Box Squatting for Raw Lifters - Part 2: Common questions about box squatting

In part 1 of this series, I looked at why you should include box squatting in your routine, regardless of whether you're a raw lifter or not. This part will look at some common questions regarding box squatting.

Common Question #1: Louie Simmons says to not free squat at all except in competition. Should I do that and expect wild increases in my raw squat?

There is no right answer to this because so many scenarios exist. Firstly, there are different kinds of squatters - the long femured squatter and the short femured squatter. The long femured squatter will have a better time with a moderate to wide stance and being a bit more hip dominant with their squatting, while the short femured squatter is more comfortable with a close to moderate stance and generally being a bit more knee dominant when squatting. Box squatting technique is very clear that you want a moderate to wide stance, and box squatting is performed for strengthening the hips and hamstrings. Because of this, it is my opinion that box squatting will not help the short femured lifter, as this lifter is not very hip dominant when squatting. This could be the discrepancy as to why you see people that either swear by the box squat, or people that hate the box squat. Consequently, for the long femured lifter, I think the box squat would help a lot because of the exact reasons stated above. However, the SAID principle applies here. If you want to be a good raw squatter, you should practice raw squatting. In the box squat, the knees do not travel forward. In the raw squat, the knee travels forward, which means more quad reliance. Box squatting when done right does not engage the quads at all.

As you can see, there's no right answer. Try it out and see if it works for you. Don't take what people say as gospel. If somebody told you to sumo deadlift, would you drop every other form of deadlifting? I sure hope not.

Common Question #2: But so and so elite squatter tells me box squatting is completely useless...?

Let me stop you right there. Refer to common question #1. What works for one person usually won't work for another. Find a lifter who has your exact proportions and see what works for him. Also keep in mind that elite squatters are more concerned with taking their squat from 750 to 770. They already know at that point what works for them and what doesn't. Most people don't have this problem and just need to get stronger. Box squatting is one way to get stronger.

One good looking box squat.

Common Question #3: Most elite squatters throw out box squatting in favor of pause squatting. Should I do them? Aren't they the same anyway?

This is a very common misconception. Pause squatting is not the same as box squatting at all. The only way in which they're similar is that they both require you to pause in the bottom. The pause squat is a regular squat with a pause for however long in the bottom. This teaches you to stay tight, explode out of the hole, and builds tons of flexibility. The box squat has you sitting back with a wider stance, with shins almost perpendicular to the box, and relaxing the hip flexors in the pause. The sitting back and the brief relaxation makes all the difference. The sitting back places the stress squarely on the posterior chain. The brief relaxation and breaking of the eccentric-concentric chain is what makes the box squat such a powerful weapon. To get the weight moving again, you need to turn on all muscle fibers at once. If you look at part 1, you'll notice that the box squat excelled in RFD compared to normal squatting. I don't have any research on RFD generated during pause squatting, but I believe that box squatting would be higher because of that breaking in the eccentric-concentric chain. You can't break the chain during pause squatting because you need to stay tight in the hole and never relax.

So treat box squatting and pause squatting as two different variations, not substitutes for each other. The pause squat is more specific to the raw squat and is a good idea to be implemented in a training cycle.

Common Question #4: I see lots of box squatters rocking on the box. Should I be doing this?

I am firmly in the camp of don't rock on the box. Lifters tend to let the tailbone tuck under when rocking and then use momentum to drive the bar up. This defeats the entire purpose of the box. Stay in your squatting angle the entire time and you'll reap the benefits.

Dave Tate reaping the benefits.

Common Question #5: So if all I do is box squat, can I go into a competition and expect to hit major PR's?

See common question #1. The form for a box squat, when done right, is not the same as a free squat. As Louie Simmons says, in a box squat, you squat back not down. In a free squat, you squat more down than back. For optimal results before a competition, you want to use the free squat more to get used to the form and to prime the muscles to react with those leverages. What usually happens is that your body starts looking for the box behind you when free squatting. Practicing what depth feels like without the box takes a couple of sessions. So, for optimal results, do away with the box squatting before competition, and get used to regular squatting.

