3 Steps to Improving Your Squat

Posted on | May 12, 2009 |

Through most of the years that I have lifted weights, I rarely ever did a leg workout, and when I say rarely, I actually mean NEVER. I always focused on the beach body muscles; the chest, the shoulders, and the arms. I had no idea what I was missing out on because I didn’t see the value in building the muscles up in my legs. I didn’t know that when you work out your legs, you release testosterone throughout the rest of your body which helps promote full body development and muscular growth. It helps increase the rest of your lifts, helping you improve your bench, your rows, and everything else.

Not until I started lifting with my old workout partner, Chris, did I learn the value of working out my legs, and the use of proper form. Only when I started working out and performing squats did I start to see not only improvements in my lifts but in my muscular development and definition.

BARBELL squats are essential to full body development and developing overall strength and power. Deep, thighs parallel to the floor, squats. Doing this exercise on a regular basis will not only add pounds of pure muscle to your frame, but also help develop your thigh muscles, giving you added strength and power to all of your other lifts.

The 1st way to is to focus on improving your squat is to keep your thighs parallel to the floor.

No matter how heavy the weight, you want your thighs to be as close to parallel as possible. This puts stress on the muscles, forcing them to work harder, increasing the release of your body’s natural testosterone. Looking up towards the ceiling as you drive the weight up will help to keep your back straight and prevent you from arching your back forward, as if you were performing Good Morning reps.

The 2nd objective is to use the proper weight.
If you’re new to squatting, start out with lighter weight to get used to performing the exercise while maintaining proper form. If you can’t go too far down with 45 lb plates on each side (135 lbs) then reduce the weights until you are able to perform at least 10 reps. Once you can achieve 10 reps with perfect form, increase the weights until 10 reps is attained.

The 3rd objective is to shock your muscles into growth.

How do you do this? Put as much intensity as you can into your squat workout to shock your muscles into growth. I perform a Monster Leg squat drop-set workout once every 2-3 weeks to help blast my muscles into growing. In fact, every week I do some sort of shock workout to keep my legs growing. For example, today’s leg workout is a major burnout which I will be making a video of to show you.

Performing a drop-set, super-set, timed-workout such as 1 minute rounds of lunges or squats, or some kind of endurance leg workout is essential for developing your leg strength far quicker than if you perform your regular routine.

What does this all mean?

If you want to grow your legs, you are going to have to work at it. If it were easy, everyone would have big monsterous thighs and would be able to squat 400 lbs.

Truth of the matter, it isn’t easy at all, but it sure is a lot of fun trying.

Category: Legs & Thighs
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Comments

2 Responses to “3 Steps to Improving Your Squat”

  1. 25 Reps @ 225 lb Squats Burnout - Muscle Body Workouts
    May 13th, 2009 @ 12:06 am

    [...] finishing workout for Squats was a burnout at 225 lbs. I previously talked about shocking your muscles into growth and also made a video about another method to shock your muscles with a [...]

  2. MarkFu
    May 13th, 2009 @ 10:54 pm

    I love hearing guys tell me it’s “leg day” but they aren’t doing squats. Might as well stay home!

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