...but reducing Grizzly down to his zercher lifts is missing the forest for the trees. While Grizzly is an all around tank of a man, his most impressive, yet overlooked feature is his GLUTES.
When observing Kapakoulak's training, it's important to understand that he is a former Olympic Weightlifter who was forced to change his training style due to catastrophic injury and he continues to train with the goal of maximizing full body power. The specific structure of his programming is entirely up to speculation, but what we can observe is his exercise selection. While the following isn't an exhaustive list of everything Grizzly does, it encompasses the frequent and relevant work he does that will contribute to glute hypertrophy:
Squats:
Due to his previous injury, Grizzly does not perform full range of motion squats. Instead, he will perform numerous variations of partial squats and box squats. When we observe his form we can see that Grizzly has a hip dominant "hinge" style of squatting often done in powerlifting. His shins remain vertical, his stance wide, and the bar rests lower on his traps as he sits back into the squat. This type of squatting utilizes the glutes throughout the entire range of motion to bring the hips forward and straighten the torso under the bar. While Grizzly's range of motion is short, his hip and knee angle is still within range of a conventional deadlift and he compensates by utilizing a much greater absolute load than would be possible with a deep squat.
Essentially, Kyriakos Kapakoulak turns his squats into intense, heavy hip hinges which are a large contributing factor to his glute development.
Sled pulling variants:
Also, presumably due to his injury, Grizzly does not perform any type of standing deadlifts. Occasionally he will perform them from a seated position, but more frequently he will utilize various forms of heavy sled pulls.
The rope-sled-pull allows Grizzly to pull the load towards him rather than straight up from the floor which is much more forgiving on the lower back while offering a similar, yet more glute focused stimulus.
Goodmornings:
Grizzly will often perform heavy, high rep goodmornings. What's notable is that the tempo he uses is similar to bodybuilding style pump work. He focuses on the range of motion where most tension is on his glutes and releases tension when he approaches lockout.
Everything is a hinge!
Even when it comes to his upper body training, Grizzly will incorporate his hips into the movement.
Grizzly utilizes his hips to perform upright rows.
Grizzly deadlifts the bar to generate momentum for a set of Yates rows
Grizzly uses momentum to perform cheat curls
No matter what his training split is, it's clear that multiple forms of hip hinging will be done on a given day and he will perform these movements in the 8-30 rep range. This type of volume and frequency adds up immensely over time, so it's no wonder that Grizzly was able to build Boulder-like glutes.
The Takeaway:
Grizzly's goal was never to focus on glute hypertrophy. It just so happened that glutes are integral to the pursuit of explosive power and they are heavily involved in any hip hinging movement. It's tempting to conclude that his unorthodox exercise selection harbors some secret to glute hypertrophy, but in truth, Grizzly had to utilize movements that were safe for his injuries. What we can learn from his method is that even when limited, massive glutes can still be built through through high volume, frequency and very heavy weight! Our glutes can handle much more of all three than any other muscle, and if we think as creatively as Grizzly, we can sneak in that extra work at any time!
