I'm not sure how popular this is, I thought of this at the beginning of the year. The "challenge" is to squat a combined total of 1,000,000 lbs in a year.
It ends up being 19,231 lbs/ week.

I started on this journey on January 5th, obviously Jan 1st would have been more ideal.  Currently I'm trying to squat every 5 days, I'm trying to maximize my volume while enabling for recovery and muscle growth.
I've learned a few things along the way, which you might find interesting. 1- if you are doing lots of squats, 5 days is a good amount of recovery, but depending on what else you do 6-7 days may be better.  On my recovery days I am trying to work in 1-2 intense cardio sessions, lately I am digging the elliptical. In the first 2 recovery days the elliptical can be quite tough. But on the 4th day it's fine and I think helps me get circulation into my large muscles to help me recover.
The best weight to use is ~60% of your max squat. For me, I've been mainly repping 225, but I think this challenge would be doable repping 185 if you needed to. One of the advantages to this lower weight is you can really work on your depth and your form with these lighter weights.

Yesterday was my biggest day so far! Here's how it went.  I warm up with 5-8 minutes on a recumbent bike.
135 x15 x2
225 x12 x6  (last set I did 14)
185 x12 x2  (last set I did 14)
135x20
For just over 28,000 lbs.

I am also not in the best Cardio shape at the moment, and sets of 12 can get pretty tiring. It's for this reason I am generally doing "pause sets" or "split sets". I will do 8 reps, then stand in place and take 8 deep breaths, and then do the final 4 reps. It generally takes me about 45 seconds for 12 reps and I watch the clock to get 2 minutes of rest between sets to catch my breath and allow for recovery. The last 'heavy" set I usually allow myself 2.5 minutes of rest. And a final odd note, I have been doing squats barefoot (well, socks) so far because I don't have any good flat shoes.

Anyway, I have now squatted 206,575 lbs so far this year, I am at 20.66% of my squat goal, and I am well ahead of the minimum pace at this point.
This post is not intended to be a humblebrag, I thought people might find it interesting!

you started a month ago and now you can squat 225? like started from scratch?

I'm sorry if I was unclear.
I started squatting last year in the spring. Took the summer off.  It's taken me quite a while to dial in my form but I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere now. I used to have terrible lower back cramps and soreness but after some tweaks to my form I'm starting to experience very little pain and soreness in my back. Now it's all quads and glutes.
I just increased my volume and intensity for this challenge.
This would possibly be difficult for someone just starting out, but depending on how strong you are, could be possible.

Thanks for the clarification. Very impressive workout. Do you do any deadlifts? and if so when do you fit them into your schedule? I Find it hard to get squats and deadlift in and be able to run 3 miles a few times a week

I don't do any deadlifts, I am worried that they would interfere with my recovery. I could probably do them if I did squats every 7 days instead of 5.
I also quit deadlifts last year because they were hurting my lower back- obv need better form.

try Romanian deadlift, I did and it helped (should you decide to do them again)

Yikes.  I don't think I would do squats without deads at least once a week.  And I really don't care for deads.

Any particular reason?

You did 146 total weighted squats in one workout?

150 yesterday, but yes. Over the course of about 30 minutes.
I am aware of Rhabdomyolysis, I am hoping not to get that cause it's really bad.  I am hoping that listening to my body and slowly progressing I can avoid this.

Just to keep a strong back.  Heavy squats are not just loading the legs, a strong stable core is a good way to not get hurt on any lift.  If you have a weak back or problems staying tight/breathing right on deads, I'd get that fixed before it causes a problem.  But I'm 40 and really worried about not getting hurt.  The reason I started lifting was to not be broken down at 60.

I like the goal...that's pretty cool.  

What do your other lifting days look like?  I'm assuming you're not just lifting once every 5 days.

I agree that you should throw in deadlifts.  Also, curls.  Gotta do curls for the girls.  

ETA:  I never thought about that long term.  I always like adding up my numbers post workout and thinking "I just lifted a combined ton or more."

Who would keep track of stuff like that?

