garbage to it.

First of all, you're supposed to squat for 20 straight reps with deep breaths in between (as many as you need to gut out all 20 reps), and then the next workout, do the same thing but with 5 more lbs of weight added onto the barbell. You ideally do this two days a week or 3 days a week (Monday Wednesday Friday).

I KIND of did this. Except I decided to add olympic lifting, too - specifically, 5 sets of 5 reps of hanging power cleans, and 5 sets of 4 reps of split jerks (left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot forward, right foot forward on each set). Sound like a lot of volume? Yeah, it probably is. But I was a 19 year old stupid kid - apparently I could handle it.

I did the sets like this - one clean set, one jerk set, one clean set, one jerk set, etc. Then after all of my olympic sets were done, I did 20 squats.

This was far too much volume for me. I could only manage 3-4 workouts every two weeks, so I did maybe 7-8 total workouts throughout the routine. The 20-rep squat routine should last 6 weeks - I burnt out BIG time after 4 1/2 weeks, and had to take time off to mentally recover. My CNS was fried.

Apparently, though, if you're going to screw up a routine, better off screwing it up with olympic lifting than anything else. Olympic lifting is known among old-time lifters and strongmen to be a great bodybuilding boon, but modern-day bodybuilders tend to have forgotten that.

I began the routine at 213 lbs, and finished the routine at 232 lbs. I had also lost half an inch on my waist despite the 19 pound gain, so despite not getting my bodyfat tested, I can safely assume that I gained more muscle than fat.

Crazy thing is, once I actually have enough money to get back into the gym, I'm going to do this routine again and see if I can pull it off. Much of the reason I had to cut down the number of workouts before, was to minimize the bruising to my clavicles from the olympic lifts. If you're going to try to imitate my routine, be VERY careful and don't let the barbell smash into your clavicles. Lower it SOFTLY - as much as possible at least.

What did I eat? Well, I chugged half a gallon of milk immediately after each workout. I made one or two milk-and-powder protein shakes a day. I drank chocolate milk on top of that. I ate quesadillas a lot, giant bowls of cereal during the morning, and dinner was whatever my mom made for me (come on, I was a stupid college student who never knew how to cook at the time). Haphazard and NOT as nutritious as it could be, but apparently, it worked.

One of these days I'll do this again, but with much better eating and with less clavicle bruising.