Squats: Are they REALLY necessary?

[AggieBoy]

Sorry, but you are not the best athlete you can be if you haven't put in the time squatting if your sport involves the use of your legs.

Maybe if you are playing table tennis in a wheel chair you don't need to squat.

Otherwise, you are leaving performance on the table and any rationalization is just laziness and pain avoidance.

Also, don't confuse the marketing aspect of strength with optimal training.
Pavel has amazing stuff but at the end of the day his brand is kettlebells. Ross Enamait brand is kind of the opposite of having a squat rack around. I'm sure Ross has done a shit ton of squatting in his day.

 

[SexyMahnaz]

Squatting is an effective way to get stronger.

But once you get to a point ... is the effort/recovery/calories/risk required to take, for example a 140kg back squat to a 180kg worthwhile?

I'd imagine the law of diminishing returns applies here, and outside of specifc strength sports/positions it probably wouldn't be.

 

[AggieBoy]

He claims he gets his athletes just as strong using single leg squats combined with trap bar deadlifts, hang cleans and front squats.
The reason he does this is cause the rate of lower back injuries went down alot from skipping back squats.

.

I doubt these athletes have never back squatted though.
There is certainly a point of diminishing returns on back squatting when talking high level athletes who already have incredibly strong legs. Taking their squat from 600 to 700 doesn't make sense possibly from a risk reward standpoint.

To me the goal for amateur athletics should be about 2.2x body weight squat explosively. Why? Because your opponent probably can't do that so you gain an edge and it is attainable by anyone without needing drugs.

 

[ironwolf]

I doubt these athletes have never back squatted though.
There is certainly a point of diminishing returns on back squatting when talking high level athletes who already have incredibly strong legs. Taking their squat from 600 to 700 doesn't make sense possibly from a risk reward standpoint.

To me the goal for amateur athletics should be about 2.2x body weight squat explosively. Why? Because your opponent probably can't do that so you gain an edge and it is attainable by anyone without needing drugs.

what about 2.19 x bw???? would that work? or does it have to be exactly 2.2? YOu seem like an expert so please let us know.








lol.

 

[AggieBoy]

But once you get to a point ... is the effort/recovery/calories/risk required to take, for example a 140kg back squat to a 180kg worthwhile?

See I think almost right around those numbers is the difference between being trained and being well trained. It is also the area that drugs do their magic.
2x body weight makes you respectable at your sport but 2.2-2.5x makes you an ass kicker.

Here is JJ Watt doing 2.38x
[YT]qXl10t6KauQ[/YT]

 

[AggieBoy]

what about 2.19 x bw???? would that work? or does it have to be exactly 2.2? YOu seem like an expert so please let us know.

If your too stupid to realize those are generalizations and not hard numbers then I don't know what to tell you.

OBVIOUSLY ,2x doesn't even scale linearly even based on weight alone. A 300lb lineman in high school is a monster with a 2x body weight squat. OBVIOUSLY, this doesn't account for limb length and height either. JJ Watt at 6'5" 700lb squat is huge compared to a 5'7" power lifter with short legs squatting 700.

 

[Mr Mojo Lane]

Jon Jones does not lift weights. A lot of great fighters did not lift weights. A lot of bodybuilders and powerlifters cannot fight at all.

 

[Oblivian]

Jon Jones does not lift weights. A lot of great fighters did not lift weights. A lot of bodybuilders and powerlifters cannot fight at all.

The sky is blue. The clouds are white. Sun shines, and it is bright.

 

[Mr Mojo Lane]

The sky is blue. The clouds are white. Sun shines, and it is bright.

Well, dude, this thread about a guy that is going to give up squats for awhile and then maybe go back to them later is nine pages long

 

[JauntyAngle]

Jon Jones does not lift weights.

A lot of great fighters did not lift weights.

True. But the question is whether some of them might have been even better if they had lifted a bit at some points in their careers.

