Adarq.org

  Yea, Ive seen him cue the feet out when the lifter is having trouble with depth, I do the same thing.  If someone has an issue with the knees turning in or needs a little more depth then its a good way to fix it, whatever is most comfortable though, angles will vary.

I do not doubt, that the half squat is the most similar variant to a VJ and I would agree for the most part with the ranking adarqui gave - yet the squat, regardless which type, is still very, very different, especially in one of the most important aspects, namely time for force production. Thinking about the squat as a VJ-specific exercise will not lead to the best results for anyone but a novice-level-strength athlete.
IMO this point led to a lot of misunderstandings between people on internet forums. What everyone observes is that an athlete makes gains in VJ once he starts to train his squat and gets better relative strength. What people deduce from this observation is that they have to squat more weight and also jump to make further gains. Legitimate regarding the observation. Then there comes a coach like Shawn Myszka and says that the squat is overrated for VJ and that squat strength does not correlate with VJ. I am sure his observation is valid as well. The problem is that both sides talk about different athletic populations, one that needs less specificity and gains ridiculously well from the squat alone and one that needs more specificity and will have a hard time to make gains from squatting and jumping without the assistance of exercises, that are indeed closer to the VJ on the similarity spectrum than ANY type of squat, for example powercleans, powersnatches, hang snatches, jump squats, depth jumps etc.
I agree with adarqui in so far, that people will make considerable gains with a half squat in the beginning. bball2020's argument falls in the same category and might be correct if every trainee stays as unadapted as they are in the beginning. But that is not the case. Sometimes even with less than optimal programming people actually get somewhat strong by accident and from this point onwards they will have little benefit from doing half squats alone. What they need is the type of squat that produces the strongest person the fastest regardless of how similar that squatting movement is to the sport demands. Because other exercises will have to be used anyway to transfer higher strength to higher VJ. At this point it is irrelevant how closely your squat "mimics" a jump, a concept that is totally backwards in the first place, and it becomes a lot more important how well your squat prepares you for things you better do to become a better athlete, like doing snatches. Then you are at the point were Shawn Myszka was when he said that squats are an overrated exercise for VJ - an argument that I don't share, but that is understandable regarding his perspective working with a lot of preselected athletes, that have a certain level of strength already and that validates my thoughts that a half squat is not the final answer to VJ training and that training this way is short sighted because it won't make you as strong as fast and not optimally prepare you for other things that will need to be done once you gained some strength - for example unilaterals.

Thanks for posting this!

Weightlifting full squats demand a degree of mobility far beyond that which is required during the execution of most sport acts and certainly far beyond the working range of many athletes who might otherwise enjoy a full sporting career never having been cut short because they do not possess the requisite flexibility to squat like a weightlifter with limit loads.

The majority of non-weightlifters, in fact, would be foolish to risk the possible structural trauma that is presented as part of a cumulative result of squatting maximal loads through the entire amplitude concurrently with varied gradations of sport practice.

Anyone who states the contrary cannot possibly understand the training problems inherent to working with athletes year round whose practice of SPP yields a high structural demand to the legs and knees specifically.

This quote tells me, that Mr. Smith is unable to teach an athlete a full squat. It does not even have to tell me, he basically even said so himself since he believes that most athletes that seek his advice are not flexible enough to do more than a half squat. Can someone please tell me why we should even read beyond that? Or am I misinterpreting things? If so I apologize, since I find that post to be adding very little of substance to the discussion.

Other than this, since I openly admit not to have the experience of coaching anyone let alone athletes whose practice of SPP yields high structural demand to legs and knees, I will ask YOU, bb2020, since you posted this quote, to elaborate on the topic of the risk of structural trauma that presents itself from full squatting + sports, but not with half squatting + sports.

And if the argument runs that the difference is in lifting submaximal loads instead of maximal loads: Who here is planning to do that exclusively? I am sincerely interested since I will follow that training log very mindfully.

I think ure looking at the problem from two different angles.
as steven-miller was saying in another post about motivation, choosing what to do, investing time in your trianing and so on, its one thing to coach yourself when u have all the time in the world, u can ask urself to be motivated and u actually care about improving, esp for VJ or non-competitive athletes (we can assume that, if nobody's gonna pay u for training, u have some sort of passion and dedication about it), and TOTALLY different to train others, when u go on with different problems such as: time, lack of motivation to do every single drill perfectly, boredom, non-adherence, lack of confidence, non-trust, plus u simply dont have the ability to control every single second from your athlete's life.
I used to think the same, if you dont go 110%, whats the point of training? but then when u coach athletes and they dont turn up because they decided to go out, or they simply dont wanna do a drill because 'it's hard', what do you do?

Well, I know many people, mostly due to how he writes not what he says, do not particularly like JS, so i guess ill try to speculate on this. As far as the flexiblity thing, maybe he speaks that way because he coaches a whole team.  There are much more important things to be accomplished with the little time he has than teach form and work on specific flexibility for a lift that has no barring on the football field.

I acknowledge the difficulties inherent in teaching a large group of athletes at the same time. Certainly not an easy task. If choosing less effective, but easier exercises is the answer can be debated though. But that is not for this discussion, right?

