Squats a Final Thought

I have rambled on long enough now about why squats need to be evaluated closely as to if they are a good exercise or not. Let me finish my thought from the last post to wrap-up this discussion.

We left off discussing how important it is to understand the current ability level of your client or yourself. Not in regards to what kind of shape they are in or how much endurance they have but rather what are the current limitations of their muscular efficiency. Understanding this is the key to providing the optimum training program to work with.

The reason squats are so dangerous is that they a re a very high level exercise. A few years ago in a training philosophy class I taught the students were to rank exercises based on a system they created. The objective was to create categories for all exercises based on the exercises ability to impact the muscular system. They used a fun system that incorporated the school colors so White was all exercises that did not put pressure into your structural joints( kneeling pushups), Purple was exercises that did put pressure into all of your structural joints, (pushups) and finally Gold was an exercise that used outside resistance into the structural joints (bench press).

They then devised a series of tests to determine what level an individual could train at safely based on the ability of their muscular system to perform the diagnostic moves.
When I was still working at ADAPT, Brian Cassidy came up with a 5 level training system that I thought was genius. I am not sure if he is still using it but the highest level was the traditional lifting moves such as the barbell squat, power cleans, bench press etc. These moves were the highest level due to the fact they forced the body to have to react to the outside resistance of the barbell. If there is any amount of inefficiency then the chance for their to be a negative reaction to the resistance was very high and would cause the body to compensate for the inefficiency to try and still perform the move.

What we are trying to say is that in the example of a barbell squat, if you have postural imbalances caused by muscular inefficiency than these imbalances place the body at risk. Think of the picture again of the severe anterior tilt we discussed. In a barbell squat the amount of pressure into the lumbar spine is significantly magnified and will cause the body to tighten the muscles of the lower back up even more to try and protect the spine. So the person who made the comment about someone being able to squat 800 pounds without hurting themselves but then injures their back picking up a piece of paper is missing the point in my opinion.

The injuring of the back was directly a result of the fact that their body had created such high levels of tightness in the hips and lower back from trying to protect itself it lost the ability to move efficiently and ultimately led to injury. So back to the original comment. Maybe it was a bit strong of me to say that Squats were one of the worst moves I have ever seen but at least it got people talking. Regardless of your personal feelings about the barbell squat I hope you know see why it is so important that you understand when and how to use it. Again this is an opinion but I just feel you can get much better results from other lower body exercises that have far less dramatic potential negative side effects.