Joel Jamieson says about strength in his book:

It's important to realize that in MMA a great deal of your strength in the sport comes from technique itself. Learning how to use your bodyweight to your advantage, to manipulate leverage as if it were a weapon, to use your opponent's momentum against him (or her), etc, has the ability to exponentially increase how strong you feel to your opponent in MMA... obviously, general and specific conditioning also plays a large role in how strong you are in MMA as well. All the strength in the world won't do you any good if you don't have the endurance to maintain it throughout the course of a fight...

Now, with all of the above being said, most of the best fighters I have worked with have had a decent level of general strength. They may not have been able to put up powerlifting-type numbers, but they also weren't weak by any means and the most explosive fighters I've worked with have all been relatively strong.

Where strength tends to have the biggest influence on power output is against higher resistances. In MMA, higher resistance comes in the form of your opponent pushing, pulling and trying to force you into positions you don't want to be in and vice versa. This means that strength plays the biggest factor in the grappling skills and situations.

TL; DR- it's not the be-all and end-all, but it's pretty useful.

A lot of bodybuilders and powerlifters cannot fight at all.

Relevance?

 

[Mr Mojo Lane]

Well let me put it this way. The OP said "I just finished up a 9 week strength phase". I disagree that it was a 9 week strength phase b/c you did not do squats.

If you were doing pistols instead of squats during a functional/muscular endurance phase than ok, there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[Tosa]

The pistol, IMO, is a pretty garbage exercise. It's a movement that doesn't really resemble anything else done in athletics or life. The biomechanics of a single leg squat means the knee tracks far forwards, and that there's little loading on the muscles of the hips or "core", making it a glorified knee extension. Furthermore, in order to reach the desired depth, most individuals completely round their backs - not a big deal if the movement is unloaded, but generally not a good movement pattern to associate with lower body work.

 

[RafailNadull]

Maybe quarter one legged squats would be more useful. They certainly more closely resemble a movement that often occurs in athletics and life.

 

[KnightTemplar]

Nobody move - I'm hijacking this Thread!:icon_chee

Are Front Squats easier on the knees than Back or SS Bar Squats? Or is the level of stress placed on the knee the same for all variations?

 

[Tosa]

Nobody move - I'm hijacking this Thread!:icon_chee

Are Front Squats easier on the knees than Back or SS Bar Squats? Or is the level of stress placed on the knee the same for all variations?

Harder on the knees, unless you're bad enough at front squats relative to other variations that the decreased load makes it easier. If you're trying to reduce stress on the knees in a squat, I'd suggest the following:

1) Low bar squat, if shoulder mobility allows for it. Or, use a speciality bar that allows you to shift the weight farther back in a similar manner, if available (eg. SSB, cambered bar, buffalo bar).
2) Try widening your stance. Just slightly, at first. To go with this, focusing on sitting back.
3) Make sure you're pushing the knees out / spreading the floor / insert cue here. Bands or a hip circle can help you work on this. Also, make sure the adductors (that's the inside of the thigh) aren't tight.
4) Keep tension across the knee joint during the lift - Ie. if you bounce out of the hole, and lose tension doing that, stop, even if it means reducing the load.
5) A good pair of knee sleeves.
6) If there's a degenerative condition (eg. arthritis) and the very bottom of the squat aggravates it, it's acceptable to just squat to parallel.

Keep in mind that reducing stress on the knees usually either means shifting the stress elsewhere (usually the hips) or reducing the load.

 

[miaou]

Front squats and high-bar squats used to produce knee pain for me.

A few months ago I switched to front and high-bar squatting reaching full knee flexion and bouncing off the bottom.

Knee pain is gone.

 

[Tosa]

Interesting.

I guess you could say that if knee pain is an issue, someone should try both with, and without the bounce.

 

[yookfarb]

The guy on the left bases his entire S&C around the squat(albeit front squat), AND he drinks milk.

 

[RafailNadull]

If only Anderson had done heavy squatting, he would clearly still be the champ.

 

[ironwolf]

Chris Algieri was doing goblet squats on HBO 24/7 and he's fighting manny pacquiao in a few days.