How Low Should You Squat?
How low should you squat?
Oh, you mean like how many degrees should your knees and hips be?
Ha, that’s easy!
The answer is “Don’t do them at all” degrees!
Like, why would you even want to leg day, bro?
Furthermore, why on earth would you want to use the squat rack for squats when you could use it for its actual intended purpose, which is for curls?!?!
But since you apparently wanna do squats, let’s be really real with each other. While it’s romantic as fuck, squatting so your ass almost kisses the ground isn’t that important.
Sure, squatting ass-to-grass (ATG) activates more muscle, especially in the posterior chain, but let’s not pretend like you can’t hammer the quads by just going to parallel. Fuck, you can even activate the quads by doing partial reps, which place constant tension on the quads when done properly. That, however, requires having to build the mind-muscle connection, and who the fuck wants to be bothered with that?!
Seeing some of the shit I see in the gym and IG vids of people squatting with excessive buttwink and them turning the squat into more of a good morning exercise movement, many would do best to just go parallel so the hips are in line with the knees rather than squatting the 10 or more degrees lower.
Besides bidding sayonara to ATG so you can stop looking like an idiot and causing people like me to stare a hole through you as you butcher the exercise, there’s another reason that you may care for.
Squatting ATG with relatively heavy loads over time increases the risk of injury to the lumbar spine, hips, and surrounding tissues, none of which were made to stabilize and generate force at that depth with that kind of poundage. That’s one of the key reasons why official powerlifting depth is at parallel, not lower. But since you don’t really care about safety, then just reconsider ATG for vanity purposes, that of being made fun of by people like me!
As for me and what I do?
My, that’s none of your business, nosy!
But if I were to disclose that information, I’d tell you that I squat ATG but change depth to parallel when I squat “heavy”.
But that’s just what I would tell your nosy-ass were I compelled to disclose that information, which I’m not, so take it as you may, nosy motherfucker!
Glossary: exercise, gym, leg day, muscle, reps, squat, squat rack, squats
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