Slow Squats, Fast Deadlifts

I’m transitioning to squatting in a raised heel weightlifting shoe from barefoot. My squats are now very slow relative to before, even using something as light as 65% percent.

How could I go about improving this speed?

I think the “problem” is that my quads haven’t learned to be explosive. Deadlifts are slow off the floor, but fast after that point; mat/block pulls are fast. Squatting barefoot was fast, but squatting with a raised heel is slow.

High pulls seemed to be more posterior chain for me, and I think they helped a lot in general to build speed with my glutes and hamstrings.

Is there something similar I can do to retrain my quads to work explosively?

Of course, I might not be on the right path at all.

[quote]LoRez wrote:
I’m transitioning to squatting in a raised heel weightlifting shoe from barefoot. My squats are now very slow relative to before, even using something as light as 65% percent.

How could I go about improving this speed?

I think the “problem” is that my quads haven’t learned to be explosive. Deadlifts are slow off the floor, but fast after that point; mat/block pulls are fast. Squatting barefoot was fast, but squatting with a raised heel is slow.

High pulls seemed to be more posterior chain for me, and I think they helped a lot in general to build speed with my glutes and hamstrings.

Is there something similar I can do to retrain my quads to work explosively?

Of course, I might not be on the right path at all. [/quote]

Jumps squats

You can read my article here:

I also like speed squats done with a very light percentage (40-50%) with a pause in the bottom position.

I think I’ll give the jump squats a go, see how that works out and go from there.

Once explosiveness is developed, in order to maintain it, is it usually enough to just perform the main work explosively? Or does it still require a fair amount of regular dedicated work?

[quote]LoRez wrote:
I think I’ll give the jump squats a go, see how that works out and go from there.

Once explosiveness is developed, in order to maintain it, is it usually enough to just perform the main work explosively? Or does it still require a fair amount of regular dedicated work?[/quote]

It would require a certain level of maintenance work for a while. The longer you include explosive work in your routine, the more stable will your new explosiveness be. It’s kinda like losing fat… if you go from 18% down to 8% but as soon as you reach 8% you stop eating properly you will balloon up to 18% very fast. But if you make some efforts to stay in the 8-10% range for some time, the body will become less prone to rapidly gain fat.

Thanks again.