One upping Mike Boyle - Squats, worst exercise for sports training?

[toddmr]

Here's my answer to the silliness about not using the squat to improve running:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...3BODIES_3.html

That's Shawn Crawford. Gold Medal 200 meters in 2004 and Silver Medal 200 meters in 2008.

Look at the squat number on him. Apparently his 450# squat doesn't slow him down too much. Not too shabby.

Now the shot-putter has a 650 squat and 635 bench.

But those are two concrete examples of how squatting can improve athleticism.

[msingh]

But those are two concrete examples of how squatting can improve athleticism.

They causation could be in the other direction that powerful athletes can become trained to have strong squats. To claim the squat contributed to their performance needs to be demonstrated not just correlated.

[Cmanuel]

i'm starting to think that mike boyle and all of the anti-squat nutswingers that are coming out of the woodwork are doing it just to separate themselves from the pack... using it to try and sell their training program/gym/whatever as the latest and greatest.

I think they are just upset they haven't had as much success as established athletic training facilities like defranco and so forth.

[Mark Rippetoe]

They causation could be in the other direction that powerful athletes can become trained to have strong squats. To claim the squat contributed to their performance needs to be demonstrated not just correlated.

Mr Singh is right here. A good way to investigate this would be to look at the change in vertical, the change in squat, and the change in sports performance. What do you suspect you would find?

[Polynomial]

Regardless of how squats affect athletic performance, what really pisses me off about this whole debate is that kids lose in the end. When doing my 5x5 set on Monday, a group of four 18 year old girls arrived at the squat rack next to me and proceeded to squat. Except that they all performed ridiculous quarter squats that would Gold's Gym trainers proud.

I don't interfere with other people's workouts, except when it comes to safety, and usually not even then. So when they began arguing about how one walks out the bar, I chimed in with the usual advice. After I was done with my squats, I asked them where they learned how to squat. The answer: "high school track team." The only other thing that I told them was that they should look up SSBBT.

So there they were: four young women who mustered the courage enter the weight room and get strong, only to be left weak and injured because some idiot coaches don't know how to teach squats, or worse, advise against them.

[Raskolnikov]

This is just silly. There's really only two ways to make someone more explosive: make them stronger or increase their rate of force development. Since the latter is only trainable to an extent, the former is where the most gains can be made. All things being equal, the stronger you are the faster you'll run and the higher you'll jump. Does anyone actually dispute that? Boyle certainly doesn't -- he just doesn't believe that the squat is the best means of increasing strength, which, while wrong, is an entirely different argument. This other douche, however, is way out in left field with talk about squats being slow and force transfer through the heel (which would also rule out the Boyles Bulgarian split squat, incidentally)... it's just bullshit, pure and simple.

[macetini]

One time I saw two men kissing in the park.... Until I saw that video this was the gayest thing I ever saw..

[Blairbob]

Raskolnikov-exactly, build strength first and learn to express it as power. If you are weak, you cannot train power first. Coach Sommer is big on this in gymnastics. Building a solid base of strength before moving on to power.

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_a...rcise_gone_bad

This goes more into Mike Boyle's argument. They talk to Boyle again, then Dave Tate, Christian Thibaudeau, and Eric Cressey. Some thoughts are that Boyle trains a lot of hockey players who tend to be poor at squatting due to the nature of hockey and how they move (if you have ever looked at the rounded back leaning forward posture of speed skating). Boyle also states he finds the squat too dangerous for the possibility of a spinal injury to his athletes.

[Smiler Grogan]

It seems that this asshat is the former partner of world's greatest father Marv Marinovich, and their training "systems" are virtually identical. Marinovich has been training BJ Penn this year, FWIW.
It just seems like another case of fine-tuning genetically super-gifted athletes, touting the inevitable success, and marketing it to average joes as cutting edge training tech, when they really just need to get strong like bull before they can even think about being competitive athletically. You'd have to be real fucking dumb and work pretty hard at it to fuck up working with Polamalu and Penn. But good luck getting the skinny kid down the street ready to play freshman football next year with wobble-boards drills and bosu flys.
I could be wrong.

[brittf]

Mr Singh is right here. A good way to investigate this would be to look at the change in vertical, the change in squat, and the change in sports performance. What do you suspect you would find?

Hi Mark.

That is the $1000 question, isn't it?

I was going to ask you about the correlation between improving squat performance and increasing vertical leap a couple of days ago. However, I first searched the forum and found a longish post on this question. It seemed to me (from that post) that there was NOT a good correlation (ie. tripling your squat MIGHT make at most a 2" difference in vertical). It seemed to support the idea that "jumpers/sprinters are born, not made". You have also drawn the conclusion (just read it in MOMG) that good O-lifters have a high vertical "in order to be good O-lifters" and it is not clear how much O-lifting necessary IMPROVED their explosiveness.

I was quite bummed . I have never had a fantastic vertical leap and really wanted to "train it".

Is there any reason to change this view, or is there at least "some" truth in the idea that you can improve maximum strength and strength-endurance quite readily through training, but that "explosive" strength (and, POSSIBLY by extension, sports performance in sports that require agility and explosion) is not really all that trainable??? (Aside from skills training, of course).

Just curious as to your thoughts.

Regards,
brittf