Big Squat Wednesday: More Than a Day—A Coaching Philosophy
By Joe “Big House” Kenn
Vice President of Performance Education, Dynamic Fitness & Strength
If you've spent any time around strength and conditioning over the past three decades, you've probably heard the phrases Big Squat Wednesday or Big Squat Friday. Today, they're part of the culture in many weight rooms across the country. Recently, I even smiled when I saw my good friend Ben Hilgart posting about Big Squat Thursday with Boise State. Seeing that reminded me just how far one simple idea has traveled over the years. But what many coaches don't know is where it all started, and more importantly, why it started.
The story begins in the winter of 1994 when I was given my first opportunity to oversee a Division I (1-AA) football strength and conditioning program at Boise State University. At that time, most football programs followed the traditional four-day lifting split of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Wednesday serving as the off day. At the same time, I was in the early stages of developing what would eventually become the Tier System, a whole-body approach to training that was very different from what most football programs were doing. My belief was simple: athletes compete using their entire body, so they should train using their entire body. Whether they are sprinting, jumping, changing direction, blocking, or tackling, athletic performance is a coordinated effort, not an isolated muscle action. That philosophy became the foundation of how I approached program design.
Like most strength coaches during the 1990s, our programs revolved around the clean, the bench press, and the squat. Success was often measured by personal records, and there was tremendous pride in building athletes who could move serious weight. As I began organizing the weekly training schedule, one question kept coming back to me. Why was Wednesday an off day? Around that same time, I had read an article discussing workplace productivity that identified Wednesday as the most productive day of the week. Whether it was from the New York Times or another publication, the idea stuck with me. If Wednesday represented the most productive day of the week for business, why couldn't it become the most productive day of the week in the weight room?
That single thought changed the way I viewed the entire training week. Instead of giving athletes the day off, I built the week around it. More importantly, I made one deliberate decision that separated Wednesday from every other training session: we eliminated conditioning. There would be no running, no extra metabolic work, and no competing physical demands. Everything we did on that day was directed toward one objective—producing the biggest and strongest squats possible. The athletes knew exactly what the expectation was before they even walked through the doors of the weight room. Wednesday wasn't just another lift; it became an event. It became Big Squat Wednesday.
As my career progressed, that philosophy followed me from Boise State to the University of Utah, Arizona State University, the University of Louisville, and eventually into the National Football League. Along the way, however, football itself began to change. Coaches increasingly adopted player-run practices during the middle of the week, and suddenly Wednesday was no longer available for heavy lower-body training. The environment had changed, and good coaching requires adaptation. Some of my former staff members, including Josh Storms and Ben Hilgart, recognized that reality before I did and shifted the emphasis to what eventually became known as Big Squat Friday. When I arrived at Louisville, our football schedule demanded the same adjustment, so I made the move as well. The day changed, but the philosophy never did.
Looking back today, I realize that the greatest lesson from Big Squat Wednesday has very little to do with the squat itself. It has everything to do with intentional programming. Too often, coaches become attached to schedules simply because that's the way they've always been done. Great programming doesn't revolve around tradition; it revolves around priorities. The training week should reflect the demands of the sport, the practice schedule, the recovery needs of the athletes, and the objectives of the program. When those variables change, great coaches adjust without abandoning the principles that made their systems successful in the first place.
My own coaching philosophy has certainly evolved over the past thirty-plus years. Early in my career, I wanted athletes to build monster squats because that was the benchmark of strength. Over time, experience taught me something even more valuable. I came to understand that movement comes before muscle, that health is wealth, and that no single exercise defines athletic development. Today, while the squat remains one of the most valuable exercises in the weight room, it shares the stage with front squats, unilateral training, movement quality, and a much broader exercise pool designed to develop complete athletes rather than simply stronger lifters.
That's really the story behind Big Squat Wednesday. It was never about Wednesday. It was never even about the squat. It was about creating a clear training priority, building the week around that priority, and having the confidence to evolve as the coaching environment changed. Great systems are not successful because they never change. They are successful because they continue to adapt while remaining true to the principles that created them.
Thirty years later, coaches may call it Big Squat Wednesday, Big Squat Friday, or even Big Squat Thursday. To me, that's never been the important part. The important part is that coaches continue to think critically about why they organize training the way they do. If this story encourages one coach to challenge convention, prioritize intent over
tradition, and build a better training week for their athletes, then Big Squat Wednesday has done exactly what it was intended to do.
— Coach Joe “Big House” Kenn
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