Hip/Belt/Harness Squats

Looking for some variations of the belt squat that people have used successfully to put on size, hopefully some exist. Searching through the site I found some threads talking about it, wondering if anyone currently is using them or has used them in the past.

Found this:

This seems to be the most plausible variation I’ll be able to use. The main reason I’m looking at these movements is that I’m in the navy and next year I’ll be doing alot of underways followed by a deployment and barbell squatting will be almost impossible to do. Only a few racks on board which most of the time are being taken up by groups of 20 guys rotating through for bench press along with the fact that depending on where we go balancing the bar in rough seas starts looking like a cirque du soleil act. Which is also why using a belt to load plates standing on benches probably won’t work too well along with the issue of benches being heavily prized in the gym area. Plan on trying to use jump boxes stacked up, since they’re not as high and the low center of gravity of the weight between the hips probably wouldn’t be too hard to balance.

Goblet squats with a dumbbell are another option, I’ve started using them at the end of the session for higher rep finishers. Single leg exercises are kind of out of the question due to the balance issue but will incorporate them when I can.

great exercise, hard as hell to load up heavy though.

I’m pretty sure Ironmind make a belt for it that is guaranteed to like 1000lbs or something, but it won’t be cheap

I was thinking the “T-bar” variation might help with that, making it more stable and really focusing on the negative portion of the lift. I’ll probably do hamstring movements first then quad dominant movements for legs, using the leg press as the heavier movement.

In general these seem to be kind of a hit and miss exercise especially the belt loaded version, unless you have access to one of the machines that you attach the belt to.

I realize they’re not an exact substitute to barbell squatting because of the loading issues, I guess due to that most people don’t really mess with them.