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Regardless of whether you're doing half or full squats, at least people are actually realizing the importance of getting the lifts up.  Squat, half squat, split squat...Anything is better than nothing.

Six years ago this debate would have been about whether strength training was even effective. Ask Raptor and dudes like him that were around on those boards way back when arguing about whether to do air alert or squats.

When I was in high school there were still quite a bit of belief that weights did nothing but make you slow - I was one of them. As a Jr. (1990) I went to a T&F presentation at Texas A&M, a pretty good program, and all they talked about was box jumps&  plyos.  So I thought I would do box jumps and plyos but I would make them even better.  If box jumps and plyos were good, then box jumps and plyos done with strength shoes AND ankle weights would work even better. Not! Fortunately, I finally decided I didn't give a shit if weights made me slow or not and started lifting. 

Perhaps only because people with narrow hips aren't always very strong and having wide hips isn't nearly as detrimental for SVJ as it is for speed.  I'm just speaking generally - narrower relative hip structure is a good trait for athleticism. I think for strictly vert purposes (bilateral or unilateral), relative femur length trumps most other stuff wrt to structure.

RE: Hip flexors

Go back to the things I said earlier this thread about femoral control.

We know that what happens to the legs during the recovery phase (once the foot comes off the ground) plays no direct role in sprinting (see the infamous Weyand study)

The harder you push against the ground, the faster you go.

BUT....

Having an optimal posture (repositioning your legs correctly) allows you to set up in a way that allows you to more efficiently exert more force when your foot does hit the ground....you get a better wind-up, better leverage, and a greater pre-stretch from the contributing musculature (the muscles that contribute when your foot makes ground contact)

If the hip flexors are weak it's very difficult to get to that posture and people will either shorten their strides up or flail their feet sideways, as the TFL and rectus femoris try to do what the psoas can't. It's easy to see from the back. 
Look at who has naturally strong hip flexor and great femoral control and who doesn't. Femoral control = the muscles in control of the femur from the hip (the hip flexors and glutes) are fully in control of the femur from both sides.

Best strengtheners: Look at the sprinters posture than try to duplicate.  The hip flexors are one of the few muscles that tend to be weak in the shortened range (the very top of a full knee or leg raise) rather than the stretch range.  Here is an exercise to test.  Keep the natural arch and don't lean back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxkbqUa28BY

 
 A lot of people won't be able to lift their knee an inch without squirming around all over the place. You should be able to come up several inches.

I recommend doing sets of 8-10 with a 2-3 second hold at top on that exercise. The more you lean forward the harder the exerise is. Use bands for extra resistance. 

Another good exercise is doing the same thing standing up, which also happens to hit the glute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAUwgrazCg4  (keep the plant leg straight and don't let the knee bend).

Then maybe look into pike variations:

http://gymnasticbodies.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10:developing-the-hanging-leg-lift&catid=2:articles&Itemid=3


Raptor, regarding your knee collapse, that's actually more of a combined eccentric and isometric contraction. I wouldn't get caught up in doing isos just get your quads stronger overall in things you know how to do.  You can't affect one type of strength without affecting them all.

It's been done before. That's basically Barry Ross's program. A few plyos and deadlifts that's it. You can get results from it. Anything you do that causes your legs to work against progressive tension can illicit some gains.  Hell you can get results from doing a leg press or squatflex too if your training age and level of progression vs your untrained state are low enough.

But for my money a squat variant is a better bang for the buck for most as it's inherently less back and more legs.

Squat variant + jump squat/hang snatch + depth jump/calf raise + reverse hyper/hip thrust= Best IMO

But the more you try to make something perfect and 100% optimal that more you're apt to  screw yourself up more adding exercises and jacking with sets, reps, frequency etc. so a  lot of people would be better off doing something simple like you propose as it inherently eliminates a lot of things they'd screw up doing the "perfect" program....

My doc said don't do deadlifts cuz my couzin blowed his back out doing them....now he's in a wheelchair.......he was taking cleatine too with deadlifts and the doc said his kidneys are almost blowed out too from it.....plus it made his temper really bad and he wanted to kick everybody's ass and creatin made him put some other guy in the hospital cuz he went off playin a pickup game..

now he has blowed out kidneys and blowed out back and he's only 16

dont' do deadlifts and cleatine braa11!!

Raptor you're doing about everything wrong you could do wrong.

Mistake #1: You already have symptoms of a lack of jumping efficiency and now you plan on doing 4 days per week squatting with no jumps?  That's a recipe for disaster.  

Mistake #2: Natural Ectomorph + high frequency squatting + fat loss = fail  

Strength gains are difficult under best case scenarios. Take someone who's naturally recovery challenged and put them on a recovery challenging frequency protocol and stress the system even more with intervals and caloric restriction and you're asking for trouble.

Mistake #3: Not tracking your diet

Exercise has a very minimal impact on body composition in the absence of caloric changes.  You can go out and do 30 minutes of intervals and burn 300 calories. Fuck, that's a couple of spoons of peanut butter.  Last year a study was done in Texas where they took a group of sedentary peopel and had them lift weight and do cardio 3-4 days per week. There was no dietary intervention whatsoever and after 6 weeks the average fat loss was like half a pound.  You might be able to get it done by changing the composition of your diet but the more attention you cgive it the better your results are going to be.  

In short, you can probably make some gains with your proposed schedule but it's not the best use of your time or the modalities it contains.  

A better observation would be how the body-fat is stored. If you knew how to differentiate potential visceral adipose tissue from subcutaneous distribution you'd have a pretty decent barometer of athletic potential.  Performance in speed-strength activities correlates strongly with tesosterone level, which correlates with FT fiber expression and VAT storage.

An easier observation is just look at the hands and the 2D:4D ratio. A longer ring (the 4th) finger indicates greater testosterone exposure in the womb and likely greater testosterone expression in adulthood.  If your pointing finger is longer than ring finger you're likely not as testosterone dominant and vice versa. If the 4th finger on one hand is noticeably longer than the one on the other hand that indicates very good testosterone sensitivity. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio