Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
Surely it can’t be just me because it seems there’s an awful lot of talk on whether to go parallel or get even lower. Personally I’ll go for as low as possible but there’s something important that I think needs to be shared before making this decision.
It’s really quite simple: We have a power rack (squat cage) in our gym and the horizontal supports (safety bars) are set at thirty inches from the floor. Now, I’m five feet and eight inches in my converse all-star (training shoes) so if I rest the bar on my shoulders in a standing position this comes to four feet ten inches approximately. That means if I want to reach the safety bars I have to sink twenty eight inches.
So when I squat the bar travels twenty eight inches *or two feet and four inches. This gives me problems though. What I find is that something seems to give. As I try to ascend from a full squat my hips feel overloaded and I have to work really hard just so the weight starts to move up again. For some reason my thighs were in no position to do any work in this position. Many times I would have to rest the bar on the horizontal supports and start all over.
In order to rectify this problem I started squatting a little higher than usual, thus not letting my legs fold as they normally would. So what was happening to make me so weak when I tried to get that extra depth in the squat?
This is where I tried an experiment. I got my training partner to watch as I squatted. What I did was to squat just above the lowest setting. This means the bar would have touched the horizontal supports had I pushed them in through the second set of holes from the lowest. Then I allowed my legs to fold more to get the bar right down to the supports.
What my friend noticed was that in order to get the depth my hips were rotating and pushing my back out of a tight arch. So, for example, if I am facing right >>> you would see my hips rotating anti clockwise. This was the reason my hips were working too hard; this was the reason my thighs had no power; this was the reason I was pinned to the deck.
At approximately thirty three inches from the floor I could hold my form and squat effectively. Any lower than this and my form would collapse resulting in serious problems leverage wise, and for the health of my lower back.
I am simply not flexible enough to squat lower than thirty three inches!
Now, with the bar at a height of thirty three inches from floor level my legs are definitely parallel but certainly not what I would call lower than parallel. What it actually means to get to parallel, I think, is a source of confusion when discussing the art of squatting. Roughly, during the first half of a squat movement the legs and hips move the most with less movement in the upper body. As the depth increases and the legs reach a horizontal position the upper body has to move more to compensate for a shift in balance. Since this is the case it is very easy to feel the legs are parallel when in fact there’s a lot less movement going on in this area. As you ascend from parallel the idea is to move the shoulders first which accounts for the idea that your upper body moves more than the legs as you hit parallel.
When you do reach a roughly parallel position you can do one of two things. You can shift the upper body forward more to reach the parallel bars (this accounts for cases where the squatter ends up in a good morning position on ascending). You can also fold the legs more. What you might notice here is that there isn’t much different in the position of the thighs. In other words you can get approximately six inches or more extra depth in a squat but your thighs will still be parallel and won’t look much different.
This means that it’s much harder to define what it means to go parallel because the margins are so wide. Individual differences in flexibility mean that parallel squatting is going to mean a different thing to, and for, each person, altering the effectiveness of their leg workout.
It’s really quite simple: We have a power rack (squat cage) in our gym and the horizontal supports (safety bars) are set at thirty inches from the floor. Now, I’m five feet and eight inches in my converse all-star (training shoes) so if I rest the bar on my shoulders in a standing position this comes to four feet ten inches approximately. That means if I want to reach the safety bars I have to sink twenty eight inches.
So when I squat the bar travels twenty eight inches *or two feet and four inches. This gives me problems though. What I find is that something seems to give. As I try to ascend from a full squat my hips feel overloaded and I have to work really hard just so the weight starts to move up again. For some reason my thighs were in no position to do any work in this position. Many times I would have to rest the bar on the horizontal supports and start all over.
In order to rectify this problem I started squatting a little higher than usual, thus not letting my legs fold as they normally would. So what was happening to make me so weak when I tried to get that extra depth in the squat?
This is where I tried an experiment. I got my training partner to watch as I squatted. What I did was to squat just above the lowest setting. This means the bar would have touched the horizontal supports had I pushed them in through the second set of holes from the lowest. Then I allowed my legs to fold more to get the bar right down to the supports.
What my friend noticed was that in order to get the depth my hips were rotating and pushing my back out of a tight arch. So, for example, if I am facing right >>> you would see my hips rotating anti clockwise. This was the reason my hips were working too hard; this was the reason my thighs had no power; this was the reason I was pinned to the deck.
At approximately thirty three inches from the floor I could hold my form and squat effectively. Any lower than this and my form would collapse resulting in serious problems leverage wise, and for the health of my lower back.
I am simply not flexible enough to squat lower than thirty three inches!
Now, with the bar at a height of thirty three inches from floor level my legs are definitely parallel but certainly not what I would call lower than parallel. What it actually means to get to parallel, I think, is a source of confusion when discussing the art of squatting. Roughly, during the first half of a squat movement the legs and hips move the most with less movement in the upper body. As the depth increases and the legs reach a horizontal position the upper body has to move more to compensate for a shift in balance. Since this is the case it is very easy to feel the legs are parallel when in fact there’s a lot less movement going on in this area. As you ascend from parallel the idea is to move the shoulders first which accounts for the idea that your upper body moves more than the legs as you hit parallel.
When you do reach a roughly parallel position you can do one of two things. You can shift the upper body forward more to reach the parallel bars (this accounts for cases where the squatter ends up in a good morning position on ascending). You can also fold the legs more. What you might notice here is that there isn’t much different in the position of the thighs. In other words you can get approximately six inches or more extra depth in a squat but your thighs will still be parallel and won’t look much different.
This means that it’s much harder to define what it means to go parallel because the margins are so wide. Individual differences in flexibility mean that parallel squatting is going to mean a different thing to, and for, each person, altering the effectiveness of their leg workout.
Last edited:
