SQUATS wtf

[Ozz2001]

Ok i seen ppl post that you should go down farther so i figured the other day id try it out..Well now my glutes and hams are killing me which is fine but...
I dont feel like i got anything on the front part of my legs at all? WTF Now if i go parella (bad speller) i get more workout on the front leg and not my ass and hams as much..So is going lower going to take my front leg since the the weight and pressure is going to my glutes? Any ideas? Also how much can i work my legs for maxium growth? There starting to catch up now and i get wood just watching them finally grow after years of having now...I read its best to only work them once a week since there made different then other muscles.I have seen it work so far but can you really do them 2 times a week and still get maxium growth and size? Thanks for any help ( have long legs if this may help the answers)

 

[the good thief]

You will get more glute and ham activation when you go past parallel. I only squat once per week due to the intensity of the move, any more than that and i smoke my CNS. Some bro's squat more than once per week...experiment and find what system keeps your numbers going up...

 

[Guinness5.0]

If you are new to going deep then your glutes/hams/hips will be your weak spot for a while. Once they catch up and you get stronger your quads will be activated as well. I know that for me at first the same sensation occurred but now when I squat I feel it EVERYWHERE

 

[Madcow2]

Yeah, right now you are likely out of balance with dominant and relatively stronger quads. The full squat will balance out your musculature fairly quickly (a very good thing - particularly to prevent injury as the hams/hips/glutes engage and protect your patella from heavy sheer). After balance is achieved you'll have a lot easier of a time pushing your squat up and growing your legs (including the quads). So, you can kind of look at it as a short-term effect and the imbalance in your legs created by your previous technique will cost you some quad stimulus while everything else gets up to par.

There is a great write up in the PL forum that covers the squat: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=332299

There are several schools of thought on squat depth. Many misinformed individuals caution against squatting below parallel, stating that this is hazardous to the knees. Nothing could be further from the truth. (2) Stopping at or above parallel places direct stress on the knees, whereas a deep squat will transfer the load to the hips,(3) which are capable of handling a greater amount of force than the knees should ever be exposed to. Studies have shown that the squat produces lower peak tibeo-femoral(stress at the knee joint) compressive force than both the leg press and the leg extension.(4) For functional strength, one should descend as deeply as possible, and under control. (yes, certain individuals can squat in a ballistic manner, but they are the exception rather than the rule). The further a lifter descends, the more the hamstrings are recruited, and proper squatting displays nearly twice the hamstring involvement of the leg press or leg extension. (5,6) and as one of the functions of the hamstring is to protect the patella tendon (the primary tendon involved in knee extension) during knee extension through a concurrent firing process, the greatest degree of hamstring recruitment should provide the greatest degree of protection to the knee joint. (7) When one is a powerlifter, the top surface of the legs at the hip joint must descend to a point below the top surface of the legs at the knee joint.

Regarding the number of times in a period you should squat (frequency), it's impossible to say without taking into account specifically what you intend to do (volume and intensity as described as a % of 1RM) and the workload imposed by each training session. I will say that for general usage a 1x per week frequency of performing a lift is really suboptimal and runs right into a detraining effect. There is a lot of benefit in the form of adaptation from higher frequency. This is not to say that you take your 15 sets of weekly squats and now perform that 2x per week for 30 sets total - that's a 100% increase and will bury most people. This is a short piece I wrote to address this same question a while back: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4776914&postcount=386. A more workable alternative is 8 sets in each of 2 sessions. You'll find a lot of guys here squatting 2-3x per week and making great gains - probably some of the best strength and mass gains they've ever experienced (this kind of protocol is fairly common outside of BBing for adding muscle and power to athletes and has worked for ages). That said, they aren't going in and bombing 10 90%+ triples every session - there is a regulation of volume and intensity to allow for this. Oftentimes, the programs are periodized to allow for periods of much higher stimulus than could be tolerated indefinitely (i.e. a linear unperiodized program) after which the overall load is lowered (volume = down, frequency = down, intensity = generally up) to allow for adaptation and recovery.

This is an example of such a program and probably the most popular one people are using here for this purpose: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4764723&postcount=381

This is a write up on dual factor theory which is at the heart of periodization and basically the best description of how the body works in response to training. I.e. when you train you accrue both fitness and fatigue (hence dual factor) but these accrue and can be disipated at different rates - hence loading and unloading periods and allowing for higher training loads. This is basically the way athletes, PL, OLs train around the world and has been used for a long time now. BBing has just managed to ignore it for the most part - why I have no idea since you can see from the results here that it's pretty damn valuable. A good article explaining this is here: http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/PlannedOvertraining.html

You'll find a lot of other information on the above program, a more novice to intermediate program, training theory, a bunch of other programs, and interviews/articles in this link: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375215

Hope some of that helps.

