[quote]hungry4more wrote:
imc_1121 wrote:
Would’nt I overtrain by doing squats twice a week? I’m an ecto btw.
Just do one heavier day and a lighter day…and eat…a lot. [/quote]
That’s another good idea! The few times I’ve experimented with heavy/light days for multiple workouts a week, I made pretty good gains.
[quote]imc_1121 wrote:
Would’nt I overtrain by doing squats twice a week?
[/quote]
No. Absolutely not. Or at least, most likely not. I suppose it is a possibility, but pretty fucking unlikely. Sure, you may get tired, and it may be hard to get out of bed or walk up stairs, but so fucking what, grow a pair. If you’re really that concerned with getting ‘overtrained’ you haven’t got a chance in hell at building any significant amount of muscle. In fact, if you’re squatting once a week, 3 whole sets, and you’ve only added 10 kilos in 2 months, without growing or getting sore, you’re probably undertraining <<gasp!>>
You say you feel tired after your sets right? Ok, that’s a start, but how tired? Are we talking “ooh, that was a good squat session, I almost sweated a little bit on that last set. I might have to shorten my cardio to only 45 minutes now” or more like "fuck, what’s this hard thing on my face? Oh, it’s the floor. Nice, I like the floor, it’s comfortable, I’m just going to lay here in this nice warm puddle of my own sweat for a few minutes.
Is it really hot in here today? Did someone light me on fire? Crap, I don’t know if I can get out of the building of it’s on fire right now. Ooh look, everything’s fuzzy and there’s a light show…" See the first example isn’t really tired, it’s just, I don’t know what to call it, mildly taxed maybe? The second may be a bit on the extreme side, but if you’re really having that much of a problem growing, try getting there once, you’ll learn a lot about yourself and how strong you are (or aren’t, as may be the case).
Right now you’re doing sets of 12, 10, and 8 with 90kg right? Try switching things up, how about 5x5. Or 2x8. or 8x3. It doesn’t really matter, just switch it up. Increase the weight (even if you say it’s not the weight, it doesn’t hurt to increase it and test yourself) and squat 3 times a week. Increase the weight you use every week until you can’t (this will take a while).
If you do this for a few months, increasing weight every week or so (or even every session when you can), and eat enough (see below) you’ll grow. And if you really and truly end up “overtrained” to the point of losing motivation and feeling depressed and weak, congratulations, you’ve worked your ass off and learned something about yourself. Take a week or 2 off then get back at it with more knowledge about what your body can handle. I doubt this will be a problem for a long, long time though.
[quote]
I’m an ecto btw.[/quote]
Maybe you are, but you’re probably just average like the rest of us, you just don’t eat enough or train hard enough. Kick your own ass in the gym, then eat, a lot, then rest and repeat.
How much are you eating now? Add more to it. Buy whole milk, chicken, steak, etc… Find an all you can eat buffet near your gym and pig out once a week after a really heavy squat or deadlift day.
Good luck,
Jay
p.s. sorry for the longwinded post but I felt typing “SQUATS AND MILK!!!” just wasn’t enough in this case.
Hey guys, yesterday I did some front squats and some regular squats with my heels elevated, and today I’m sore as hell. I’m really happy btw, I’m sure this will help getting rid of my cursed chicken legs. I’ll try doing a 100 rep leg press on my next leg workout.
Thx a lot for the help.
Seems like 90% of my posts recently have been relating to squats!
I find conventional squats seem to give fairly inconsistent results as far as quad growth goes from person to person. I believe this to be attributed to subtle options in squat stance, and flexibility issues that push towards a wide stance. What I mean is, most people have ankle flexibility issues that prevent them from squatting properly close-stance without raised heels.
Furthermore, people seem to be able to squat with a mid to wide stance without any flexibility work. This stance, though, seems to be much much harder on the posterior chain than the quads. These people may be able to improve their squat a whole ton, but the quads simply won’t be taking the brunt of the workload of the squat.
The improvement in the weight will come, but the improvement in the quads will unfortunately be quite slow. Indeed, i’ve seen some people with pretty small legs squat a ton with a powerlifting stance.
I think being able to close-stance squat properly will alleviate these growth issues. Think olympic style squats. I believe there was an article comparing olympic to powerlifting squat stances run within the last few months. As far as bodybuilding goes the summary strongly recommended olympic squats over powerlifting. If your goal is moving the most weight, powerlifting style will be superior.
To close stance squat properly, you’ll have to work on your ankle flexibility. In the meanwhile, having plates under your heels or olympic lifting shoes will most likely greatly increase your progress.
And to answer your earlier question, yes you always want to drive almost all of your generated force straight through your heels to the floor. The purpose of raising your heels on an object is to allow you to do this while bypassing your apparent flexibility issue. If you didn’t have the block, you would probably not be able to close-stance squat properly without your heels raising up on their own.
[quote]AndrewBolinger wrote:
Seems like 90% of my posts recently have been relating to squats!
I find conventional squats seem to give fairly inconsistent results as far as quad growth goes from person to person. I believe this to be attributed to subtle options in squat stance, and flexibility issues that push towards a wide stance. What I mean is, most people have ankle flexibility issues that prevent them from squatting properly close-stance without raised heels.
Furthermore, people seem to be able to squat with a mid to wide stance without any flexibility work. This stance, though, seems to be much much harder on the posterior chain than the quads. These people may be able to improve their squat a whole ton, but the quads simply won’t be taking the brunt of the workload of the squat.
The improvement in the weight will come, but the improvement in the quads will unfortunately be quite slow. Indeed, i’ve seen some people with pretty small legs squat a ton with a powerlifting stance.
