hey what do you guys like the best , with a pause on pins or without and why 
I personally prefer pin squats. I am not exactly a expert on why or how they are so different but in the pin squat I am always able to keep better and wind up using more weight so therefore I get better overload with safer form. When I do pause squats my form starts to break down dramatically out of the hole for what ever reason I always seem to turn a heavy pause squat into a HEAVY good morning.
They are a bit different:
Pin squate the bar will unload at the bottom, pause squats you keep hold of the full wieght. Personally I think pause squats are superior for this reason. They both will cause you to lose all stretch reflex, but the pause squats force you way better to keep tight and stay tight. Pin squats also are useful in teaching you to initiate a full drive without any tension but I think most trainees would get more benefit from pause. Just my 0.02
Do both… they kick ass in different ways as Arramzy said.
In stead of squatting off pins try squatting with a bar suspended by chains. With pin presses the bar will probably land on a different spot each time which if your like me, will mess you up and potentially put you in a very awkward starting position. The chains make the bar return to the EXACT same spot each rep. You can do this for benching and dead lifting too! Another plus, is the chains allow one to make height or depth adjustments with each chain link vs the pin setting. Nice to have options.
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
Do both… they kick ass in different ways as Arramzy said.
In stead of squatting off pins try squatting with a bar suspended by chains. With pin presses the bar will probably land on a different spot each time which if your like me, will mess you up and potentially put you in a very awkward starting position. The chains make the bar return to the EXACT same spot each rep. You can do this for benching and dead lifting too! Another plus, is the chains allow one to make height or depth adjustments with each chain link vs the pin setting. Nice to have options. [/quote]
One thing to be careful about with chains is swinging the weight too much! This will give you momentum and possibly start encouraging some weird/bad form out of the hole. Adjustability is definitely nice though.
yes, good point A.
I know pin/suspended squats are easier to recover from based on experience. How about paused squats?
I’ve actually been doing paused squats for about 7 weeks now. I had shoulder surgery 9 weeks ago and I can’t put more than about 320ish pounds on my SSB or it smashes and hurts my shoulder and I can’t use a straight bar yet. So I’ve been pausing everything and going waaaaay below parallel to make what I’m able to do harder. It’s kicking my ass! I like it though. I’ve put about 1/2 on the quads and my VMO is looking larger. My briefs are tighter in the ass area guess the low squats are doing some good even though it’s light weight.
[quote]arramzy wrote:
They are a bit different:
Pin squate the bar will unload at the bottom, pause squats you keep hold of the full wieght. Personally I think pause squats are superior for this reason. They both will cause you to lose all stretch reflex, but the pause squats force you way better to keep tight and stay tight. Pin squats also are useful in teaching you to initiate a full drive without any tension but I think most trainees would get more benefit from pause. Just my 0.02[/quote]
I concur
I like Pause Squats. With Pin Squats you don’t have the stretch reflex but its easier to generate force against the bar because you’re not doing it from a compromised position, whereas the pause squat really trains you to survive in that sort of “point of no return” in the bottom of the squat.