THOUGHTS ON SQUATS

I’ve been training the barbell squat since 2003.  Steely eyed readers will note that this does NOT line up with my persistent claim of (as of this writing) having lifted weights for 26 years.  This is, of course, a testament to the reality that, in 1999, when I first started lifting weights, all I had was an adjustable standard weight bench with spinlock collars with a leg extension/curl/preacher curl station built in, along with some spinlock adjustable dumbbells, which meant I, of course, only did bench and curls 5 days a week, with some occasional leg extensions and curls.  And then I joined our football team for 1 season, wherein our coaches demonstrated the barbell squat to us and then promptly informed us it was a dangerous lift that would hurt our backs and that we shouldn’t do it.  Yeah: our program wasn’t super great.  So I spent my formative high school years NOT squatting: it wasn’t until I got to college that saw OTHER lifters performing this “dangerous” movement that I got the gumption to actually give it a try (fun fact: THAT college weightroom had a rule against DEADLIFTS, because THOSE lifts were dangerous, required a high degree of skill, and could hurt your back.  You’d get kicked out if you were caught deadlifting…so I called all my deadlifts reverse hack squats.  Also fun fact: this was the same college gym Jon Andersen lifted in…)  This incredibly long and undesired background story is here just to establish my bona fides as it comes to the following thoughts, observations and blasphemy I’m about to express regarding the squat, but why don’t I provide a little more background: the ONLY way I knew how to squat from 2003 to about 2023 was a low bar squat.  I never even tried high bar.  I then went through a stint of ONLY doing high bar, no belt, stupidly full ROM squats for about 2 years before returning back to my beloved low bar squat, for reasons I will discuss momentarily.  But for now: here are some thoughts on squats…

 

IT’S A BODYBUILDER: NOT A LEG BUILDER

And a soul crusher

Alright, before I get any further, let me clarify that when I say “squat”, I’m referring to what many other people call “the back squat”.  Since I’m pedantic, I do NOT call it the back squat.  Saying “THE” squat means it is, by default, with a barbell on your back.  All other squats are variations of this squat, and I’m not going to say “back squat” the same way I’m not going to say “overhead” when it comes to the press.  So anyway…

 

The squat always comes under fire in discussion on building muscle because of the fact that we have numerous various studies that absolutely confirm that there are tons of better movements out there for building leg muscles.  Leg extensions, leg pressing, belt squatting, and I’m sure various other machines and exercises have all come out ahead of the squat.  And this argument is used to remove the squat from muscle building programs, saying that it’s an obsolete movement and there are better choices out there for building the legs.

But still not this

 

This is missing the point.  The function of the squat in a mass building program is not, specifically, the building of the legs: it’s the building of the body as a whole!  And as much as glasses pushers wanna make a meme out of “squats make your arms grow”, there’s a reason the old school folks believed that maxim.  For a while, the idea was that training large muscles released more growth hormone, and though that may be true, the amount raise is, most likely, inconsequential.  No, my thought (yes, it’s my theory, the joy of solipsism is I don’t have to prove anything) is that it’s the whole body systemic loading of the squat that, in turn, promotes a whole body systemic RESPONSE to grow from the load.  THIS is why the squat features so heavily in mass building programs, like Super Squats, Mass Made Simple, Building the Monolith, Deep Water, much of the work of Stuart McRobert, Paul Anderson’s training, etc etc.  It’s not about the bending and extending of the legs, because if that were the case the leg press would be an adequate substitute here: it’s about the time spent with a load on your shoulders compressing your entire body.  Let’s use a little philosophy to compensate for a lack of biology here with this follow on explanation.

 

We take it as a given that, if you train a muscle DIRECTLY, that muscle responds by growing (assuming the training is correctly executed of course, balancing stimulus against recovery and fatigue).  It’s the whole reason isolation exercises exist: we want to target THAT muscle and make it grow.  But we ALSO know, through studies and experience, that even if we train only ONE side, the OTHER side of the body will respond.  If we train ONLY one arm, the other arm will STILL grow in response to this stimulus.  The body does NOT want to be asymmetrical, and will attempt all manner of hormonal and metabolic tomfoolery to be able to achieve balance even if we ham-fistedly try to make it do otherwise.  This is why you’re advised to train the uninjured side when you have an injury: in order to limit the amount of muscle lost during the recovery process.  When we take both of these ideas to be true, we understand something Dan John has been saying to us for years: the body is all one piece.  It actually CAN’T be isolated.  Even when we try to do so, the stimulus travels to the OTHER side of the body.  Which stands to reason, then, that even IF we’re doing “squats”, and the targeted muscles are in the legs, due to the sheer load of the exercise being placed across the ENTIRE body, the entire body will, in turn, grow.

