I recently found out my quads are week. I squat wide stance weekly and have been neglecting my close stance low box work. I couple of weeks ago I maxed my Low Box close stance squat and was shocked to find out that my 1 RM was ~ my 10 RM with a wide stance. As you can imagine my quads are pretty week compared to my posterior chain. Now I have close stance squats in my three week rotation of ME movements. What else can I do to bring up my lagging quad strength/size. I was thinking close stance Olympic style back and front squats for 8-15 reps for assistance work after my speed squats. Also maybe even some leg presses as an assistance exercise after my ME work. I am also going to start doing more backward sled dragging. What do you guys think? Suggestions?
[quote]vandalay15 wrote:
A close stance low box is going to be weaker than wide stance off a higher box. It doesn’t mean quads are your weakness. [/quote]
I do realize this, but if you seen me from behind you would think I have some huge quads to go with my huge posterior chain. Sorry about the visual, but I think you get my point. My legs look kind of funny with small quads. I know that having bigger stronger quads will help with squatting and deadlifting, but I guess I am mainly after the visual effect more than anything.
Front squats are great. You guys fold your arms over the bar like an X right? I’m just kiddin about that, I will reintroduce front squats into my routine. I think I will do 1 and 1/2 rep sets though. I mgiht even start doing leg extensions
Joe,
Remember, you aren’t probably focusing on movements that are very quad involved proportionally(i’d imagine if you train like most WS’ish people.) I’m just gonna take a guess, your ME rotation prob is somehting like
week 1:wide box squats
week2: close box squats
week3: gm’s
now 2 of those moves barely use any quad, while one of them uses some quad, but not all. so of course you can expect your quads to be smaller, i think even dave and louie have talked about this, their quads got smaller the deeper they got into WS.
and to bring them up, you know what to do, its just a matter of time.
[quote]Joebob wrote:
Front squats are great. You guys fold your arms over the bar like an X right? I’m just kiddin about that, I will reintroduce front squats into my routine. I think I will do 1 and 1/2 rep sets though. I mgiht even start doing leg extensions ;-)[/quote]
I had/have the same problem. I have always used a wider stance when squating and semi-wide when deadlifting (not as wide as I should for powerlifting though).
I just learned how to do front squats and they feel great! It’s one of the few excersizes that drains my whole body, like back squats and deads. I personally use a finished clean hand possition. This was hard on my wrists for the firs few weeks, but they seemed to stretch themselves out, along with some (very little) pre-stretching before lifting.
I could never get the bar possitioned right when crossing my arms. This might have something to do with my body shape or where I possitioned the bar on my shoulders. Try both and see what feels better.
I started front squatting only about 2 months ago and I think I already see some progress in my quads, but I guess the smaller they are to start with, the quicker you’d see results and I have some work ahead of me to bring my quads up to par with the rest of my legs, glutes and posterior chain.
I almost gave up though, after the first 2 weeks. I couldn’t hold 95lbs for very long before my shoulders felt like they were going to give out and I didn’t feel like I was getting any kind of quad workout with that weight.
A little repositioning of the bar (closer to my throat), and some good advice to just suck up the shoulder pain helped a lot by the third week. I’m now only up to 5 sets of 10 with 155lbs, and my back squat is at 5 sets of 10 with 305lbs, so I think I still have a long way to go with the front squats but I’m hooked now.
Yeah, now that I think about it this thread is wasted bandwidth. I know what to do, and I am in the process of correcting my muscle imbalances. Before I started powerlifting I did front squats quite often, so form and moving decent weight isn’t a problem. I am just so used to squating with a super wide stance that the close stance lifts feel really awkward right now. I might even work front squats in as ME for 3RM just for fun. Thanks everyone for the help.
Yo, you had given me some Bench Press tips in a thread I made. I really appreciate it But i also found your name in a thread for weak Quads. I think I have the same problem. I deadlift 420 and have Squatted 355lbs, and feel my hamstrings are decent. But I can’t even front Squat 135lbs for reps. I’m gonna add those in to my scheme and get my quads strong. What else did you do to help your quads.
Dumbbell bulgarian split squats are great to assist the quads without putting excess stress on the spine, so you could throw in a couple sets after your squat work.
if you want stronger quads, why are you training in such a high rep range? lower your rep range 4-6 area, you will still get hypertrophy at this rep range and much increased strength
[quote]john-lennon wrote:
if you want stronger quads, why are you training in such a high rep range? lower your rep range 4-6 area, you will still get hypertrophy at this rep range and much increased strength[/quote]
Several bodybuilders swear by higher rep ranges for legs. Shawn Ray claimed he rarely went over 2-3 plates a side even though he was strong enough to do much more for squats if he lowered his rep range. I wouldn’t make that claim for any other major muscle group, however.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
john-lennon wrote:
if you want stronger quads, why are you training in such a high rep range? lower your rep range 4-6 area, you will still get hypertrophy at this rep range and much increased strength
Several bodybuilders swear by higher rep ranges for legs. Shawn Ray claimed he rarely went over 2-3 plates a side even though he was strong enough to do much more for squats if he lowered his rep range. I wouldn’t make that claim for any other major muscle group, however.[/quote]
For me there’s nothing like high reps squats and lunges for hypertrophy. My lower body responds very very well to sets of 10 reps and more.
