Squats?

I am doing a Westside squatting style workout right now. Doing the dynamic day on monday, wait three days (thursday) then do the max E day. Problem is when i come to thursday, i feel like my glutes and hamstrings ain’t fully recovered. Do i have to juice to do such a workout? Do i have to extend my time between dynamic and max effort days?

Oh, and while im at it. Dave Tate says my toes should point straight forward. This feel really unnatural when trying to "spread the floor". Altough i can feel a better hamstring recruitment. Should i do what feels best or better off trying pointing them straightforward? Glad for any responses. Great forum by the way!!!

Neo, You should not be that sore after the dynamic day three days later. When you are lifting on your dynamic day, what % of max are you using for your sets of doubles? If you are new to the the Westside program it should be about 55%-60%. The only way I get that sore is if I have not trained legs in a couple of weeks. Then the soreness may linger 3-5 days. If you are training with the correct %'s, just delay Max effort day the first couple of leg routines. It should get better. As far as feet pointing straight, Dave Tate / Louis recommends this, I believe, for better hamstring and glute muscle recruitment. I turn my feet slightly outward. Get the tapes Westside puts out if you want to follow their program to the letter.

Hmmm i forgot to tell that i’ve done this only a week now. Using box squats as an exersize, have done a 4 week with learning the box squat first with 8-4 reps. And the first week i might had a very low protein intake (about 100grams pr. day). Could this be the reason?

A few things to consider - be consistent with your negative tempos but don’t do a prolonged 4-5, whatever…length negative. The purpose here is strength, not hypertrophy. One thing the WSB guys advocate is recovery work with a sled the day after a workout. Even if you don’t have a sled, do some form of light aerobic active recovery the day after your max day, as well as some passive stretching. Something else to consider is going MWF with your workouts so you hit legs every 4-5 days rather than three. I’m clean and recover just fine on this schedule.

I’ve been doing squats for most of the past 18 years and have been going hard on the westside system for 18+ months now. My squat has improved more than 100 lbs in this time frame. I’m also training clean, not that it’s my pride and joy, just a factor to consider.

If you want to make Westside work for you, I found you have to take on the whole program. Ironically, I've found that the best way to increase recovery is to do more workouts, particularly very low intensity, moderate volume sessions using movements other than squat derivatives (reverse hypers, ghg raises, ab work, easy plyos). It's funny how I've believed in lowering total training volume for the past decade and now i'm recommending to add workouts if you're not recovering fast enough. True learning is a humbling process! This is what Louie preaches. Read the archives on deepsquatter.com for more on this.

As far as having the toes pointing forward, I've been lucky enough to have Louie himself teach me to box squats and I think he'd say to forget "spreading the floor" and focus on "pushing out the knees" and to "sit back", particularly at the very bottom of the range of motion. I have inherent external rotation in my hips (that means my toes point outward more than normal) and I found that with this modification to squatting style (toes pointing forward) I shoot up from a below parallel box even faster that toes slightly pointed out. Try it it should work.

I agree totally with Eric about following the whole westside routine. Using a different ME lift than the squat makes a big difference. As for the toes pointing straight, this is actually very usefull because it forces you to initiate the lift by sitting back, not bending the knees. With a proper westside squat you will feel very little in the quads. If you want to squat wide-stance with the toes a little out and a more consistent back angle(with a little more quad involvement too), look for video clips of Ed Coan squatting. Using his form I can hit well below parrallel, while the westide style will lock your hips up at exactly parallel.