Quarter squat weight compared to real squat?

[wobbles]

Saw two guys at the gym doing box squats (although they never sat down on the box, or even touched it, so maybe it was some bizarre safety measure?) with a lot of weight. They were barely doing quarter squats and were coming unto their toes very heavily. There was some degree of knee bend, so I suppose it has to be called a squat of some sort. It was amusing when the guy said (in response to something I didn't hear) "we're going down to parallel which is all that matters". The bottom of the guy's ass was still above his knee at his lowest point.

It made me wonder how much weight these two could handle if they actually had to descend to parallel? One guy was using 125KG which is only a little below my 1RM, and it offended me that he would use this weight for reps doing a bastardized version of the exercise I've worked so hard to get decent at.

How much overall lower body strength is really necessary for the kind of quarter squat I just described?

[lint]

Honestly, there are more important things to be concerned with than what someone else quarter squats at the gym. Their quarter squat doesn't diminish what you can squat. Just chuckle and move on.

[5x5Lifter]

In Starting Strength 2nd ed Mark Rippetoe says that distance the bar moves(1/4) times weight equals workload (this was in the bench press section so I dont know if it applies to squats). So 125 times .25= 31.25kg

[muddy]

As lint said, who cares. If it makes you feel any better, there's no doubt you (correctly) squat more than they (correctly) could squat (were they actually to squat correctly), and if you continue, in another 6 months the difference will be even more extreme.

[wobbles]

I don't care what anyone else does at the gym, I wasn't being entirely serious when I said it offended me. My inquiry was genuine though, I think it'd be interesting to know how much/little your average quarter squatter could handle if forced to perform the movement correctly. I imagine it varies from person to person but a general indication of "60%" would be good enough for me.

5x5Lifter: I think they can squat more than that.

Here's a video of a random dude on youtube performing the same movement I witnessed in the gym today. Depth is comparable. I mean, it's still a lot of weight on his back, and some movement does happen?

[muddy]

Ok, I'll bite. Here's my made-up number: he can squat 305 for 3 reps to a powerlifting legal depth with a high bar position.

I base this on: 1) he pulled a 315 deadlift for one rep without much trouble and it looked reasonable; 2) even with his ultra-wide hand position in the squat, I wasn't alarmed enough by back tightness (or lack thereof) to stop watching the video; 3) the high bar position won't be quite as bad as low bar for someone trying full depth after being used to quarter squatting. But who knows, maybe 305 would staple him to that squat rack. I've never tried a quarter squat, but even without having done it I can see there's a world of difference between what he's doing in that video, and what it is to take 405 to depth. There's absolutely no doubt 405 or even 365 in that video would end up left on the spot bars if the squat went anywhere near proper depth.

I don't mean to bash the kid - clearly there's a justifiably proud papa putting up that video, and I don't mean to take away from the kid's accomplishments.

[wobbles]

My goal wasn't to ridicule the people I spotted in the gym today, or the kid in the video -- I want that to be clear. I'm interested in how much more weight a person can handle when only doing a quarter squat. Your guess seems reasonable enough. Ideally I'd like to hear some numbers from people, and the difference between their proper squat and their quarter. That's probably not going to happen on this site though (as everyone endeavours to squat properly). I've never done a partial squat but I think they have their uses for specialized training, maybe even just to make your normal weight feel light.

Thanks for the responses.

[5x5Lifter]

5x5Lifter: I think they can squat more than that.

Yeah I thought that seemed kind've low myself. I guess it only applies to bench.(Or does it?)

[DeadStrength]

My take basically is that without seeing what else they do/how they do it it's going to be pretty hard to tell.

If their hips aren't moving back (so they're bending completely at the knee) then that won't help. And if they're quad dominant (which they likely are) and have dormant glutes (which is possible or likely depending on what other lifts/sports they do) and perhaps weak hamstrings then a full depth squat might pose them a lot of problems especially at the bottom of the hole, past parallel. Obviously the high bar style will give them some benefits here, but on the flipside they would go deeper than with low-bar.

