Condensing this into one thread since making a half dozen just seems stupid.
My squat feels stronger when I don’t actively drive my knees out. Letting them move slightly out as I descend seems to work best. Am I doing something horrifically wrong or does this matter at all?
Has anyone on this board trained with only paused squats or squats from pins? Is this beneficial at all or this a complete waste? I know some people’s paused bench is nearly identical to their TNG bench. I have a feeling training paused squats exclusively would just bring your paused squat and regular squat closer together without really improving your normal squat.
I’ve done strictly beltless training since January because I deemed my core was too week. Since then I’ve pulled 500 beltless in Olympic shoes (lifetime PR), done a 405 ATG beltless squat, 405 paused beltless LBBS, and a 335 beltless front squat while dropping about 10, possibly 15 pounds. That’s great, my core is much stronger. However, when I put a belt back on I get nothing from it except for on overhead press and LBBS stability. I’m not sure if it’s because core strength and intra-abdominal pressure are no longer a limiting factor in my lifts, if it’s because I’m using the belt incorrectly, or if it is because my belt is a pos from Academy that isn’t an equal width all around.
Has anyone run a variation of 5/3/1 along the lines of 3/2/1, where you work up to 3+ at 90%, 2+ at 92.5%, 1+ 95% or something similar? I’m not looking to deviate from 5/3/1 at this time, but from what I understand it is basically block periodization.
For question 1, I do the same, feels fine to me, in fact, it helped me increase squat over 100 lbs in under 3 months.
For question 3, I don’t have a direct answer, but I know when I moved to the inzer 13mm lever belt, my squat feels much better. In fact, when I load up the weight, I can’t even push out a full belly full of air it’s that awesome.
Pause squats are great. Like you intuit, if you perform them to the exclusion of competition squats, they will drift closer together, (this will probably happen anyway if pause squats are new to you.) Train them both, that should be obvious.
Get a power belt and get used to using it. Establish when you use it and when you don’t. There are many ways to do that, e.g., only over 80%, only over 90%, on your heavy sets but not your down sets, for regular squats but not pause squats, etc…
If you’re interested in 5/3/1 training and different ideas about programming within that philosophy, it is probably worth it for you to join Jim’s private forum. It’s not free, but there’s a lot of info in there that isn’t anywhere else, including a template that does something pretty similar to what you’re describing.
For the pause squats question, I spent a few months training chain suspended squats starting from the bottom with weekly range of motion progression due to a hamstring injury. Heavily loading the eccentric and rebounding would cause me pain, while starting from the bottom gave me no issues. Training this way did help me break a multiyear plat and finally hit a 500lb squat at 181, and is now a part of how I train. These days, my cycle lasts 7 weeks, and the first 4 weeks I spent training from the bottom of the movement, and the last 3 weeks I squat to the chains from the top, so it’s a mixing of both. It has some use, and if you are an uncoordinated goon like me, the stretch reflex never did anything for you anyway.
For the belt question, get a proper belt and see what happens. Until then, if your belt tapers, turn it backwards so that the thick part is pressed against your abdomen and the thin part is against your back. It’ll work out much better.
[quote]T3hPwnisher wrote:
For the pause squats question, I spent a few months training chain suspended squats starting from the bottom with weekly range of motion progression due to a hamstring injury. Heavily loading the eccentric and rebounding would cause me pain, while starting from the bottom gave me no issues. Training this way did help me break a multiyear plat and finally hit a 500lb squat at 181, and is now a part of how I train. These days, my cycle lasts 7 weeks, and the first 4 weeks I spent training from the bottom of the movement, and the last 3 weeks I squat to the chains from the top, so it’s a mixing of both. It has some use, and if you are an uncoordinated goon like me, the stretch reflex never did anything for you anyway.
For the belt question, get a proper belt and see what happens. Until then, if your belt tapers, turn it backwards so that the thick part is pressed against your abdomen and the thin part is against your back. It’ll work out much better. [/quote]
Awesome replies, especially this belt suggestion. That never fcking occurred to me once. I’ll be trying that this week.