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Stop Squatting Like a Newb

After more than 2 decades in the gym, I’ve got a pretty long list of things that annoy me. Right at the top is when I see some guy load up the bar and grunt his way through what he thinks are squats, when he barely goes down past a 30 degree bend in the legs.

If your ass doesn’t hit your ankles, you aren’t doing squats.

Another thing my time in the gym has taught me is that people, for the most part, don’t want to be helped. They don’t like advice. They want to keep on doing it their way, no matter how wrong it is, or how much better the results would be if they would only do it right.

Most of these poor deluded individuals are firmly trapped  in the same quicksand I used to be mired in: they think the amount of weight is the end-all-be-all of resistance training. Well faithful readers, how much weight you use is only part of the equation.

See, the reason they don’t want to squat lower is because to do so they’d have to reduce the weight. Rather than do less weight right, they’ll just keep on doing more weight wrong, all so they can puff up their chests and proclaim back at work “Squatted 275 for 6 today.” when all they did was get 275 off the rack and bend their knees enough to lower the weight a grand total of 6 inches, before grunting and groaning it back up and calling it a rep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you say. Another old iron head bitching about how everyone else is doing it wrong. Hey, don’t take my word for it. Go watch some power lifting videos about squats on YouTube. For the squat to be most effective in building muscle and strength, as well as minimizing stress on your knees, your hip has to drop below your knee. That means 90% of people I see squatting in the gym are doing it wrong.

So try doing it right for a change:

• Don’t rest the bar on your traps, rest the bar lower on your rear delts. This puts the weight more over you hips and enables you to generate more power. Stop using the little sissy pad thing on the bar too. It makes you look like a pussy. If it hurts where you rest the bar, you are probably setting it too high. Or you’re a pussy. Set the bar lower and be a man.
• Ever see people putting 5-pound plates under their heels? Or a two-by-four? Don’t do that. Don’t even lift in running shoes, lift barefoot if you want to be hardcore, or in flat shoes like wrestling shoes or Chuck Taylors. Raising the heel moves the weight forward away from your hips, reduces your leverage, and puts more stress on your knees. Hint: if you see a guy squatting while wearing running shoes, it’s a sure bet he doesn’t know what they hell he’s doing.
• And speaking of knees… stopping the squatting motion before your hip drops below your knees puts MORE stress on your knees, not less. Go ahead, try it. Squat with an empty bar. Go all the way down. Don’t bounce. Feel the transition? Your center of gravity is over your hips and ankles, not your knees like it is with partial squats. Partial squats and leg extensions are horrible for you knees, so stop doing them. Dumbass.
• If you have problems going all the way down because you end up leaning too far forward and losing your balance, the most likely reason is that you don’t have enough hip flexibility. So work on that. Stretch your hamstrings too. And stop making excuses.

For more info on the squat, see the How to Squat post I wrote for the weight training section of Nutribody.  

Now stop squatting like a newb and stop thinking you’re squatting all this weight when you aren’t. And the next time some old guy wants to show you a better way to do things, listen.

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