Not just good ole back squats, do variations, and do them heavy. The past few weeks ive been hammering away at squats and today I started to see some progress. Not just an increase in weights, but my "hole shot" (ascent) was a lot stronger and faster. How is this so? By breaking myself several times a week. What do you mean "variations"? Yes the best way to get better at squatting is doing it, but, bottom position squats and lock outs help you work through the sticking points and get your legs jacked.
Bottom position squats first. The name tells you what its. When your doing this lift there are three positions you should work from, below, at and above parallel. Your obviously gonna need a squat cage so you can move the pins to the right height. This lift is tough so if your scared then go do leg extensions or something, and let the people who want to get better use the cage. so once you get the pins where you need them and your bar racked, get underneath the bar, and PUSH. What weight and rep scheme should you use? As heavy as you can for singles or triples. How many sets? I do 15 for singles and 7 for triples. So what is the benefit? Well starting from the bottom, you don't have the "coiled stress" on your muscles, so you have to recruit more muscle fibers to move the bar. If your gonna do triples, unload at the bottom so your don't build tension on your muscles and have to recruit the maximum amount of tissue for each rep. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will feel in the hole, and your going have a more explosive hole shot. Your gonna have to take my word for it, ill get you the science behind it later.
So on to lockouts. This variation works the very top of your squat but also carries over to your lift off. For the set up, set the pins 8-10 inches lower then where you normally start from. Overload the bar big time. And if you feel like being considerate, get a bar that is already curved a little bit. once you get all the plates you can handle, lift. thats it. Your gonna feel like a beast with 600lbs on your back trust me.
So there it is. Get off the leg press and squat.