I mean since they're doing 125kg I'd say 60%-70% is probably a decent guess, but if they were quarter squatting 200kg and never deadlifting and only occasionally using the hamstring curl, they might only be able to fully squat 40-50% of that weight. When the weight shifts to the hips at the bottom and they can't fire their glutes plus their hamstrings are weak... assuming of course that they don't collapse on the way down. But who knows?

[Van]

Let's turn this around then shall we? If I can squat 100kg for 5 reps to legal powerlifting depth, how much do you recon I can quarter squat?

[ulbonado]

In a basic physics sense, the amount of force applied is the same regardless of how far down you go. A mass of, say, 100kg (just to pick a nice round number) under the influence of gravity (which provides a downward acceleration of 9.8m/s^2) generates a force of 980 Newtons (100kg * 9.8m/s^2 = 980kg-m/s^2 = 980N) downwards. If you have this weight on your back, you have to exert slightly more than that force upwards in order to lift it. This is the same whether you go 1/4 or ATG. What differs is the amount of work you do. In physics, "work" has a precise definition-- force applied across a distance, measured in joules (N-m). So if you squat in such a way that the bar moves 1 meter as you rise, then with the 100kg load in this example, you are doing 980N * 1m = 980 joules of work (ok, slightly more than that, since you have to beat gravity, not just match it, but lets ignore that). I guess it's obvious at this point that the amount of work done for a given weight is directly proportional to the distance moved. So if someone moves the bar only 1/4 the distance, they're doing only 1/4 the work, or in this case, 245 joules. So then if you want to figure out how much weight can be moved over the full 1 meter using only 245 joules, you basically divide it by the 9.8 number from earlier, which gives you 25kg. It's all neatly proportional-- moving an equivalent weight 1/4 the distance takes 1/4 the work, so doing that smaller amount of work over the full distance allows only 1/4 the weight.

However. A key point is that the 1/4 squatter using the same weight as a deep squatter is in fact exerting the same amount of force on the weight as a deep squatter. But, this physics example is a simplication. It works for blocks being lifted perfectly straight. But the biomechanics of a squat are a lot more complicated. When you're down in the hole, your quads, parallel to the ground, have a lot less mechanical advantage then they do when you're partially upright. So if you squat deep, you actually do have to exert more force through your quads to transmit the same force to the weight. I think this is the crux of why deep squats are harder-- pushing out of a deep hole is mechanically disadvantageous, so you have to work harder to do it. But ultimately the force actually applied to the bar is the same, as per the first paragraph above.

So what does all this mean in terms of how much the 1/4 squatter could lift if he did a full, deep squat? Beats the hell outta me. But I think it hinges more on the mechanical advantage penalty at the bottom then purely the distance traveled while squatting. The 1/4 squatter is capable, in the mostly upright position, of exerting the force needed to move the bar. This is exactly the same amount that the deep squatter is doing when passing through the same position. If it were possible to keep doing this over a longer distance without changing the position of the legs, the 1/4 squatter could probably do the necessary work (in the physics sense). But whether he has the "overcapacity", if you will, to get it out of the hole when the legs are sharply bent is the real crux of the question.

[atypical1]

One of us put waaaaay too much thought into this

But that's good math and it looks like you really thought that post out well. I'm a bit of a geek so it's nice to see that level of analysis. I know stats better than physics so I couldn't tell you if you were BS'ing us or not...

I think that the question about how much you can quarter squat is actually pretty irrelevant how strong you are. It's kinda like saying "how much can I unrack on the bench". I bet I could unrack a pretty decent amount of weight but it's not going to do anything for me and it's not a test of my strength at all.

Let's add on top of that the injuries that I could sustain from doing quarter squats. To me that's a big enough reason to not do quarter squats. Squats are all about leaving your ego at the door and doing the exercises correctly.

