December 2, 2011 in: Daily Tip

Squatting On a Box Does NOT Give You the Right To Do the Following:

-Descend Faster
1. Please don’t PLOP onto the box and lose any eccentric work that the down phase will benefit you.
2. Plus it’s just a a matter of time before you blow out your back (thoracic or lumbar).
3. One of the great benefits / teaching tools the the box squat provides is to teach hip path (“Sit down AND back”) Descending faster with little or NO control is with our a doubt allowing you to squat straight down and keeping you on the balls of your feet and hips are tucking underneath you.
-Descend Slower
1. Don’t allow the box to distract you from your normal, comfortable hip path
2. Descending REALLY slow might give you a little more confidence in your ability to handle the weight yet it will kill your power curve and the time under tension will be great for building more muscle, and creating some serious DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) BUT if you train slow, YOU WILL BE SLOW!
3. Remember, using the box squat is a tool to maximize performance in the COMPETITION squat. Moving unusually slow in the box squat will probably screw up your mechanics
-Bounce off the box
1. Again, it’s a GREAT way to prematurely blow out your lower back if you want to bounce off the box to gain a little extra momentum on your squats
2. If you have to bounce, is it really a legitimate squat and of course you know it won’t transfer to your COMPETITION squat
3. And eventually you’re turning your squat into an ugly good morning
-Sit too far back
1. I coach the box squat where you have to shoot the hips back far enough that “your hamstrings touch the box first”, but if your sitting TOO far back, then again your flexing too much at the hips and too little at the knees thus giving away a to of your leverage
2. If you sit too far back it will also effect bar placement on your back. You will have to ride the bar TOO far down your back to compensate and thats a bad habit to break
3. Siting too far back will disengage your quads too much taking them out of your squat equation. I know that knee extension is a lesser variable in the POWER-SQUAT equation, yet I would never let one of my lifters do themselves the disservice of risking quad atrophy from hip hingeing too much
-Excessive rocking (some will rock a little bit)
1. This a BAD habit I see my younger lifters make. Once they figure out how it works, it gets more pronounced and eventually becomes the ONLY way they can come off the box.
2. Performing this method of box squatting will make one totally dependent on one’s lower back in order to initiate the squat pattern and causing an excessive lean forward
-Groove bouncing to get the weight up
1. This one is a little more subtle, yet will definitely throw off your COMPETITION squat and thus ia a bad habit to be squashed early. One is still sitting back well, yet will bounce into the squat and never breaking up the ‘eccentric-concentric chain’. Thats NOT what the box squat was meant to be used for. One needs to refrain from speeding up the sitting portion too fast and bouncing into the groove briefs and risking the angle being off and then you crash. Again it can be a DANGEROUS habit. Take every squat attempt seriously and don’t rush through them. You will pay for it later…I promise.

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