| Critical MAS
"The lesson I should have walked away with then was that the number of pounds lifted is a less important metric than intensity, which is more difficult to quantify. When I did the Wall Squats my leg muscles felt more taxed. When I did the back squats, my entire body felt destroyed, including at times, my back."
"Trust me when I say that a single Wall Squat taken to total failure can produce as much muscular fatigue as a 20 mile hike. Not every person will want to train to failure. I covered this in the post Training to Failure or Training to Quit Part 2. Because I have the freedom to have down days post-workout, going to failure works for me. If you are an in-season athlete, law enforcement or military and need to be near peak performance on a daily basis, then training to failure may not be wise."
My previous post I No Longer Give a Squat About the Squat, I outlined why I no longer perform the barbell back squat. This post will list the exercises I’ve used to replace weight lifting’s most sacred exercise. Before I begin, I want to clarify that I am not a personal trainer and the only client I’ve trained has been myself. I approach fitness in the same manner that I approach investing, which is a risk versus reward model. The squat without a doubt can provide huge rewards, but it is my opinion that the risk of injury increases over time.
To have strong legs, I do not believe it is necessary to back squat.
What I learned very quickly is just how difficult this simple exercise can be. Even though I was squatting more than body weight for reps, my legs would burn greater on a 60 second Wall Squat. At the time I didn’t understand why the Wall Squat seemed to produce deeper muscle fatigue. I was still in the Pavel school then – which places greater importance on demonstrating strength without going to failure. But I was a good comrade, so I stopped doing the Wall Squat to failure and returned to my free weights.
The lesson I should have walked away with then was that the number of pounds lifted is a less important metric than intensity, which is more difficult to quantify. When I did the Wall Squats my leg muscles felt more taxed. When I did the back squats, my entire body felt destroyed, including at times, my back.
When you perform a Wall Squat, the first half of the exercise is designed to fatigue the slow twitch muscle fibers without allowing them the ability to recover. The goal is knock out the slow twitch fibers so you can directly target the larger fast twitch muscle fibers. This is where the exercise gets difficult.
Trust me when I say that a single Wall Squat taken to total failure can produce as much muscular fatigue as a 20 mile hike. Not every person will want to train to failure. I covered this in the post Training to Failure or Training to Quit Part 2. Because I have the freedom to have down days post-workout, going to failure works for me. If you are an in-season athlete, law enforcement or military and need to be near peak performance on a daily basis, then training to failure may not be wise.
Body by Science by Doug McGuff and John Little
You can’t do that with the Barbell Back Squat. When you begin a descent, you need to know you have enough strength left in the movement at any time to stand up and rack the weights. Exercising to failure is not an option with the squat. You’ll hurt yourself. Because you can’t safely exercise to failure with a barbell back squat, intensity is replaced with an increase in volume. That might be great for your legs, but in my opinion is subjecting your back and spine to unnecessary stress.
Because I follow High Intensity Training, I only do one set to failure once every 5-7 days. I have more leg strength now than when I was back squatting and none of the pain.
To have strong legs, I do not believe it is necessary to back squat.
A Humbling Lesson From Pete Egoscue That I Ignored
During my squat heydays around 2001 – 2004, I was dealing with frequent back pain. It was during this time that I starting reading Pete Egoscue. His books had a serious of exercises used to correct alignment problems. One of the exercises in the book was an Air Bench. This is also called a Wall Sit in the Hillfit: Strength program and Wall Squat elsewhere. Read How To Do a Wall Squat for an exercise explanation.What I learned very quickly is just how difficult this simple exercise can be. Even though I was squatting more than body weight for reps, my legs would burn greater on a 60 second Wall Squat. At the time I didn’t understand why the Wall Squat seemed to produce deeper muscle fatigue. I was still in the Pavel school then – which places greater importance on demonstrating strength without going to failure. But I was a good comrade, so I stopped doing the Wall Squat to failure and returned to my free weights.
The lesson I should have walked away with then was that the number of pounds lifted is a less important metric than intensity, which is more difficult to quantify. When I did the Wall Squats my leg muscles felt more taxed. When I did the back squats, my entire body felt destroyed, including at times, my back.
Sequential Muscle Fiber Activation
After I read the book Body By Science by McGuff and Little, I understood why the Wall Squat produced such a deep level of fatigue rapidly. By placing the body into a static hold, at first the slow twitch muscle fibers are engaged. They are fatigue resistant and recover quickly. These are the dominant fibers used in endurance sports. If the slow twitch muscles become fatigued then the more energy expensive fast twitch muscle fibers are engaged. They have a lot more power, but they fatigue much faster and take longer to recover.When you perform a Wall Squat, the first half of the exercise is designed to fatigue the slow twitch muscle fibers without allowing them the ability to recover. The goal is knock out the slow twitch fibers so you can directly target the larger fast twitch muscle fibers. This is where the exercise gets difficult.
