Just wodnering what yall’s thoughts are on the different effects theses may or may not have on the body. I know personally with sets of 5, I can use heavier weights when taking breaths between reps when neccessary. Doing them with just one breath between reps (piston style) however seems to get my legs/butt/lower back a little more sore. Breathing squats allows for a higher workload while piston style allows you to constantly rep out the weight without pausing.
Usually when I do them I will only give myself the number of breaths for the rep I am doing. For instance the pause between reps 1 and 2 only get 2 max breaths while the pause between reps 4 and 5 I will alow myself to take up to 5. Many old bodybuilding routines and old time strongmen used this style and it is also the primary technique used in the infamous “squats and milk” program.
Seemed to work for Platz.
In DC training we do a quad “widowmaker” which is basically a high rep quad set done either in the fashion you describe above, or by doing continuous reps until just short of failure, taking some breath, doing some more reps until just short of failure, more breaths, until eventually you’re getting maybe a rep between breaths, then finally terminating the set when you know that you aren’t getting another rep.
Personally I think it’s a great quad builder and definitely builds mental toughness as well.
To me it doesn’t matter how many breaths you take. Just unrack squat as many as humanly possible, rack, and call it a set.