I think being able to close-stance squat properly will alleviate these growth issues. Think olympic style squats. I believe there was an article comparing olympic to powerlifting squat stances run within the last few months. As far as bodybuilding goes the summary strongly recommended olympic squats over powerlifting. If your goal is moving the most weight, powerlifting style will be superior.
To close stance squat properly, you’ll have to work on your ankle flexibility. In the meanwhile, having plates under your heels or olympic lifting shoes will most likely greatly increase your progress.
And to answer your earlier question, yes you always want to drive almost all of your generated force straight through your heels to the floor. The purpose of raising your heels on an object is to allow you to do this while bypassing your apparent flexibility issue. If you didn’t have the block, you would probably not be able to close-stance squat properly without your heels raising up on their own.[/quote]
I don’t get it, why did I have to raise my heels to actually feel the exercise? What’s this ankle flexibility issue?
[quote]imc_1121 wrote:
AndrewBolinger wrote:
Seems like 90% of my posts recently have been relating to squats!
I find conventional squats seem to give fairly inconsistent results as far as quad growth goes from person to person. I believe this to be attributed to subtle options in squat stance, and flexibility issues that push towards a wide stance. What I mean is, most people have ankle flexibility issues that prevent them from squatting properly close-stance without raised heels.
Furthermore, people seem to be able to squat with a mid to wide stance without any flexibility work. This stance, though, seems to be much much harder on the posterior chain than the quads. These people may be able to improve their squat a whole ton, but the quads simply won’t be taking the brunt of the workload of the squat.
The improvement in the weight will come, but the improvement in the quads will unfortunately be quite slow. Indeed, i’ve seen some people with pretty small legs squat a ton with a powerlifting stance.
I think being able to close-stance squat properly will alleviate these growth issues. Think olympic style squats. I believe there was an article comparing olympic to powerlifting squat stances run within the last few months. As far as bodybuilding goes the summary strongly recommended olympic squats over powerlifting. If your goal is moving the most weight, powerlifting style will be superior.
To close stance squat properly, you’ll have to work on your ankle flexibility. In the meanwhile, having plates under your heels or olympic lifting shoes will most likely greatly increase your progress.
And to answer your earlier question, yes you always want to drive almost all of your generated force straight through your heels to the floor. The purpose of raising your heels on an object is to allow you to do this while bypassing your apparent flexibility issue. If you didn’t have the block, you would probably not be able to close-stance squat properly without your heels raising up on their own.
I don’t get it, why did I have to raise my heels to actually feel the exercise? What’s this ankle flexibility issue?
[/quote]
when you squat with your feet closer together, your ankles must flex much further to reach the bottom of the movement. if someone is lacking calf flexibility, they will feel unable to complete the squat with a narrow stance and therefore try a wider stance, which does not stretch the calf muscles/ankle joint as much. But a wider stance squat does not stress the quads nearly as much.
shoes with a raised heel allow the ankle joint to flex less during a squat, allowing someone with limited flexibility to squat with a narrower stance which stresses the quads more directly.
also ‘feeling’ the burn or soreness is not your best indicator of progress with resistance training. you can get sore and feel a hell of a burn by doing hundreds of bodyweight lunges or bodyweight squats and they will NEVER give you huge legs.
[quote]Tagio wrote:
imc_1121 wrote:
AndrewBolinger wrote:
Seems like 90% of my posts recently have been relating to squats!
I find conventional squats seem to give fairly inconsistent results as far as quad growth goes from person to person. I believe this to be attributed to subtle options in squat stance, and flexibility issues that push towards a wide stance. What I mean is, most people have ankle flexibility issues that prevent them from squatting properly close-stance without raised heels.
Furthermore, people seem to be able to squat with a mid to wide stance without any flexibility work. This stance, though, seems to be much much harder on the posterior chain than the quads. These people may be able to improve their squat a whole ton, but the quads simply won’t be taking the brunt of the workload of the squat.
The improvement in the weight will come, but the improvement in the quads will unfortunately be quite slow. Indeed, i’ve seen some people with pretty small legs squat a ton with a powerlifting stance.
I think being able to close-stance squat properly will alleviate these growth issues. Think olympic style squats. I believe there was an article comparing olympic to powerlifting squat stances run within the last few months. As far as bodybuilding goes the summary strongly recommended olympic squats over powerlifting. If your goal is moving the most weight, powerlifting style will be superior.
To close stance squat properly, you’ll have to work on your ankle flexibility. In the meanwhile, having plates under your heels or olympic lifting shoes will most likely greatly increase your progress.
And to answer your earlier question, yes you always want to drive almost all of your generated force straight through your heels to the floor. The purpose of raising your heels on an object is to allow you to do this while bypassing your apparent flexibility issue. If you didn’t have the block, you would probably not be able to close-stance squat properly without your heels raising up on their own.
I don’t get it, why did I have to raise my heels to actually feel the exercise? What’s this ankle flexibility issue?
when you squat with your feet closer together, your ankles must flex much further to reach the bottom of the movement. if someone is lacking calf flexibility, they will feel unable to complete the squat with a narrow stance and therefore try a wider stance, which does not stretch the calf muscles/ankle joint as much. But a wider stance squat does not stress the quads nearly as much.
shoes with a raised heel allow the ankle joint to flex less during a squat, allowing someone with limited flexibility to squat with a narrower stance which stresses the quads more directly.
also ‘feeling’ the burn or soreness is not your best indicator of progress with resistance training. you can get sore and feel a hell of a burn by doing hundreds of bodyweight lunges or bodyweight squats and they will NEVER give you huge legs.[/quote]
It’s true that soreness is not a good indicator of progress, but it is generally a sign that your workout was effective. Certainly in the case of proper rep ranges.