me:“What are you working up to?”
him: “Oh, 225 for two sets, then 275 for two sets, then 315.”
me: “Cool, can I work in?”
him: “Sure.” (unracks weight and “squats”)
Me (thinking): Oh, it’s “quarter squat day.”
I’ve been going to the gym for 9 months. I’ve seen three people squat; the quarter squatter above included. It’d really be nice to work out around some like-minded people sometime.
The Y sucks.
To be honest I don’t think many of the “ATG” people exist. It’s nice to tell people that’s how you squat but when you look at gyms it’s usually pretty rare to see a decent set of squats.
I currently can’t go too deep in the squat or hit parallel because of an inguinal hernia, but at least I have a good excuse!
I know exactly what you mean. I go to La Fitness in ATL, and haven’t seen one single person in the squat rack unless they’re curling.
I’m changing gyms though to a much better gym i hope. It has a very strong emphasis for powerlifting, olympic lifting, strongman type training from what i’ve seen.
If people lived up to their Internet personalities we would live in a much better world.
Sorry to double post but, i just wanted to add that a tried deep squatting today and it felt so much better than when i usually just go parallel. Just thought i’d throw that out there.
I think the hordes yelling ATG or not at all just like to yell. I’ve seen Tom Platz on Video do everything from ATG to just partial reps for his legs. Whatever gets the job done and not injured seems to be your best bet.
I would think that range of motion and full reps were thrown right out the window for guys like Larry Scott & Tom Platz when it came to building muscle and stressing it as hard as they could in certain exercises.
I think all forms of squats would be good. ATG with a lighter weight that you can actually do ATG’s on works well. Weight well over your 1RM for 1/4’s, partials, whatever, puts a ton of stress on those BIG FTMU’s and the muscle feels a whole new kind of stress.
Sure a ATG squat will do more than a half, but who’s to say that when the guy doing the half rep has much more stress on his thighs …than he would doing a full rep with a weight he could actually do a full rep for?
It all works. There is a place for everything.
merlin
I go to UW - Seattle…we have four full racks each with an accompanying platform. Olympic lifts are pretty common, but for squatting most people go parallel. After working out at a home gym for a while (recently stopped living with the guy that owned the weights), I’m pretty satisfied with the school gym.
Granted, we’ve got all the stereotypes that other places have too; dude that does 100 curls while his girlfriend whines, the 1/4 ROM bench pressers with 11 inch arms, assholes that leave 315 pound barbell on a platform without re-racking weights etc.
But seriously…why can’t people fucking re-rack their weights? This pisses me off more than most shit in the gym. It’s just so simple.
Kelley Bagget’s Vert Bible actually has 1/2 and 1/4 squats listed as a great way to increase your vertical(granted he does the 1/4 squat in sets of 25 rythm squats alternating between exploding onto the toes and forcing the heels to stay down).
A lot of knowledgeable SPORT coaches(not BB trainers or olympic trainers) don’t do any work below parallel because of a low correspondence to sport mastery(no, not because of knee injuries).
Now that’s not to say there aren’t a ton of people out there who are just squatting wrong, but it seems like 90% of the people here think it’s impossible to do anything but parallel or lower without being some douchebag egocentric frat boy.
[quote]red04 wrote:
it seems like 90% of the people here think it’s impossible to do anything but parallel or lower without being some douchebag egocentric frat boy.[/quote]
Usually they are, can you blame us?
To tell you the truth, I’d rather see someone doing 1/4 squats than doing squats in the smith, endless leg presses, or squat rack curls. Most dudes I see in the gym don’t even do legs at all, so 1/4’s and partials are a serious step up.
-dizzle
I despise leg press pussies! So what if you’ve got stacks of weights on the press, be a man and do some squats!
[quote]JohnnyBlaze wrote:
I currently can’t go too deep in the squat or hit parallel because of an inguinal hernia, but at least I have a flimsy excuse! [/quote]
Rub some dirt on it and squat deep.
I have no problem with people doing quarter squats as long as they do full squats as well.
[quote]JohnnyBlaze wrote:
I despise leg press pussies! So what if you’ve got stacks of weights on the press, be a man and do some squats![/quote]
I happen to like the leg press ha.
I used to be bothered by what other people were doing, half reps, too much weight, whatever but now the only thing that gets me mad is being unsafe.
In my gym yesterday a guy was doing squats and someone trying to sneak around the bar to grab a 10 or 25 lb plate knocked into the bar on one side and the squatter lost balance immediately and appeared to seriously injure his knee, also the bar hit his head on the way down and cut it open pretty bad.
People(the one who bumped the bar) that don’t have common sense and proper respect for others(WAIT 30 SECONDS FOR YOUR GOD DAMN 10 LB PLATE) scare the life out of me when I’m there.
As long as these people that screw up their training aren’t hurting themselves or other people I say leave them alone until they ask for help. People are probably signing into messages boards saying “Dood I saw this newbz trying to butterfly 35 lbers and couldn’t do one rep!!!” I was stretching and I’m sure glad nobody came to “spot” me or give me advice.
Yes there are douche bags that train bad all the time, but certain exercises I cheat on for effect and if someone only saw me train that day they’d assume I was an idiot, let’s all just give people the benefit of the doubt and worry about our own training for once.
i train at PowerHouse and we have people squat all the time, and with good form. Although I must admit I have never seen a gym nearly this hardcore before.
Oh well I know I squat ATG and do box squats! I have the sore knees and muscles to prove it haha walking the day after my squat/deadlift day is always an issue.
I don’t really care so much that he was doing quarter squats. I didn’t say anything to him; except when he observed, “I don’t go down as far as you.” to which I just replied “Yeah, it’s a bit harder.”
Last night I was a tad bit enthusiastic about finding another, perhaps, real squatter. Meh. I was just disappointed. 
I would just like to be around people who really “know what they’re doing.”
And on a slightly related note - I love squatting. Best exercise, ever. I cringe whenever I read an article on here and they make a quip about people making excuses to avoid squatting. No one actually does that, right?
I’m willing to bet 90% of the people on T-Nation don’t squat correctly or as deep as we think(myself included). I remember I brought my camera to the gym last year and took a quick video clip of myself squatting(for analyzing my form, not being some gym voyeur creep), only to realise I almost break parallel…half the time.
I dropped weight and really worked on my form, but as one of our author’s once wrote, practice doesn’t make perfect, prefect practice makes perfect. Even with a bare bar squatting deeper was awkward and uncomfortable, and I felt like I was about to fall on my ass.
That being said I still go deeper than anyone I have ever seen in real life(save for T-Nation vids).
And before you bust my ass for not squatting ATG, I’m tall, like 9’11", so go fuck yourself.
I sweat more than anyone else in the gym.
…Maybe its just genetics.
I squat at the bottom of a steep hill so my ass touches the grass faster and i can use extremely heavy weights
I hit parallel, sometimes lower, I really need to work on my Squatting flexability, but when doing Fron Squats, you can’t cheat!