I haven't really gotten a good schedule going but I hope do 2 days of upper body per week and 1-2 days of cardio per week. The 5-day rotation for squats kind of screws up weekly schedules.
I have 2 different "upper body" days that I rotate between, focused on bench press one day (flat) + overhead press, and Dumbell Bench Press + Incline Bench on the other day. I try to do free dips at the end of each workout.

I'm just about peaked in strength right now (just upped my Bench PR) but I'm trying to cut down a lot of weight (30-40 lbs), so I'm trying to focus on higher reps and not higher weight. Actually kind of undecided about how I'm going to proceed, but I do need MORE cardio this year than I did last year.

The squats being a big deal, everything else takes a bit of a back seat. Hopefully as I get even stronger, the squats won't be as taxing.  I could put them on a 7-day rotation if I had to, that would make everything else easier to fit in.

You shut up.

I love when someone provides me something that is self evident.  Meh, it's not an Excel spreadsheet where I can check the calculations so it's probably wrong.

I don't know whether to call you a beast or get you a straight jacket.

I would never claim to be awesome at lifting weights. I seem to excel at reps over maximum weight. And I'm currently about 30-35 lbs overweight.
The straight jacket might be the better choice. Although I just read about a guy who did 20 sets of bicep curls 3x a week...

I tweaked my back doing squats on Saturday. Not exactly sure what happened, I was on the 3rd rep of the 3rd set. I racked the weights and took a 2 minute break, and then continued. There was some pain when I stood up with the weight, but no pain in doing the reps. I was able to do about 100 more reps after I hurt myself so I don't think it's that severe. It's continued to slowly get better and barely bothers me some 2 days later. Any ideas of what happened? Is this a sign I should increase my rest?

ETA: Form was pretty good when I hurt myself, I wasn't off balance or leaned over.

I'd probably guess that a stronger posterior chain, via deads, would keep your body ready for the increased workload.

I listened to a podcast of a guy (American) that was training with the bulgarians for a few years, all they did was front squats, cleans/jerks and snatches.  He was hitting his max front squat as many as 35 times A WEEK, or 3-5 times A DAY!!  Which is nuts, but not the point.  He ended up with a career ending wrist injury and now does powerlifting in the US.  He said that all that stupid max squats on a daily basis could have been duplicated in far less time with smarter programming, specifically by adding deadlifts into the program.  This is a guy that when he got back to the US he decided to try back squats and hit a 600lb back squat his first day at it, THREE TIMES.  If dead lifts are good enough for him, I'll put up with them even though I hate them.

That said, I also had some butt wink problems when I first started squatting and a heavy load would flex the lower spine and it would hurt for a few days.  Again, I think deadlifts helped but so did cleaning up technique and mobility.

Here we are 3 days later, my back feels fine. Heck, my muscles aren't even that sore. So I either give myself some extra rest or start working on a cycle with deadlifts.
I could presumably do squats and deadlifts on a 7 day cycle, like do Squats on day 1 and Deadlifts on day 4. I could also keep my current cycle and reduce the workload slightly. My back is pretty strong, although when doing some heavy seated low rows a couple weeks ago I experienced some lower back pain, maybe that was a warning sign. I just decided to not do it.

Quick update: I just did squats yesterday and my running total is now 338,040 lbs, I am 33.8% of the way to my goal. I need to get into a regular rotation. I strained my back a little maxing out on overhead press a couple days before so I took some extra rest. I think I am going to try some deadlifts pretty soon.

This is an interesting and cool workout. However I highly doubt its optimal for gaining absolute strength.

A cycle I used to use that gave me the volume I wanted but still provided enough rest looked like this.  I worked out four days a week and split my body into three sections; legs, back and biceps, chest and triceps.

WEEK 1

Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Chest and Triceps
Thursday: Back and Biceps
Friday: Legs

WEEK 2

Monday: Chest and Triceps
Tuesday: Back and Biceps
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Chest and Triceps

Week 3

Monday: Back and Biceps
Tuesday: Legs
Thursday: Chest and Triceps
Friday: Back and Biceps

Week 4

Begin cycle again.  