On a last note, maybe the guys who are doing quarter squats are doing a lot more weight and that's hard to take sometimes. It's easy to look at those guys and say "I bet I'm stronger than they are" but I would resist that thought. It's not about beating other people in the gym as it's not a competition it's training. Besides, people who know squats will be impressed that you're doing them correctly and your knees will certainly thank you.

james

[coreJack]

Besides, people who know squats will be impressed that you're doing them correctly and your knees will certainly thank you.

Recently, I was sharing the rack with a guy quarter-squatting 245, while I was squatting 75. As I finished a set, a guy working out nearby says, "nice form on the squats, you hardly ever see that". You can imagine how the guy squatting 3x the weight must have felt. Funny thing is, he admits to me that he probably has poor form, and then proceeds to increase the weight on his next set.

[hardestgainer]

In a basic physics sense, the amount of force applied is the same regardless of how far down you go. A mass of, say, 100kg (just to pick a nice round number) under the influence of gravity (which provides a downward acceleration of 9.8m/s^2) generates a force of 980 Newtons (100kg * 9.8m/s^2 = 980kg-m/s^2 = 980N) downwards. If you have this weight on your back, you have to exert slightly more than that force upwards in order to lift it. This is the same whether you go 1/4 or ATG. What differs is the amount of work you do. In physics, "work" has a precise definition-- force applied across a distance, measured in joules (N-m). So if you squat in such a way that the bar moves 1 meter as you rise, then with the 100kg load in this example, you are doing 980N * 1m = 980 joules of work (ok, slightly more than that, since you have to beat gravity, not just match it, but lets ignore that). I guess it's obvious at this point that the amount of work done for a given weight is directly proportional to the distance moved. So if someone moves the bar only 1/4 the distance, they're doing only 1/4 the work, or in this case, 245 joules. So then if you want to figure out how much weight can be moved over the full 1 meter using only 245 joules, you basically divide it by the 9.8 number from earlier, which gives you 25kg. It's all neatly proportional-- moving an equivalent weight 1/4 the distance takes 1/4 the work, so doing that smaller amount of work over the full distance allows only 1/4 the weight.

However. A key point is that the 1/4 squatter using the same weight as a deep squatter is in fact exerting the same amount of force on the weight as a deep squatter. But, this physics example is a simplication. It works for blocks being lifted perfectly straight. But the biomechanics of a squat are a lot more complicated. When you're down in the hole, your quads, parallel to the ground, have a lot less mechanical advantage then they do when you're partially upright. So if you squat deep, you actually do have to exert more force through your quads to transmit the same force to the weight. I think this is the crux of why deep squats are harder-- pushing out of a deep hole is mechanically disadvantageous, so you have to work harder to do it. But ultimately the force actually applied to the bar is the same, as per the first paragraph above.

So what does all this mean in terms of how much the 1/4 squatter could lift if he did a full, deep squat? Beats the hell outta me. But I think it hinges more on the mechanical advantage penalty at the bottom then purely the distance traveled while squatting. The 1/4 squatter is capable, in the mostly upright position, of exerting the force needed to move the bar. This is exactly the same amount that the deep squatter is doing when passing through the same position. If it were possible to keep doing this over a longer distance without changing the position of the legs, the 1/4 squatter could probably do the necessary work (in the physics sense). But whether he has the "overcapacity", if you will, to get it out of the hole when the legs are sharply bent is the real crux of the question.

Just something I have to pick you up on. You've worked out the force you need to lift the weight, but you've forgotten about the different angle of the thigh to the torso. The closer this angle is to 180 degrees, the less effort is required to lift the weight which is why the quarter squat is much easier. You can work this out with triginometry if you feel inclined.

[sgtrock]

I posted some info a while back on another thread about quarter squats, basically what I could google quickly. Some of it was from Joe DeFranco, and another I think was CrossFit. In short, they said quarter squats are specialized athletic training movements for power (think American football lineman) and the potential to cause muscle imbalance and therefore serious injury is pretty high.

I figure quarter squats started as an athletic movement but were quickly adopted by bodybuilders as a way to show off heavy "squats" at the gym.