Football is a year round sport. Im assuming the demands he talks about are mainly the sport specific stuff that they do year round(drills passing leagues) along with more specific stimulus such as sprints and jumps.  Like adarq said earlier, he tends to have problems with his hips easily if he squats below parallel.  Obviously problems still can happen at or slightly above parallel, but I guess the room for error is so much less at such a low depth.

I don't know adarqui's specific situation with his hips and how he used to squat when the injury happened. That being said, you cannot possibly compare an athlete that already had an injury before, that is still bugging him, with perfectly healthy athletes like you and me. Just because adarq has hip pain when he squats deep, does not mean that you or me have to squat high.
Regarding room for error - which error is that you are talking about? Are we actually discussing whether such a simple movement as the squat is too technically demanding for an ATHLETE to execute correctly? Please pardon me, but if an athlete is unable to execute a correct squat with adequate instruction, I argue that this has to be a horrible athlete and far from the norm. I say that the same applies to for example the powerclean and powersnatch.

Also, plenty of people lift submaximal loads exclusively. I would say the criteria is

Max effort= above 90%
Sub max= below 80%  (80-90% is gray area i think)

A lot of people, especially who's sport isnt weightlifting, can make huge gains stick from 75%-80% range with the correct volume and with the use of other high intensity stumulus(sprints,jumps), especially those non advanced lifters.

If I do 20 reps with 75% of my 1rm then yes, this will certainly lead to adaptation. But that is not submaximal by my definition of the word and it is certainly not linked to a lower chance of injury.

And by the way, what is an advanced vs. non advanced lifter to you?

I think ure looking at the problem from two different angles.
as steven-miller was saying in another post about motivation, choosing what to do, investing time in your trianing and so on, its one thing to coach yourself when u have all the time in the world, u can ask urself to be motivated and u actually care about improving, esp for VJ or non-competitive athletes (we can assume that, if nobody's gonna pay u for training, u have some sort of passion and dedication about it), and TOTALLY different to train others, when u go on with different problems such as: time, lack of motivation to do every single drill perfectly, boredom, non-adherence, lack of confidence, non-trust, plus u simply dont have the ability to control every single second from your athlete's life.
I used to think the same, if you dont go 110%, whats the point of training? but then when u coach athletes and they dont turn up because they decided to go out, or they simply dont wanna do a drill because 'it's hard', what do you do?

Good post and I agree that those are different scenarios. I don't have experience with the "being a coach and training groups" scenario. But I guess you have to make sure that your athletes understand why the stuff they should do is important for them and that accomplishing it will lead to them performing substantially better. If they don't care about that, you can't do much about it. Making the training easy but extremely ineffective is however not a good solution because it will amplify the conviction of the athlete that training in the weight room is a waste of time and that he should better go partying.

Ive actually seen damn good athletes who struggle with proper squat technique and clean as well..

Anyways, gonna leave it as it is.  Squat how you do and ill squat how ill do.  I nor any athlete need to squat below parallel and vice versa.  Again, im not talking about squatting quarter squats, i mean i favor thigh parallel squats for the majority of my training IE powerlifting depth(lower than half squat). And you obviously prefer deeper, so be it to each his own.

also, are you a big RIPPTOE guy?  JW, like some of his vids, just cant get him over saying that VJ cant be improved.

If damn good athletes struggle with proper squat technique than their instruction is probably not up to par.

Regarding Rippetoe, I like that he makes clear predictions of what can be achieved with his program thus making it evaluable by everyone, I like that he wants things to be done right and does not just come up with some wishy-washy way of saying "do what works best for you", I like that he has good arguments why he thinks his method of training a beginner is the best, I like that he takes into account various stages of training advancement, which he also defined objectively with Lon Kilgore, and organizes training accordingly.
I think defining these stages the way he did along with his extremely detailed description and instruction of how to execute the basic barbell exercises and how to coach them are his most important contributions to the field. It's not so much his Starting Strength method that is so important, although I find it to be extremely good and I am sure that the modifications in the upcoming 3rd edition are going to make it even better, but it is those universal principals that he described and made practically applicable.
Regarding him and VJ: He never said that VJ cannot be improved. He said that it cannot be improved above a certain level, which is a rather obvious point to make. His suggestion or observation was, that it won't usually go up higher than 30% of the initial height. He therefore takes into account the genetic disposition of an athlete for this kind of task, in which he is doing right I think. The 30% are of course a somewhat arbitrary number and can certainly be disputed. But I think this might actually be a somewhat accurate approximation of what will be achieved on average. We all know some examples of people who increased their ability by more than 30% (mind you, we are talking SVJ here), but those are a minority.

I would not necessarily listen to Rip for advice on people who want to increase either sprinting speed or VJ, but he will tell you that himself. One should however listen to what he has to say about training for novices in general, which is his forte, and also about what he has to say on barbell exercises.
That does not mean that he is right and everyone else is wrong, but if you want to make up your mind about certain things you would be wise to read what he has to say.

I will paste here what Kelly Baggett says about that topic in the VJB :

Quote

That's his opinion, but science (if you count using an EMG as science) and personal experience shows half squats (not 1/4 but same idea) hit the pchain quite well.

http://www.t-nation.com/testosterone-magazine-623#inside-the-muscles