Common Question #6: Will box squatting negatively affect my regular squatting?

No. It may temporarily cause it to go down if you exclusively box squat, but it will catch up soon enough. It's more the technique difference that causes that temporary drop in numbers than anything else.

Common Question #7: I box squat WAY more than I free squat. What's going on?

You're using a box that's too high. People misjudge what parallel is with a box. Remember that in your bottom position, your hip crease needs to be inline with the top of the knees or lower.

The last part of this series will focus on ways to incorporate box squatting into your routine for best results. Here's a video of Fred "Dr. Squat" Hatfield hitting a big big squat.

Box Squatting For Raw Lifters - Part 1: Why box squat anyway?

Ah, the box squat. The red headed bastard step-child of geared lifting. People love to hate on geared lifting, and as an extension box squatting, the most popular comment being "It doesn't transfer over well to raw squatting". This will give you some insights into how to incorporate box squatting into your lifting, even though you are a raw lifter.

First, why box squat. Here are some big reasons:

1) It teaches a person how to load and lead with the hips. Usually novices and most intermediates do not know how to load the hips properly. You either see a full out knee break to initiate the squat, or not knowing how to maintain a tight arch in the back. The box squat teaches you to reach back with the hips and to keep the chest up (or else you collapse). Most beginners cannot free squat to save their life. However, within 5 minutes I'll have them performing perfect box squats. With an external object to navigate to, people are more aware of their body. Removing the box and having them squatting is a simple step after.

He should box squat.

2) There is this thing called Rate of Force Development. Essentially it refers to the speed at which force is produced. Sprinters, high jumpers, olympic lifters etc have insanely high levels of RFD. There is research that shows that the box squat produced 3-4x as much RFD than a normal squat (1).


3) Most people have terrible, and i mean terrible, development on the back side of the body. Because the box squat forces you to sit back, it loads the hamstrings and the glutes to the nth degree. In fact, when you do box squats to a depth below parallel, you'll see your quad development actually go down, while hamstring and glute development get to new levels.

4) Box squatting deloads the knees. I have medial meniscus tears in both my knees and the only way I've been getting any kind of squatting in my routines is by box squatting. Again, because you sit back so much, the knees don't travel at all. This saves the knees and puts all the pressure on the muscles involved instead.

5) Box squatting ensures depth. You'll notice that in most lifters, when the weight starts piling up, the depth gets shallower and shallower. With the box, you have to reach a definite point to know that you've performed the rep correctly.

6) Recovery is a lot easier with box squatting. For whatever reason, you can recover faster from box squatting. According to Louie Simmons, the original members of Westside Barbell in Culver City, California, used to perform box squats three times a week (2).

7) The box squat helps with deadlifting. One is by increasing your RFD (see point 2). The other way is that because it breaks up the eccentric-concentric chain (by pausing on the box), you're forced to create "static overcome by dynamic work". Which means that you need to generate force from a complete stop. Of course this is probably why the box squat increases your RFD.

Generating force from a complete stop - sound familiar?

8) You can set the box to different heights to work on whatever weakness you have. Setting the box very low forces you to build mobility in the hips and adductors, while destroying the hamstrings and glutes. Some deadlifters like setting the box to a quarter spot position referencing the fact that this is the position that they pull from and thus needs to be strengthened.

The next part of this post will reference some disadvantages of box squatting and some misconceptions. Then I'll show you how you can use box squatting in your routine to bring up your raw total.

References:

1) "A biomechanical comparison of the traditional squat, powerlifting squat, and box squat." (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22505136)

2) "The Box Squat" (http://train.elitefts.com/movement/squats-movement/the-box-squat/)

Why train the weakest joint angles?

