This weekend Dave Hoff took another world record, and all I see is weak haters trying to take away this accomplishment with their nonsense about “squat depth” and “bad judging.”
The Iron Warrior is here with a comprehensive guide to teach all of my fellow warrior brothers and sisters how to defend perfect squats on the internet.
Warning: these are advanced arguing techniques that you didn’t learn in your high school debate club you freakin nerd. So snort some ammonia, put on your wrist wraps, and get ready to go hard in the comments section.
I’m not with you at all on this. First of all, I’m not here to fight against Dave Hoff’s squat simply because it was good by current multi-ply standards. However, if he was squatting raw in just about any fed except maybe SPF he would have got three red lights for that. You cant accurately judge squat depth from the front when the squat is close to depth, but here there is no way that his hip crease was below the top of his knee.
The problem is that there is a lot of inconsistency in judging from fed to fed and also within feds. Look at the US Open, on Sunday almost everyone got a few reds for squat depth and many good squats didn’t pass while the day before you have guys like Ben Pollack squatting around parallel and his lifts passed. If Pollack’s squat was good then so were the ones that got called on depth the next day because I didn’t see anyone squat higher than him. The judges on Sunday were worse than anything the IPF has ever had.
To add to that, USPA seems to be relatively lenient with squat depth, particularly when the lifter is wearing wraps. Squats that are right at parallel are routinely passed while way deeper ones got called on depth at the US open on Sunday. How are lifters to know what is expected of them if there is no consistency.
The only way to sort this out is to have side view cameras like the IPF did at Worlds last year. I haven’t watched anything from this year’s worlds, but last year they replayed all squats from the side angle and I didn’t see a single call on squat depth that I would argue against, unlike many other IPF meets. I’m not sure if the jury was able to watch replays (I assume the judges didn’t) but regardless they were consistent with judging at that meet. I have a lot of issues with the IPF but this is one thing that they have gotten right and it should serve as an example to other feds.
As for Dave Hoff, the only people whose opinion matters on whether or not that was a good squat are other multi-ply lifters. If you can squat the same weight deeper than him then please do so and set a world record yourself.
When I lifted in a hardcore powerlifting gym most of my disagreements about depth involved the powerlifters advising me to squat higher and stop wearing those silly toe shoes.
Excellent point. Same argument for 1 arm circus dumbbell overhead press. If the judge says the elbow was locked and gives the down command, that’s it. It’s counted.
Honestly the point of this video wasn’t even to pick on Hoff or the SPF, it was really just parodying 3 common arguing tactics i see in comments sections on the internet trying to claim these types of squats are actually to depth (or why depth is impossible), none of which are good arguments.
“squat depth can’t be judged from the front” Just like chris_ottawa said in the first reply, judging squat depth from the front gets tricky only when it’s close, but squats that are egregiously high can easily be recognized from the front.
someone being weak does not mean that they cannot recognize that a squat is high. How much weight someone can half squat, unrack, or hold does not determine their ability to accurately state if the top of the thigh at someone’s hip has reached parallel with their knee.
claims that multi-ply equipment makes it impossible to perform a squat to parallel. This just isn’t true. I’ve seen plenty of multi-ply lifters actually hit depth, so it definitely is possible.
I understand that he performed the squat this way because he knew it was likely to pass, which is all that an athlete should care about when performing the lift.
Imo it’s just a pissing contest; pure and simple. Of course geared lifters are always going to have the bigger total, so raw guys say it “isn’t real.” Pick your reason: squat too high, bench shirt does the work for you, monolift is cheating, etc etc). Strong is strong, no matter where you choose to compete (gear, raw, strongman, Highland games, etc).
What’s confounding to me is there are plenty of examples of geared world record holders who take the gear off and also get raw world records (Alhazov, Byrd, Mendelson, etc). Yet the raw contention will not recognize how strong geared lifters are. They challenge geared lifters to take off the gear and compete raw. But they never put the gear on and beat geared lifters at their own game. What does a gym like Westside Barbell, for example, have to prove? And to whom should they prove it?
That was what I said earlier, if you don’t compete in multi-ply then it doesn’t concern you. Even within feds, who really cares. SPF passes high squats but that doesn’t bother me. The only problem is when it comes to all-time records, if certain records are set with loose judging then they can’t be accurately compared to others. The only solution is to go for federation records or simply beat them at their own game and compete in a loosely judged fed. Until someone starts paying serious money for setting records it doesn’t really matter.
Anyone who thinks that the top geared lifters aren’t strong is an idiot. Of course the gear adds to their total, otherwise they wouldn’t wear it. That is also why geared lifters compete against other geared lifters.
I feel like most raw guys (at least the experienced ones) recognize that the top multi-ply guys are very strong. You’d have to be delusional to think otherwise.
