Adarq.org

Yeah low bar squat sucks, it's overly hip dominant.

For VJ high bar is way better. Steven, if you could high bar 440lbs, you'd be jumping way higher.

We haven't finished defining dominance I guess.. gotta find some studies but it has to do with the amount of force a muscle produces to lift the weight, not the joint angle.

In a sit up, you can have your knee flexed, this does not mean sit ups are hamstring dominant. In a deadlift you can have considerable knee flexion, or in a hack squat, but they are both glute dominant exercises. Has to do with lever arms as well.

Power cleans are nowhere near being as quad dominant as a squat jump because the barbell is not aligned to place stress on the quads in the same fashion in a powerclean compared to a jump squat, or any olympic lift. The bar is too far in front of the body. n a jump squat the weight is right above the center of mass.

I would also jump way higher if I could lounge 440 lbs. But that does not mean that the lounge is a superior exercise. Go right ahead and post more irrelevant studies to define quad dominance. Also notice that you are using the phrase without having it defined yet.

About the low bar vs high bar shenanigans, like what others said, it probably doesn't matter as long as you're strong, but I would agree with TODDAY.  High bar is more specific and has a little more carry over than low bar for olympic lifts.  Olympic lifting is already so "quad dominant" and relying so much on being upright, that one might say high bar IS the p-chain exercise of choice for an olympic lifter.  It depends on your dimensions, but I know high bar gets plenty of p-chain for me.

The back angle and the starting position of the low bar squat and the classical lifts(steven brought it up) could be argued, but the first pull usually isn't a problem for a lot of people.

For regular athletes, front squat and high bar back squat might be a little redundant.

Are you an o-lifter? Where do you get the information from that o-lifting is about "being upright"? This could not be further from the truth. Also, standing up after you made the catch is not where most of the difficulty is either for the majority of lifters.

Your front squat ratio (assuming ~140kgx 5 since had more in the tank) is 0.7.  Much better than most powerlifters, but I would still expect high bar squatters to have a higher ratio.  Myself I maxed at 315 lbs in the front squat when my back squat max was only 370 lbs.  Still, a couple people don't make an argument.

As you said, a couple of people don't make a solid argument. But I also want to add that you cannot compare those ratios like that since everyone lifts more weight with a low-bar squat. So you would have to correct the 370 lbs by multiplying it with a factor >1 that takes this into account. But only comparing ratios, measured at one date, are an invalid indicator of transfer anyways (yeah, I realize I started it).

The main advantage to high bar squats is that they do translate better to olympic lifts.  You just can't catch a clean or snatch without knee flexion.  You just get lower with the high bar squat and if you want to do full olympic lifts then I really can't see why you would avoid high bar squats. 

Olympic lifters have to front squat. That is what makes their catch strong enough for the full lifts. Doing high-bar squats in addition is not necessary and one can argue that they would be better off with the squat variant that is more balanced (more hamstring and low-back involvement) and that makes them stronger faster. Low-bar squats have a higher similarity with the back angle at the starting position as well compared to high-bar.

Quote from: steven-miller on January 25, 2012, 02:53:28 pm

Quote from: Raptor on January 25, 2012, 02:01:09 pm

Well quad dominance is how much load an exercise TENDS to make your body use as far as the quads are concerned.

I do not understand this sentence. Can you explain this? I suppose quad dominance is not the same as potential knee flexion in an exercise?

Yeah, I think you can say that. At least in my version of the definition. So for me personally, that's pretty much the same - the potential of knee flexion and quad loading of a given exercise. Of course it's more a matter of that knee flexion/quad loading actually occuring than the potential of that since that's what we really care about.

While I said that I supposed quad dominance NOT to be the same as potential knee flexion, your post clears things up nevertheless.

If knee flexion was the definition, then I would disagree about jumps being quad dominant as well as jump squats being quad dominant. It would depend on technique used.

Does someone think differently about the "muscle dominance" issue?

After thinking about it, I do not agree anymore that jump squats are more quad-dominant. I do not disagree either, though. I would like someone to explain to me what quad-dominance is, what it means and how it can be measured. I realized that I am not really sure about those things and I would like those who regularly bring/brought this up (AlexV, Avishek, adarq, Raptor,...) to explain this to me. My former agreement was stupid.

I disagree about full clean being ~ max. triple squat. If that is the case, then squat = too weak.

But I agree that the range of these relationships is quite huge. It heavily depends on the individual and training methodology (for example the above ratio, which is one that surely exists in the real world, even if it should not).

@rusi: You really front squat 320?

About the links Avishek posted:

@http://www.defrancostraining.com/ask-joe-test/41-strength-training/180-hang-cleans-vs-weighted-jumps-for-explosive-hip-extension.html:
What I deduct from this Q&A is that Defranco is primarily concerned with not injuring his athletes and that he feels that he is unable to teach the o-lifts in a way that an injury is very unlikely. I cannot see any argument being made against the effectiveness of powercleans other than that they are ineffective when done wrong - which is a pretty obvious fact. However, just because most do powercleans wrong, this does not mean that they cannot be taught right or at least to a level of competence, where players don't have to jeopardize the health of their wrists. (That story about the wrist surgeries is, btw., a clear indication that those football players were coached by morons)

@http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21777152:
If you have the full text, then post it. The abstract is gibberish and quite telling of the quality of the paper and the only hint about a result is this sentence: "Results indicate that peak power for the bar, body, and system is differentially affected by load and movement pattern." This is fairly obvious and says nothing about the nature and direction of those findings, nor about the effect sizes and levels of significance.
Other than that I want to comment about what is written in regards to the study design and the examined variables. I am concerned about the following question: When setting up a program to increase vertical jump performance, what is the best combination of explosive exercises to train with, so that this increase occurs. What the authors in this study supposedly looked at was a completely different question, namely: How is the measurement of power affected depending on exercise, load, and measurement method. For those with bad reading comprehension skills: The cited study did not look at the training effect of exercises on the depended variable of VJ height, but a completely different topic, which is unrelated. And if someone comes and claims that it IS related, then this person hopefully does not perform squats to improve VJ - since I can tell you that power-output will be very low for a heavy squat - and hopefully, according to this study, only performs unweighted VJs, since those, according to the presented measurements, are highest in power-output (whatever that means).

@the other studies: I did not look at them since I concluded from your summaries that they were all concerned with measuring power-output. However, this is not a sensible indicator of the usefulness of an exercise (as demonstrated by the squat vs. VJ example above). Furthermore, the results were partly contradicting, which Daballa already mentioned.

Right, and if by any chance you miss a lift and can't control the bar as it's over your head AND can't drop the bar, what do you do?

What do you do if your squat is too heavy and your gym does not have a rack with safety pins? You can squat with spotters, sure, but who is squatting without them anyways? I am pretty sure I have seen you go heavy without spotters in the squat. Where is the difference to the snatch? Obviously bad training situations demand better planning and caution. That does not mean that the exercise cannot be done (except maybe with the bench press where there should always be a spotter or safety pins).

@Avishek: What makes you think that you have the experience/knowledge to evaluate the usefulness of a snatch variation?