This post is going to get me drawn and quartered. Oh well, it has to be said. Why are we training the weakest joint angles? If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that the human body is strongest when all joints are extended and weakest when all joints are flexed. For this post, I shall be using the squat as an example. We are strongest when standing (duh) and weakest in the bottom position, where all working joints are completely flexed. To take it a step further and add shoulder flexion, the weakest squat would be the overhead squat. Have you ever seen somebody overhead squat more than they back squat? I didn’t think so. There are enough strength coaches that don’t think the overhead squat should be trained (like Poliquin). However, these same coaches believe that the full squat (high bar ass to grass) should be an integral part of everybody’s training. This blog post will question that thinking and suggest alternatives.

First off, I should say that if your sport requires you to express strength and power from the full squat position (like Olympic weightlifting), this post is not for you. If you’re lifting for athletic power, general strength, and or powerlifting, read on.

Let’s examine the full back squat. From Bret Contreras’ site “A proper Olympic back squat is exemplified by going rock bottom in a squat while keeping the knees out, chest up, and feet flat” (Contreras). It’s truly a work of art when done right. Look at the picture below of Anatoly Pisarenko squatting some big weights with some picture perfect form.

Now that you’ve stopped admiring the picture, let’s analyze the joint angles. The knee and hip are completely flexed, which means the hamstrings have checked out, and the stress is completely on the quads and glutes. More to the point, since we have a fully flexed knee and hip, we are moving less weight because we are limited by that weak link. The weakest joint angles are stopping us from training our strongest joint angles, while putting a lot of stress on the knee joint. Let’s compare this to the picture of Arnold deadlifting.

As you can see, the knees are shallower and as a result, the hips are shallower.  This takes place because of something called passive insufficiency: The inability for a biarticulate muscle to stretch enough to complete full range of motion in both joints simultaneously (exrx). Because the knees are shallower, the hamstrings are involved to a much higher degree. Since we are not completely flexing the knee joint or the hip joint, we can handle much heavier loads and train the strongest joint angles. That's the reason why a person's deadlift is almost always more than their full squat. Also, as Gray Cook has observed, you can’t help but have some stress through the knee joint when full squatting. But when deadlifting, there’s almost no stress going through the knee joint because the stress is more on the powerful muscles of the posterior chain (Cook). You may ask, but what about the back? Less stress on the knee joint means more stress through the back right? Yes, you are right. However I would counter by saying that the muscles that support the lower back and pelvis have a far larger surface area and are far more powerful than the muscles that support the knee, and are designed to handle far heavy loads. Cook makes the argument that you should maintain the squat movement, but train the deadlift heavy. You can read more about his argument in the article linked in the references section.

However, some people just love to squat. There is that incredible feeling when you squat that you just can’t get with any other movement. So how do we squat heavy and get stronger while making sure our joints don’t get stressed? Enter the low bar "powerlifting style" squat.

As you can see from the above picture, this style of squatting satisfies all the problems listed above. By squatting with a more moderate stance and having the bar lower on the shoulder, the knees remain shallow in the bottom position, putting a lot more stress on the hamstrings then the Olympic style squat. In fact, strength coaches like Mark Rippetoe think that this squat is so much more beneficial that he’s written an entire book and program based on the low bar squat. For all the athletes that are looking to run faster or jump higher, the low bar squat will improve on all of that because it strengthens the posterior chain to a much higher degree than the Olympic style squat. For all the general fitness people who just want to be able to play ball on weekends or be able to play with their grandkids,  the low bar squat removes a lot of stress on the knees, puts them on the more powerful muscles that control the hip and lets you squat longer in life. For the powerlifters, you should already be using the squat because it lets you lift the most weight.

 If you just have to full squat because you love the feeling of being that low with weight on your back, I strongly suggest you consider exclusively using the front squat. The front squat has the same amount of muscle activity as a back squat, but with lower weights. This means that the stress on the joints will be much lower than the back squat (precision nutrition). Of course, if you just don’t want to squat but want the same muscle benefits, the deadlift and its variations will give you enough activation, size and strength through the legs.

I hope I’ve convinced you to at least try the low bar squat and strengthen your strongest joint angles. If you’ve got achy knees, your squat isn’t going anywhere, or you just want to hoist some heavy weights around, you owe it to yourself to utilize the low bar squat to its full extent.

