Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Ive changed the style of my quats. I used to have a lil bit wider than shoulder stance. and I would squat all the way down til my ass hit my heels. feet facing dead ahead. i also wore the bar really high up on my traps.

well now I do this:

arch my back significantly and stick my butt out so I maintain that tension. I stand with my legs shoulder width, feet slightly angled out. and i let my knees follow their natural path. I drive from my heels and concentrate on the quads. and the bar is slightly lower on the traps in the natural "pocket".

Sounds good. I've taken a break from squats. They used to be one of my favorite exercises but now I am sticking to Leg Presses. I've had some lower back problems and had to take a squat break.

I don't know if I ever had good squatting form to begin with, it always felt a bit funny for me. I do remember at times, it felt just right, and I'll get back into them sometime. I also took a break from deadlifts and I loved that exercise too.

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From what I know about squats (which might very well be squat, no pun intended) you shouldt bring your ass all the way down close to your knees. ANytime you dip your ass majorly past your knee level you are putting a lot of strain on yuor knees. Plus, you dont have to dip down so low to see great results. at least that is what i think.

Yeah ive never seen anyone recommend you hit your ass on your legs, a 90 degree angle for the thighs is good, and thats what i've seen people at the gym do, its what I do. But hell maybe we are all just half assing our squats.

olympic lifters do ass the grass squats because they have to. it does however cause shearing on the knee and isnt really recommended for most people.
you only really need to go to the point where the tops of your thighs are parellel to the floor. try to keep the knees protruding forwards no more than your toes (though this is harder if you are tall) and a smaller arch in your back. avoid rounding your back too often. i personally dont believe that rounding your back occasionally is bad as professional strongmen actually train round back lifting - how else would you be able to lift an atlas stone otherwise!?
the idea is to sit back when you squat, rather than lower the weight with your knees. this takes some getting used to.

and whenever you feel like you dont want to squat, just remember -

shut up and squat!



jonathan

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Squat
Press
Eat
Repeat

I just recently read in one of the bodybuilding magazines (Fitness-Rx, I think) that you should go all the way down to get the best results in your glutes, so that's what I've been doing.

But this stuff is still new to me, so I don't know.

you get excellent results for your glutes doing parallel squats and deadlifts. also going full depth on squats will round your back, which you would want to minimise.
actually it was really funny recently - i have some shorts that i bought a few months before taking up weight training - and they were pretty baggy until i took up squatting 8months ago.
i put them on for the first time in about 9months a few weeks ago and they were sooooo tight! like bloody hot pants!

nothing builds an ass like squatting!

jonathan

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Squat
Press
Eat
Repeat

Of course you get the best (temporary) results.
The question is: what price do you want to pay for those "best results"?!
You can't put any more tension on your knees and chances are good you fuck them up with time. Of course olympic lifters and bodybuilders do it, but how will they be able to move in 20 years?

I can't give you any proof on what I'm saying. From what I've learned I can only say this: you better minimze tension on you're knees!

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-tomorrow come today-

I use the smith to do squats and it's helped me not only with form but also with my confidence in hitting higher weights. I generally go down to about a 35-40 degree bend in my knees before I go back up and it makes my legs all wobbly so I'm assuming it works.

I've pretty much given up doing squats with a barbell because of the strain it puts on my back, and I go for one leg squats (with no extra weights) or lunges (w/ dumbells) instead

Honestly, squats below parallel don't tend to cause excessive knee damage contrary to popular belief - the major causes of injury due to squats are poor form and adding too much weight for what someone can handle. Sure, there's always such-and-such article or "study" that claims this is the case, but the truth seems to go against this quite often.

Olympic deep squatting has been around since early in the century, and unless someone suffered a catastrophic injury, few people were reported to have had numerous knee injuries down the line. I haven't met too many bodybuilders that have kept training hard for multiple decades, but each summer at the olympic lifting competition here locally, you'll get to meet people who have been doing deep squats for longer than I've been alive and are still putting up more weight than people half their age. More commonly it was problems with blown elbows and the like that ended careers and plagued people long afterward (the price you pay for trying to hold on to a heavy jerk!) Think of it this way - most international olympic lifters do the deepest squats possible 5-6 days/week, sometimes 2-3 sessions in a day, doing double to triple bodyweight much of the time. No belts, no knee wraps, no suits, yet many of them have careers that span up to a decade or longer before they choose to retire. These people (men and women alike) do more squatting in a week than most of us will do in 2 years, yet they keep on going and continually get stronger. This is where the talk of deep squats being bad for you loses its base for the argument because there simply isn't any proof. You're far more likely to damage yourself on a Smith machine because it simply isn't a natural movement - I've never squatted with my feet a foot in front of me, and I've never made a squat where I couldn't lean forward to keep my weight distributed as best I can for maximum power to get back up. Take out the necessity of the stabilizer muscles to handle the load (squats aren't just about legs - you've got to have a good strong set of abs and a powerful lower back to start going heavy!) and you've got a recipe for disaster. Now, which one seems to be more dangerous?

Nobody seems to know where the misconceptions regarding deep squats being bad comes from, but most likely it is from the same circle that says machines are better than free weights and that if you squat your arse will get too big. Fact is, many people don't squat deep because it is HARDER than squatting to parallel or just above - heck, if I cut my squats by about 4" in depth I can handle 50 lbs. more than I do when I go deep, but why on earth would I want to make lifting easier since it only hinders progression? Lift carefully and lift long, lift foolishly and you'll regret it quickly is the honest truth about squats and any other exercise. So as long as you develop the core strength to handle heavy poundages and deeps squats you'll be good to go.

Ryan