I Love Box Squats!

So I worked my squat up to 245x3. This was after many weeks of training squats and deads and I felt like I needed a break. I took a week off and came back,deciding to switch up my routine a bit.

I started the box squat with a wide stance and after just 2 weeks my form had improved a great deal. It feels like my torso is moving straight up and down. Its fantastic.

After only 4 weeks my box squat went up to 275x5 which was done easily. Next week I will go for 285.

Anyone else recently fall in love with the box(squat)?

[quote]Chickenmcnug wrote:
So I worked my squat up to 245x3. This was after many weeks of training squats and deads and I felt like I needed a break. I took a week off and came back,deciding to switch up my routine a bit.

I started the box squat with a wide stance and after just 2 weeks my form had improved a great deal. It feels like my torso is moving straight up and down. Its fantastic.

After only 4 weeks my box squat went up to 275x5 which was done easily. Next week I will go for 285.

Anyone else recently fall in love with the box(squat)?[/quote]

Not recently, but I do like doing them. It’s a nice tweak to a familiar exercise. These let you know just how strong your squat really is.

I was having some form issues including depth so I brought in the box a few months ago and goddamn I love them. I initially had to drop some weight to work on the form but recently nailed 5x10 with 315.

been doing them since switching to pl, love doing them

I love them too. Develops good explosion from the bottom up. Last week I did narrow stance 315 with 90 in chain (405 at top, 315 at bottom) for sets of 10. Felt good.

I’m think of adding box squats but I’ve never done them. Do you actually sit on the box, pause and lift out of the bottom position or are you just touch your rear to the box and drive back up?

I have the same question - do you sit on the box? Or do you tap it? Thanks

you come to a stop on the box, well, enough of a stop to let your hip flexors relax so you break the stretch reflex.

Then you explode up.

Does anyone have any video links of a box squat?

I saw it a lot by the football players at my University this summer and I haven’t seen it since. I’d like to see some video and one day…yes one day work with some box squats.

[quote]jackson44 wrote:
I have the same question - do you sit on the box? Or do you tap it? Thanks[/quote]

Big thing, too, is that your shins must be perpendicular to the ground when your butt touches the box.

In other words, you’re siting back pretty far on the box, so much so that if the box were not there, you’d fall on your butt.

go to dave tates site, www.elitefts.com and check out exercise index they should have something about the box squat, not sure of video thou.

I think that will be true for many lifters. However, if you are tall or long-legged and you squat inside a rack to below parallel, your shins may very well not be parallel. I’m 6,4. For a long time, I noticed that no matter what I did my knees had to come forward some to lower back to box with control. I thought I was doing something wrong. But when I started trainign at a key club that has a monolift and I got to use a wider stance, I finally figured out what Louie Simmons meant in those articles.

[quote]TC wrote:
jackson44 wrote:
I have the same question - do you sit on the box? Or do you tap it? Thanks

Big thing, too, is that your shins must be perpendicular to the ground when your butt touches the box.

In other words, you’re siting back pretty far on the box, so much so that if the box were not there, you’d fall on your butt.

[/quote]

If nothing else, box squats are kind to beat up knees and provide a back-up plan to train around strains and injuries. When my back is too tore up to squat, I do leg presses. But if my knees are too beat up to do free squats, I’ll box squat. Just another good tool to have in the shop…