given an equivalent percentage of 1RM relative to the ROM, i'd definitely say quarters feel more horrible (draining, risky): there's not much "stretch reflex", it's more of a knee driven reversal rather than hip driven, it's extremely hard to descend with speed and reverse it early - without your joints actually helping you like they do in a full squat, and you feel like you could snap in half if you go just a little bit too far down.
as far as energy goes, there's probably some good data out there - based on ROM/tempo/% 1RM etc.
you can get some really good rebound coming out of the bottom of a full squat, it feels good that's for sure. you can achieve a similar feeling with half squat as you get better with it. The game changes alot as you go up above half squats. that's assuming you're going very heavy on everything..
if you're hitting quarters/halfs with lighter loads, the movement should feel really good.
Yeah this is definitely a new outlook and a more accurate outlook on things. I used to think full squat paused atg = 33% harder than 2/3 squat, at least sort of that mentality. Now the way I see it is they're 2 different lifts as you mentioned.
yup but it still depends on the individual. for example, some people with high-jumper leverages find it nearly impossible to get into a deep squat safely, so for them, deep squatting is 100x more difficult than half or quarter.
Tried alternating half and full squats today and it was just a different feel. I don't think i should abandon 1/2 squats.
ya that can get weird.. I wouldn't alternate in the same session.. alternating in different sessions is completely fine though.
When I wanted to experience the best of both worlds, i'd warm up "deep" and then transition to half. I lost the footage but, I once took some video at night of me near ATG'n 315 x 1, which was over 2 x BW. It was just part of my work up to heavy half squatting, when I was trying to hit 405 x 1. Not sure what happened to it or why I didn't upload it.. But it always cracked me up when people would shit on my half squats so hard & tell me to go deep, but not realizing that half squats built my deep up nearly proportional to the gains made going half.
Half is really a beautiful distance, it carries over to deep AND quarter. Deep carries over to half, but not nearly as much to quarter. Quarter carries over to half, but not much at all to deep.
so IMHO, half is really the money spot for squatting related to PERFORMANCE training.