Trust me when I say that a single Wall Squat taken to total failure can produce as much muscular fatigue as a 20 mile hike. Not every person will want to train to failure. I covered this in the post Training to Failure or Training to Quit Part 2. Because I have the freedom to have down days post-workout, going to failure works for me. If you are an in-season athlete, law enforcement or military and need to be near peak performance on a daily basis, then training to failure may not be wise.
Body by Science by Doug McGuff and John Little
Exercise Safety
When I engage in an exercise I want the ability to work to failure at ANY point during the repetition safely. Back to the Wall Squat. The worst case safety scenario for that movement is my legs completely give out and I’m forced to lower my body into a sitting position. Because I can safely hit failure without risk of injury, I can focus completely on generating more intensity.You can’t do that with the Barbell Back Squat. When you begin a descent, you need to know you have enough strength left in the movement at any time to stand up and rack the weights. Exercising to failure is not an option with the squat. You’ll hurt yourself. Because you can’t safely exercise to failure with a barbell back squat, intensity is replaced with an increase in volume. That might be great for your legs, but in my opinion is subjecting your back and spine to unnecessary stress.
The Squat Replacement Exercises
Here are the exercises that I have used to replace the barbell back squat.- Leg Press (HIT – SuperSlow) – Perform this exercise slowly. Read the post and watch the video at Fabulous Leg Press Torture at SuperSlow.
- Leg Press (HIT – Static Holds) - This is my favorite leg exercise. Instead of doing reps, you perform a series of static holds. This is part of the Max Pyramid designed by John Little. See the video Max Pyramid for an example of how to perform a set. This can also be done with a static weight, which is perfect if you just have access to a plate loaded leg press.
- Goblet Squat – When you move the weight off your back and place it in front of you, you don’t need nearly as much weight to provide a stimulus. Plus you can easily drop the weight should your strength give out.
- Wall Squat / Wall Sit / Air Bench – As discussed above. Check out the book Hillfit: Strength if you wish to design an entire fitness plan around this exercise.
- Park Squat – This is something I just named that was part of my Outdoor HIT protocol. It starts as a body weight squat or body weight plus kettle bell. Perform a few squats at a normal pace using a full range. As fatigue starts to set in slow the pace and reduce the range. When the movement gets too difficult drop the kettlebell (if you have one) and then freeze into a static hold. Hang on until you can’t stand anymore.
Because I follow High Intensity Training, I only do one set to failure once every 5-7 days. I have more leg strength now than when I was back squatting and none of the pain.
I chose the Wall Sit / Air Bench / Wall Sit for Hillfit for a number of reasons.
First of all it is simple to learn. Too many trainers or internet personalities present exercises that may be fine but are actually complex motor skills. Kettlebell snatches and swings for example may or may not be good exercises but they are not easy to learn without decent coaching and a lot of practice. The Wall sit is different – it is a very simple move. Once in position your task is simple – hold that position until you can’t hold it anymore, sequentially recruiting the muscle fibres.
Secondly it is a congruent exercise (in terms of Bill DeSimone’s work). At the 90 degree knee position you are at maximum moment arm for the quads, while this is also the position of maximum muscle torque – the hardest position in terms of leverage is met with the muscle being at its strongest.
Thirdly it removes much risk. Whatever the squat defenders say you are in a risky position moving with a bar on your back. I’ve seen and experienced too many slips and accidents. I’ve seen people squat without collars only to see plates slide off the bar so it flips off and cracks them in the back of the head. I’ve seen people get stuck at the bottom. In terms of duty of care I cannot recommend this move to the average person that I aimed the book at. With the Wall Sit there can be zero added load or if you do add load you can do it safely – hold dumbbells at your side or in a goblet position.
In terms of performance I either just do the timed hold, adding weight if I go over 90 seconds, or do that and immediately go into the top half of a free /air squat, the easy portion where the moment arm is less and you can keep going. I also sometimes do them Max Pyramid style: 20seconds with knees at about 60 degrees, 20 seconds with knees at 90 degrees, then 90 degrees with added weight for 20s, add weight until you can’t hold for 20 then back down, usually backing to zero load and then the 60 degrees.
Wall sits were the basic quad exercise Bill DeSimmone recommended in his first book, Moment Arm Exercise which was what got me thinking of them as the basic move.
For me for most people a wall sit, plus a plank (pushup position) would be the start of all training. I also add some timed static contractions now, but that is another story.
Hope this is helpful
I too switched to the Max Pyramid Protocol from standard Big 5 BBS protocol last fall with good results. (I use a Smith Machine at home.) I take the Big 5 exercises and do only 2 of them at a time in one workout, and mix and match them so that 1) the same exercise is never done 2 workouts in a row, and 2) I don’t combine the 2 push exercises (overhead / bench) or the 2 pull exercises (pulldown / row) in the same workout. So I can work out about once every 5 days; when recovery is good, I can occasionally shorten that to 4 days.
Even better, I bought a hip squat belt when in the US last time, and all my squats now are with the belt hooked on one weighted end of a barbell below me, with the opposite, unweighted end secured to the floor. I only have to lift the barbell maybe 2 inches off the floor to get a perfect 90 degree knee angle (the point of greatest leverage disadvantage), with no pressure on my spine at all. When muscle failure hits, the lifted barbell simply drops those 2 inches back to the floor.
Currently I start at only 85 pounds, pyramid up to 115 pounds, and back down. I can barely hold the 115 pound weight for more than 5 seconds – it’s that tough. But the absolute safety of this method lets me concentrate on muscle tension so that at the very end I’m shaking like an earthquake.
Anatoly Bondarchuk and his high step ups, except do them Zercher style with a sandbag. Throw on a weighted vest as well. Follow up with plyo jumps of various kinds.
http://www.overspeedtraining.com/legsart.htm
The reality for me is that I don’t have a lot of disc material left between a couple of the vertebra at the bottom of my spine. Even the act of taking a weighted bar off the rack will compress those deteriorated disks enough to cause muscle spasms, and send that tingling ‘pinched nerve’ sensation shooting down one leg. So as much as I’d like to continue squatting with weight, I’d much rather be able to get out of bed and stand up without pain.
So what you’ve written here rings true for me.
I have done wall sits in the past, but sort of drifted away from them. Now I think I’m going to revisit that exercise.
I also appreciate the comments by ‘garymar’. I was just about the pull the trigger on getting a hip belt from Iron Mind. But I wasn’t sure how much weight I would need to have the exercise feel challenging. It was helpful to see what someone else uses with that exercise.
I’m also surprised you didn’t mention single leg exercises. You might want to google “Mike Boyle” and squats, as he is a well known trainer who has largely given up on back squats, and relies mainly on single leg exercises as a substitute. He also has quite a few professional athletes as clients, so I presume that gives him some credibility. If you check out his books and articles, you will find that he has a whole progression of single leg exercises for leg training. I’ve found them to be quite challenging. There are a lot of ways to tweak the exercise to control the degree of loading on the working leg, and limit the stress on the knees and back.
Craig, your comments on squats and spine health are exactly what I’m getting at elsewhere. By “elsewhere”, I mean things I actually wrote and presented in context, not what other internet snipers claim I wrote.
Garymar, that is a great way to do the hip belt squat. It sounds like the old fashioned, T-bar row setup that used to be common in gyms.
MAS, one warning about the hip belt. Plan how to get out of the last rep, so you don’t collapse straight down on the plates. If you get the picture. Oww (in a very high voice).
Randall Strossen, the Super Squats/Iron Mind guy, straddled an ez curl bar which gave a little clearance.
http://criticalmas.com/2011/11/rejecting-the-naked-warrior/
I can increase intensity using 2 legs by slowing down the movement, performing longer statics or holding onto a weight during the movement. The last thing I want to do is twist my knee trying to come up from a final rep of a 1-legged squat.
@Bill – Thanks for stopping by and providing some tips. The first week I try any new exercise I ghost rep it (almost no weight) for minimal reps and then don’t touch it for a week. This has greatly minimized the injuries I had in the early years when I’d race to the gym to try the newest exercise.
I now like to do them in a plyometric style, jumping off the ground a foot or so each rep.
I don’t think the word “failure” is as useful as “exhaustion.”
Failure implies something went wrong. Exhaustion is actually the goal and achieving it can be a good thing.
If it needs to be clarified further I would say “train to complete exhaustion” and/or “perform enough reps to achieve full muscular exhaustion.”
http://baye.com/explosive-training/
Keep it under control and maintain the tension.
Yes, but the question is …does it build strength? I’m no fan of Pavel, but I think his idea of low reps short of failure build strength more than a wall sit. The wall sit will build fatigue, and muscular endurance, which may be more of what you want or need. But strength? two different things in my opinion.