hey guys today i decided to just start Christian’s program for strength/vertical leap…
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=859906
i did my workout today and for the past 4 weeks i did box squats just to open my legs up and get down to the box and it has worked great. today i took the box out and just did squats and went pretty damn low but didnt feel it as much in my glutes as i did on box squats. basically my legs didnt feel as burned as box squats did. why is this? my form and everything was the same (even went a lil lower than where the box used to be) my friend was also watching my form and said it was fine. can someone explain to me this? does it really matter?
question 2- are speed squats supposed to be done really fast or can u go down at a relatively fast speed, not too fast, and come up real fast?
sorry for all the posts guys i just wanna learn thanks in advance.
Box squats target your glutes more because you sit back onto the box and minimize forward knee movement which places more tension on the posterior chain. With regular squats you don’t sit back quite as far and therefore use more quadriceps. However, if you do box squats in this manner you can usually only use about 2/3 of the weight you use for regular squats. Most people don’t really perform “box squats,” they just perform regular squats with the box being a gauge for depth.
As far as speed squats go, for right now you should just focus on exploding upward with as much acceleration as possible. In my opinion, it takes a lot of experience to get good at decending rapidly and it’s a little dangerous if your body isn’t ready for it. It comes naturally over time.
There are a couple of reasons box squats hit the glutes more. If you are doing the box squats with good form and not rocking off the box, your glutes are prob sore because of the cold start at the bottom.
Basically, you have to develop a tremendous amount of force without the benefit of the stretch shortening cycle and depending how long you stay on the box any other elastic or stretch contribution to the lift.
If your form sucks and you are rocking alot you are probably getting to the point where you are doing a half squat half good morning, and thus with heavy weight your glutes will get the brunt of it.
[quote]kobe4life08 wrote:
do i go down rapidly?[/quote]
No, not at this stage of the game.