 

THE WORSE YOU ARE, THE BETTER YOU ARE

Yeah, kinda like this

 

Referencing even more Dan John, he talks of the 4 quadrants of lifters: pullers, pushers, hingers and squatters.  In this case, we’re going to ignore those first 2 and speak specifically to hingers and squatters.  Some people are naturally built to hinge, and some are naturally built to squat.  If you need examples of either, Mark Felix, Dave Goggins and Layne Norton are natural hingers, while Tom Platz is going to be our example of a natural squatter.  Why do these distinctions matter in this discussion of the squat?  Because it further reinforces the notion of the squat as a BODYbuilder rather than a leg builder.  Because for certain naturally built squatters, it may actually BE the case that the squat is an awesome leg builder.  Tom Platz built the most noteworthy set of legs in the world relying primarily on the squat, and set a feat of strength so incredible with his 525lb squat for 23 reps that Bill Kazmaier flat out said it was fake and it took 30 years, lots of drugs and about 100lbs+ more bodyweight for anyone else to top it.  In turn, though, when you watch the footage of Tom squatting, you see a human that was practically lab built to execute the squat.  His legs are short, his torso is long, and each rep looks like machine precision, with a bolt upright torso and feet close together.  Kaz referred to these as “sewing machine squats”, like the needle in a machine bobbing up and down.

 

Compare this to the natural hingers I referenced.  You look at their bodies and see long, gangly legs with short torsos.  When they squat, they lean far forward, practically in a good morning, and the ROM of the squat is a journey that would give Frodo pause.  It takes FOREVER for these folks to find depth, and the return from it is an agonizing and awkward process: EXACTLY what we need for growing!  I suppose they said the same thing about middle school.

Keep in mind he was the first person to squat 1100lbs in competition, so it's not like he was a BAD squatter...

Because, again, the squat is building our BODY through a prolonged systemic load.  Super Squats figured out how to extend the duration of the load by use of the breathing mechanic, Dan John figured out how to do it by just cranking the reps up to 50, Jon Andersen figured out how to do it by forcing you to do 10 goddamn sets of 10, but examples abound, we observe how spending significant time stressing the body under load results in the body growing significantly.  This means that those UNNATURAL squatters are going to get even MORE benefit from the squat as an exercise that builds the ENTIRE body by nature of them being poorly suited for the squat.  Each rep is going to take FOREVER to get done and will place the body under significant stress, whereas the natural squatter may, in fact, find that the squat is an EXCELLENT leg building exercise because they are actually built to benefit FROM the squat as a leg builder.  These folks may, actually, need to learn more into hinging as a means to achieve a similar effect.  “May” being the word there: I bet squats still do an excellent job of growing those folks too.

 

THE ROLE OF THE SQUAT

Close enough

The big takeaway from all of this is that the squat needs to be evaluated against its actual intended purpose, AND it must be implemented in a similar manner.   When I want to grow, I put a bar on my back.  I KNOW it’s going to do the job.  But when I need to start getting stronger?  The bar moves off my back and in front of me.  Front squats are always my featured lift in Operator phases of Tactical Barbell.  Why?  Because these WILL strengthen the legs for me more than a squat will AND they put less total systemic stress on me, which means I can SAVE that stress for MORE strength work: specifically strongman events that are taxing on the whole body WITHOUT allowing for the same loading I can experience with a squat.  Atlas stones, sandbag carries, log pressing, etc, all tax the whole body significantly, but don’t “build” like a squat does due to how the loading pans out.  There still needs to be a balance between stimulus, fatigue and recovery, and swapping out the squat for a front squat achieves that.  The Safety Squat Bar can potentially achieve a similar outcome as well, simply because loading can be manipulated with it, but I find it a bit more “playing with fire” compared to a front or zercher squat, and tend to still employ the SSB in gaining phases.

 

Dan John (again) has observed that increasing his squat doesn’t tend to have much significant impact on athletic performance, whereas improving the front squat DOES have much better carryover (along with the goblet squat, double kettlebell front squat, etc), BUT that increasing the squat number DOES tend to result in growth in an athlete, which, again, speaks to the premise that we need to employ to squat for its beneficial function.  CAN the squat make your legs bigger and stronger?  Certainly.  Is it the BEST tool to do so?  Most likely not, at least not directly.  There’s a reason we don’t tend to see it prominently featured in the training of strongman or weightlifters, outside of in the off season.  But when its time for us to grow?  It’s hard to find something better. 

 

IN SUMMARY

Yeah pretty much

 

Critiquing the squat as a leg builder is missing the point of the exercise (pun fully intended).  The squat is an excellent movement for what it does: adding size to the entire body.  Shying away from it in a mass building program because there are “better leg exercises” is shortchanging yourself from the benefits contained in a whole body load that comes from this movement, but at the same time, attempting to strengthen this movement in pursuit of improving your own athletic capabilities is most likely putting you at a disadvantage.  And if it feels awful, it’s most likely working for you even better!