C’mon, fellas. At least read the damn thread before posting. Shit.
Honestly, I thought box squats were primarily an assistance exercise for helping your PL-style back squat. Don’t they involve a lot of glute and hams?
[quote]JayPierce wrote:
Revamping my squat:
I love squats, but they are notorious for building big asses and upper thighs (go figure). So I started reasoning through the squat rules.
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Not necessarily. My squats aren’t narrow, but I have plenty of mass in my lower quads. I believe it’s from all the front squatting I do, personally. I “isolate” quads maybe once ever 2-3 weeks, so it sure ain’t from that.
Here’s my PL squat
And here’s the modified squat. Same depth, different joint angles, more stress on the lower quads.
Oh, and I just uploaded leg pics to my hub if anyone gives a shit.
[quote]JayPierce wrote:
And here’s the modified squat. Same depth, different joint angles, more stress on the lower quads.
Oh, and I just uploaded leg pics to my hub if anyone gives a shit.[/quote]
A few things:
- That isn’t parallel, you got another 2 inches or so to go…besides, if you’re lacking lower quad development, going an inch or two BELOW parallel would help more. So yeah, work on the depth.
Another thing, both squats, you got a pretty narrow stance, and imo your torso is too long to be squatting like that, and you should really be pushing your knees out more than that. Could I get a vid of you front squatting 75-85% of you 1rm for front squat?
I’m gonna gradually work on depth over the next few weeks. I don’t want to aggravate my knee, though.
As I said before, I don’t front squat because of my knee.
Eh…I believe in ATG, and if you’re not doing that, then why squat?
From what I saw in the vids, you’re not going low enough for my liking.
I read that your knee is fucked and that’s why you can’t do front squats, but I think you need to do them. It sounds like you’re using that as an excuse, instead of setting your ego aside and just doing them with considerably less weight than you may be accustomed to doing.
…either that or get lower when doing the back squat.
I have been thinking about giving the fronts another shot. It’s been about a year since the last time I did them. I pushed through a lot of pain that first year after my wreck.
I really didn’t bother with anything lower than parallel while I was shooting for 405. It’s going to take some time for me to regain the flexibility to get low safely. I don’t mind leaving some weight off the bar as long as I can stress the muscles I’m gunning for.
Alright, so I messed around stretching and stuff and got some flexibility back. Did full squats Saturday (ass to calves). To be absolutely honest, I feel my quads working much harder when I do the touch-and-go squats in the second vid I posted, especially just above the knee.
I’m going to give front squats another try next week, and I’ll video it as requested (anybody got an example of the best angle to film a squat from?). I may just alternate the three variations, if my knee doesn’t give me much trouble.
My loading on full squats was 255x9 this week vs. 275x7 on the touch-and-go’s last week, so pretty much the same.
Here’s 225 for a triple.
I’m excited because my knee hardly hurts at all. We’ll see how it feels tomorrow.
Toldja.
I feel the front squats more in the rectus femoris and the end of the vastus lateralis, which is one of the areas I need to work on. But I still feel the ‘half’ squats hit the vastus medialis a LOT harder. So I guess the best strategy is to alternate the two.
I’m getting a trap bar for my birthday, and if trap bar deads hit the VM the way I think they will, it’ll work out perfect.
Progress Report:
A few weeks in, my knee started feeling like trash again so I had to abandon the front squats. I’ve basically just been doing the touch-and-go high box squats with either step-ups (on the same box) or trap-bar squats (using the lower handles) on leg day. I’ve worked up to 315x5 for my top set and added about an inch to my lower quad measurement. Adding an inch in two months doesn’t seem right, so I may have been measuring differently. I need to take some pics and see if there is a notable difference.
Did my warmup sets today, which are always full depth, and my knee was feeling awesome so I decided to do full squats for my work sets. Great workout. I’m still not feeling my best because of this damned heat (it’s been ~100 deg and over 90% humidity at the airfield where I work for about three weeks now), but I hit a PR on full squats today anyway.
135x5x2
185x5
225x5
275x5
315x5
The last rep sucked ass. I was moving forward when I came out of the hole, hit the rack, hung up on the hooks, and almost had to bail it. I recovered and completed the rep, though, so I counted it 
I hope I have ‘good knee days’ more often in the future. Full squats followed by trap bar ‘squats’ is exactly what I need right now, I think.
Come on man…
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You have knee problems, and you don’t pay attention to the fact that you are on your toes in all the vids you posted. This will put a lot more stress on them.
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Your squat PR is 315x5. How about making that 405x5 before you obsess too much about what muscles are underdeveloped?
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Work on mobility; making sure you have correct recruitment patterns will go a long way in saving your knees and back.
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Buy weightlifting shoes with a heel… like Adidas Ironworks.
Hehe, sounds like fun, too bad you didn’t catch that on video The advice to buy heeled shoes sounds good to me.
[quote]ev1bl wrote:
Come on man…
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You have knee problems, and you don’t pay attention to the fact that you are on your toes in all the vids you posted. This will put a lot more stress on them.
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Your squat PR is 315x5. How about making that 405x5 before you obsess too much about what muscles are underdeveloped?
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Work on mobility; making sure you have correct recruitment patterns will go a long way in saving your knees and back.
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Buy weightlifting shoes with a heel… like Adidas Ironworks.[/quote]
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I was on my toes a bit in the second vid. But if you had read the entire thread, you would have seen where I said something about my mobility needing work, correcting it, and coming back with a front squat vid. If you watch my left shoe in that vid, it’s rock solid and never moves.
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How about you letting me decide when to worry about which muscles are underdeveloped?
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Done/doing; explain ‘recruitment patterns’ in relation to this thread
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Probably about to.
[quote]desolator wrote:
Hehe, sounds like fun, too bad you didn’t catch that on video The advice to buy heeled shoes sounds good to me.[/quote]
Wish I would’ve gotten it on vid. I bet my facial expression right at the ‘oh shit’ moment was priceless. 
You may consider moving that rubber mat out of the way. You can clearly see in both videos where your weight shifts and your your feet sink in to the mat more.
At APF Nationals, in York, they use fairly dense carpet and I’ve seen many people immediately tip forward after unracking the weight. Their complaint was that the carpet gave just a little bit, putting them on their toes. I’ve actually squatted on the same kind of rubber mat with holes (commercial kitchen mats?) and it definitely throws you forward.
[quote]johnnytang24 wrote:
You may consider moving that rubber mat out of the way. You can clearly see in both videos where your weight shifts and your your feet sink in to the mat more.
At APF Nationals, in York, they use fairly dense carpet and I’ve seen many people immediately tip forward after unracking the weight. Their complaint was that the carpet gave just a little bit, putting them on their toes. I’ve actually squatted on the same kind of rubber mat with holes (commercial kitchen mats?) and it definitely throws you forward.[/quote]
Done and done. Thanks for the tip.