Squats:
The Ultimate Leg And All Body Exercise by Ben Kong
Your legs are your foundations and hard heavy leg training will
transform your physique making it more powerful and stronger
than you ever imagined. However, hard heavy leg training is
brutal and that's why the majority of the masses run for the
hills and don't achieve Ultimate Body Success. Leg training is
simple in many ways but at the same time has many subtle
technical and psychological nuances that make it very
challenging and often very frustrating when people get stuck but
can't quite figure out why or how to get past their plateau.
The Squat is the king of all exercises and failing to pay close
attention to the technical aspects of this core exercise will
mean that you will crash and burn with what I call the 80-90kg
squat phenomenon. Very few guys squat, but still fewer squat
well. If you don't perfect your technique, eventually around the
80-90lg mark, your progress will come to a grinding halt. You
won't be able to get proper depth, the movement will feel
awkward and at worst you may even injure yourself. I have seen
it countless times,guys that weigh 80-90kg or more getting stuck
at around the 80-90kg mark who end up 3/4 squatting that weight
for years on end. Don't let this happen to you - technique is
everything, otherwise you're just wasting your time and energy
needlessly. It is absolutely imperative to practice until the
bar sits well, you feel your groove and you can hit your depth
consistently, staying tight and strong throughout the whole
movement.
Like the deadlift, the squat is a hard and heavy simple movement
yet has many subtle nuances that you will discover as you
progress in your training journey.
As with any progressive overload, over time you will come up
against sticking points or even from the start you may find that
you may not be able to hit proper depth with any appreciable
amount of weight. The most common technique flaw is not going to
at least parallel. Even if you are never going to enter a
powerlifting competition, going to parallel is so crucial for
long term squatting power, effective leg training and balanced
development of the quads, glutes and hamstrings that you always
have to be fastidious about your depth.
Whenever you increase the weights, make sure that you still keep
your depth. If you lose some depth, get it back before you
increase the weight again. Simple. On the subject of proper
squat depth as well, once you get beyond the basics, it should
be a never ending constant refinement to improve your feel or
awareness of where your proper depth is so you can work on
hitting it precisely EVERY time and not spend any more time 'in
the hole' than necessary before powering the weight back up.
There is a saying that I think relates beautifully to the squat:
"amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals
practice until they never get it wrong."