 

[Ozz2001]

Great info guys thanks a bunch..I just think its weird that i had been squating awhile now going to paral and my legs hips glutes ect i thought had got use to it,till i went past that deeper.I have been geting good results doing this and have all 3 cuts on my quads but now when i go deep it really feels like its just all butt and hams..let me try to explain a bit more.When i started i was weak so i didnt get to deeps so i felt the workout more in my lower quad towards the knee more..Then i got deeper i felt it more in top quads and the hips now its all glutes and hams...So is this caused by the angle of the squat correct? So it seems to me the farther down you squat the more upper muscles you would use correct? See i am not looking to grow a big black butt lo0l or hips i am trying to get the hip down more then anything.I want to keep most the tension on my quad and hip more then glute. so to sum it up maybe i should do do some paral and some deep to cover all angles what yell think!!

 

[Guinness5.0]

Great info guys thanks a bunch..I just think its weird that i had been squating awhile now going to paral and my legs hips glutes ect i thought had got use to it,till i went past that deeper.I have been geting good results doing this and have all 3 cuts on my quads but now when i go deep it really feels like its just all butt and hams..let me try to explain a bit more.When i started i was weak so i didnt get to deeps so i felt the workout more in my lower quad towards the knee more..Then i got deeper i felt it more in top quads and the hips now its all glutes and hams...So is this caused by the angle of the squat correct? So it seems to me the farther down you squat the more upper muscles you would use correct? See i am not looking to grow a big black butt lo0l or hips i am trying to get the hip down more then anything.I want to keep most the tension on my quad and hip more then glute. so to sum it up maybe i should do do some paral and some deep to cover all angles what yell think!!

I can't speak for anyone but myself but I haven't become big-bootied from squatting deep and my hips don't look out of place at all. The biggest visible change I've noticed has been in my quads (like you alluded to- my teardrop seems to originate up by my waist) and hamstrings. Maybe the visible effect would be greater if my bf% was lower, but I doubt it would be detrimental.

Also, the safety factor should be considered- going as deep as your body allows is much better for your knees than forcing them to bear the load of shifting heavy-ass weight from the descent to the ascent. Big-time shearing forces occur at the knee when you transition from lowering down to parallel then going back up.

 

[Madcow2]

The body grows as a system and is best stimulated as such (hence why squats, dead, rows, and presses work so well). If executed correctly it grows in proportion. To a degree it will depend on your genetics but if you don't have a giant bubble ass you likely won't develop one that is out of proportion.

If you think you can actually grow your quads and have tiny little hips and glutes be ready to take a lot of drugs and stay on them because it's going to be very hard to get your body to continue to adapt and leave your other parts relatively underdeveloped. If you do induce this by circumventing the body and using enough drugs to get results from it, be prepared for the fact that your body won't retain this asymetrical development in a natural state and you'll lose it.

It sounds like right now you are a quad squatter and your quads have responded to try to mitigate the sheering forces due to reversal at parallel and slowing the bar before that point (so it stops at parallel). You can bet that it will become harder and harder to see gains without developing the other muscles which work synergistically with the quads in the squat.

Most PLs squatting to parallel are using very different technique to transfer the load to the posterior chain, hips, glutes, back etc...

My advice would be to leave your anxiety at the door (no one has yet complained as to the development results of full range squatting and the relatively large quad development), chaulk up the current emphasis on your hips and hams as dealing with lack of development relative to quad strength, do this for a few months and if 3 months from now you have a giant purple baboon ass and no quads then you will be proven right and we are all wrong. That hasn't happened yet and I'd bet a lot of money that you are going to have much bigger legs and quads and be much happier a few months from now (have healthier knees too as it sounds like you are putting a lot of sheer on the knee).

 

[Ozz2001]

ok guys ill buy all the ideas and go deeper for 6 weeks and see what happens from there..I real dont care how i have to do them as long as i get something back for my time...I was checking for options and they all come back to the same opinions so ill giver hell and let yea know how it goes.Ive done good so far how i was doing them so if everyones right i should get twice what i got now so time will tell...Thanks to everyone that took time to help speak there mind and tolerating me lol.....enough said ..Peace