I've been waiting for the right time to make a thread on your Q&A and always held back because I wasn't sure if it was a good enough question but i might have one now.
1. Tell me about the SSB. You are aware of my issues with squatting (fwd lean out of da hole, squatmorning tendency, trouble making it a quad dominant exercise rather than my stronger hamstrings etc). I've been reading about the safety squat bar. Could it help me? I tend to lose good position coming out of the hole, and according to what i've read the SSB allows you to be strongest in the weakest position (bottom) of a normal squat which is where I am having trouble
The safety squat bar is great if you have one, there are so many things you can do with it, and yes, it makes a back squat a "higher" high bar squat. If you have trouble staying upright in the squat, yet you can front squat upright, the safety bar can be that "tweener" that gets you to a more upright, squat.
The other thing about it is, you can turn it around and use it for front squats, wrapping the arms under and over the pad. This is by far the most comfortable front squat for most athletes, and really allows you to fatigue the legs without any issues with the rack position.
The other thing you can do with a safety squat bar is, keep your hands on the rack as you squat, making sure you are in a solid position in the hole and on the way up. You can gradually reduce the arms involvement as you groove and train the movement pattern, and eventually end up with a similar squat that you were only able to achieve via holding the rack previously.
One thing to remember though, if you try and "good morning" with a safety squat bar, it will rape your low back due to the higher positioning on the traps.
2. I made the change from LBBS to HBBS recently and it helps with the issues above but my squat is still very hamstring dominant. I have hamstring soreness postworkout even if I haven't done any specific hamstring exercise and no sprinting. In fact if you didn't know where I was putting the bar, it would be hard to distinguish it from my LBBS. I also think the imbalance btw hamstrings and quads is part of the reason why i've got problems coming out of the hole. Anything I can try to fix the imbalance? Because it seems if I just try to push my squat up, my hamstrings just get stronger, and my quads not so much.
yes, you have a similar problem as many with your torso/leg length ratio that have been low bar squatting, youre much better at driving your hips up, than driving the chest and shoulders up first. The single best way to fix this imo is to front squat until that movement pattern becomes dominant. If you got a safety squat bar, holding the rack lightly as you pull yourself into a solid bottom position, and driving out upright would help this as well.
2. I have a friend who is about 25, 6' tall, a good athlete in his day and weighs a fat ~90kg/200lb (maybe a few kilos less than this). He's got a wicked first step and very quick to accelerate from stationary even though he's fairly overfat. How does this work? Is it just genetics? I ask because he's far from the 10% I would need to be athletic, he's probably closer to 30% and yet the excess (dead) weight doesn't seem to stop him from being able to accelerate quickly when guarding him
Can be a number of different things, his timing, high rate coding/excitable cns, and even with the extra weight he may still have a fairly decent strength/bw ratio. but to make your first step lethal, watch where the defenders weight is. The second you get them back on their heels, or too far forward, make that step. It will appear 208% faster to the defender, even though its the same speed as your usual steps, its how you timed it. Also, 98.576 % of statistics are made up on the spot.
