Have you ever done Hatfield squats? What makes you think that you know better than Fred Hatfield and Josh Bryant? Have you set any world records, won any championships, or coached any elite lifters? Hatfield squats will overload the strongest part of the movement, which doesn’t get much stimulus otherwise. And I will do high bar pause squats on top of that (or other similar variation). Leg press and hack squats can be useful but you have to have a reason to do them first of all, and you also have to have access to the machines and I have no machines in my basement.
The other thing I wrote was a joke, or at least sort of. I just don’t see why you would replace a squat with a machine exercise unless you can’t handle more squatting.
I’m sure I will be able to lift more with these, I have never done them before so I will have to start light but after a few weeks I should be able to move some heavy weights. I’m thinking two 5-week blocks (4 weeks + 1 week deload), there is no meet around here (other than some IPF nonsense) until December so I have plenty of time. I think that is one of the advantages of using Hatfield squats, once you get back to heavy squats with a straight bar you will be prepared for the weight. Of course I am still going to do low bar squats on my light squat day so that I don’t lose the technique.
The only thing I’ll comment on is the “deloads”. If your weights are rising and you’re feeling “on” there should be no need for a deload. Take the deload when you feel like crap during your warmups. One way to do it is to take your last warmup weight and use it for your prescribed sets and reps. Do not add volume. If you add volume to a light day, it is no longer a light day. If you add enough volume, the light day can cause the same level of systemic stress as the heavy day.
In my case I found that on days when I feel less energetic, I can lift heavy but lack endurance. What I do on those days is lift heavy for a limited number of sets. You might do 3 x 2 instead of 3 x 5 with a heavy weight. Don’t forget that on a bad day, 90% is effectively heavier than 90% since your 90% is calculated based on a good day’s performance. I’m not sure of the science, but it’s possible that when you’re that tired you’re stressed out enough to release some adrenaline. Just an observation of mine from years under the bar and from past coaches and training partners.
Your self-reflection is really grotesque. LOL I don’t question the qualities or knowledge of Hatfield and Bryant. I’m just saying Hatfield squats isn’t a safe exercise. I don’t know why train an exercise with an bar which I don’t hold safely in my hands. This only increases the risk of injury in preparation. However, you are convinced of this exercise that you will probably train it despite the criticism. But I think instead of this exercise, it is enough to add the volume of classical squats.
To answer your question, I trained a very similar exercise - the safety bar squat.
I am surprised how many people have trouble understanding the context and how many people are offended.
I figured out through trial and error that 4 weeks of hard training is usually as long as I can go before performance starts to drop. I have used the same strategy that you describe where you just deload when you start to feel like you need it, I don’t really see one as better than the other if you have no meet coming up or other limitations and in my case you need to know roughly how much you can tolerate for how long or you will waste time deloading instead of getting stronger. When I deload I usually drop volume by 50% but still lift around 90% of the previous week’s weights, going too light makes everything feel too heavy when I get back to regular training.
It only unsafe if you have a fucked up SSB or you can’t balance the weight, which doesn’t appear to be hard at all. If it feels unsafe then I won’t do it, but you are just assuming things rather than speaking from experience.
The way I do them I put a 2nd set of hooks on the outer side of the rack and put a barbell in there, unless you have special Hatfield squat handles that’s the best way to do it.
I just started doing these again yesterday, they work well but I hate them. I think they might be the most effective exercise for quad hypertrophy, only thing is that they are very fatiguing so I wouldn’t do more than a couple sets (I’m not going to do more than one). With all this talk about effective reps, I think that probably all reps with these should be effective to stimulate hypertrophy, it’s like you can push beyond failure (self-assisted forced reps essentially).
So my gym only has two power racks, and they were both being used last night, so I used a combo rack and instead of holding to a bar, I just put the posts in and did that.
Def selling myself short as far as loading these go. I think 245 for 3x8 was kinda light, especially for this kinda overload movement. 2 plates also felt kinda wobbly, so hoping more weight just sits better on the SSB
I’m also planning on putting an axle behind the posts, between the pins. (Wont mess up the paint because of no knurling, and too thick to actually grab) Just hoping it fits
I was listening to an interview with Dr. Squat a few weeks ago where he mentioned doing sets of 5 with 1200 lbs on these… I can’t even fathom that. @chris_ottawa how do you feel these fall in relation to your competition squat?
I can do reps with more than my max squat for sure, but what Hatfield was doing is almost 200lbs over his max in gear which is a whole different story. Old gear still, but that sounds pretty crazy.
One thing, Hatfield said he exclusively did Hatfield squats until a couple months out from a meet, for most people I don’t think that would work out very well. A while back Josh Bryant was talking about how he had a few guys only doing those in the offseason, some were hitting PRs shortly after switching back to the straight bar while others had some technical issues. Personally, I’m leaning towards using it more as a hypertrophy exercise than anything, and I suppose the overloading effect should make regular squats feel lighter.