Deadlifts were done on Back days.  Using this program you hit each body part six times in a four week period.  Not sure if that's enough volume for you to hit your million pound target but it should provide enough recovery to support growth and lower your risk of injury.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what my goals are to be honest. I can say that without a doubt my form has been SLOWLY improving. I've been getting a bit stronger. But mostly, I think my leg /glute endurance is going up. My glutes seem to be getting larger as well.

I mixed things up last week and I really liked it.
Previously my "working sets" were 6 sets of 12 reps at 225 or 230 lbs.

I experimented with mixing in 3 sets of 9 reps at 275. While it's 20% heavier, I can do a decent amount of reps. Side effect, I seem to be recovering just a bit better. So next squat day I may end up doing 1 set of 225 and then 4-5 sets at 275. I might even experiment with 295, but could probably only do 6-7 reps.
So last workout was 50x135, 50x225, 32x275, 16x185.  Honestly it was probably too many sets, 12 total. It was a monster day with 29,760 lbs added to the total though.

Current Squat total is 423,280 lbs, or 42.33% of my goal.  We are 97 days into 2016.  I'm hoping to push hard and get this all wrapped up before I go to Hawaii on September 20th; but conversely I may slow down and do more cardio / running instead.

Not sure if anyone still cares, but squats are going GREAT.  I just did squats with a 4-day rest interval, and it went fantastic. I think the key is regular stretching as opposed to going for longer rest periods. Take supplements, drink water, stretch.

I have been doing a "tick - tock" schedule where I do a heavy day and then a lighter day with higher reps. I've now completed 3 days of 30,000+ lbs. With the new shorter interval, I should be making great progress to my goals. I am getting stronger without a doubt. I want to start working in heavier and heavier sets of my heavy days. I am currently repping 275 on the heavy days, but I would like to push it to 295 and eventually 315. If I go too heavy than my reps get low, overall weight lifted decreases. One of the biggest challenges is locking up the squat rack for about 35-40 minutes without pissing everyone off.

Current Total:
565,475 lbs
56.55% done!

68.6% done. Hit a personal best 33,365 lbs in one session, 185 reps over 13 sets.  Oh and I had my friend take a video so you all can analyze my form.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CUr80c9K3E[/youtube]
Youtube Link
(edit, don't know why video links aren't working!)

From the feedback I am getting, I have achieved proper depth, and my back is straight, but the bar is too high on my back and my weight isn't far enough back on my feet.
However, I don't really want the bar too much lower on my back (I've tested it out) I get unstable and fall over backwards sometimes. IDK. Still have more work to do.

In that video she stops the recording, but I take a 6-8 sec break and then do 4 more reps.

New projected finish time is July 15th.

Just for s/g I added up my back squat total since March 21 this year. 86,080#.  Now that may not seem like a lot to you guys, but I'm at a slight disadvantage, being 52 and female!

Nice! I have only seen 1 female at my gym doing squats at 135# or higher- most of them do bodyweight only.

85.6% done. I could almost finish at the end of this month but I'm not sure it's worth killing myself to achieve said goal.
I set my own PR yesterday by doing 210 squats over 14 sets.  This is getting retarded. And yet still, full speed ahead until the goal is met.

856,290 / 1,000,000 lbs

Wow! 210 in a single session?  I did break body weight on squats last week, and am now up to 180# 5x5.

95.6% done. 2 more lifting days should do it. Probably will take a video of me squatting up the last rep!

After I am done with my goal I am going to stop logging my squats and I'll tone down the intensity for a while, but I'll be adding deadlifts back into the mix!

Not sure what my total is now, but i did a reset to  160, 5x5, and last night got back to 180 5x5. It felt better than the last time i was at 180,  so hopefully i can continue to progress.  May switch real soon to 5x3, or 3x5 for squats.

On July 6th I broke 1,000,000 lbs by squatting 385 one time, tying my PR. Took me 6 months and 2 days. I have a video I may post of it happening.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing anymore, but I might work on increasing my 1RM to 405; practice lifting heavier.

Congrats!  How about a dead lift challenge next?