References:

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/research-review-front-or-back-squats

http://bretcontreras.com/the-mighty-barbell/

http://www.exrx.net/ExInfo/Muscle.html

http://www.functionalmovement.com/articles/Fitness/2011-12-12_balanced_body_series_-_dead_lifting

Open Joint vs Closed Joint Lifting – Part 3

In part 1, I talked about the concept of the open joint lift and how it can be used to move big weights. Part 2 was about taking that concept and using it to prevent injuries to the knees. This post will further that concept and explain how to apply it to prevent and manage back injuries. If you haven’t read the previous 2 posts, please do so. It’ll make this post a lot easier to read.

The back is one of the most commonly injured areas, whether a person lifts or not. A back injury is also a lot more debilitating than most other kind of injuries – everything you do in life uses your back. Unfortunately, because we live in a sitting society, back problems are all too common these days.

Let me introduce you to the lower back first. The primary region we are concerned about, for this discussion, is the lumbar area (lower back). The spine connects to the hips and as such any movement in the hips will involve a loading of the spine. The spine is also strongest when it is straight or “arched”. Any issue in the spine is usually magnified when the spine is rounded. Therefore, we will remain in an arched position for all the lifts mentioned here. Because when arched, the spine is now a rigid structure that is more or less one big joint, the hips are where the movement occurs. Strong and mobile hips = strong spine = less chance of injuring the back. Usually the reason that people experience so much back pain is because the hips are so locked up and immobile that now movement has to take place through the spine.

Taking the ‘open vs closed joint angle’ from before, the most obvious solution to work around back pain is to use a more open joint angle at the hips. Why? When the hips are closed, the back is close to parallel to the floor. This puts the lower back under a whole lot of shear stress. However, when the hips are open, the back is more perpendicular to the floor, which results in more compressive than shear forces on the spine. As we have already seen, our joints can handle compressive forces a lot better than shear forces. So how do we use this information to train around back pain?

1) Strengthen the abs. This may seem counter-intuitive but it’s very rare that the lower back is actually weak enough to be the problem. Usually the problem is that a person’s abs are too weak to take the stress off the spine. Training the abs through stabilization (planks, ab wheel rollouts) is the best way to solve this issue.

2) Use the open hip angle to your advantage. Front squatting, the high bar back squat, clean deadlifts and trap bar deadlifts are great for people with lower back problems because they force you to remain more straight up than leaning forward.

Trap bar deadlift

3) Get off the leg press machines. These machines do not let the hips travel and more often than not a person will curl up the lower back when using these machines. Stay on your feet when lifting and you will reap the benefits.

4) Use single leg work for your posterior chain needs. The great thing about single leg work is that you cannot lift as much weight as with two legs. This greatly reduces the stress on the spine, while still giving your muscles a training effect because you can use a closed hip angle now. Single leg deadlifts, long step reverse lunges and long step Bulgarian split squats are great in this regard. You’ll probably feel soreness you’ve never felt before too.

Single leg deadlift

5) Train stabilization of the hips. If the hips are not properly strengthened, the onus falls on the lower back and various other muscles to keep the hips in check. Great way to train stabilization while still lifting heavy weights is to add farmer walks and its variations to your program. Grab a heavy weight and go for long walks with them. Michael Boyle has stated that the strongest hips he ever tested were strongman competitors  - where farmer walks is a big competition. Because you will be in a standing (ie open) hip position, the stress on the lower back is very low.

6) Use Olympic lifting variations of pulling. The snatch deadlift and the clean deadlift force you to sink your hips lower which would keep your torso more upright. It will still tax your muscles, but the pressure on the spine will be less. If the convention deadlift with its closed hips kills your lower back, try snatch deadlifting. You’ll probably find that it’s way easier on the spine, and you can still lift very heavy weights and get stronger.

Clean Deadlift

You’ll find that this list is directly opposite to the list in part 2. The less the knees travel, the more stress that’s put on the back. And the more the knees travel, the less stress is put on the back. Pick your poison and get to lifting.