Hip Squats

[matclone]

Meaning: belt with weight tied to the front. I've never tried these. Does this put any unusual stress on the knees?

I know barbell squats are the way to go. I'm just thinking of times where they are not available.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Belt squats, as we call them here, are definitely an assistance exercise. They are very painful to load with enough weight to train heavy unless you have specialized equipment and a lot of experience doing them. I have done 350+ for reps on a special stand we made here, and they are brutally hard on the area under the belt, useful only if you have a back injury.

[StirlingM]

I actually think that they're kind of cool, and I'm glad you don't think that they're retarded Rip. I've just started using them in the last few weeks and I think that I'm going to keep them.

Unfortunately, I don't do squats because I can't do squats (you can't physically perform the movement if one of your ankles is fixed in position, which is my problem). Or so I thought, so I first tried the "hack squat" machine in my gym - doable but a knee destroyer. Then I dabbled with the leg press - too gay, too non-functional, and it hurts my back. Then I settled on trap bar deadlifts - with a Hammer Strength machine we've got. It's called the "ground base deadlift" or some shit, but it's a trap bar deadlift whatever they call it. My gym doesn't have a real trap bar, so you use what you have.

I've done okay on those for a good while but decided to do a 1rm test in January and made 5 plates a side. I can do 425 on a deadlift, so that's a lot more weight - made me think that it's probably bullshit, too close to the conventional deadlift, and not enough range of motion through the knee anyway.

So I got to thinking and experimented a bit and found that I can (sort of) squat - if I can hold onto something while I'm doing it. Sort of a similar motion to stepping onto a high platform from the ground while using something to steady yourself.

So the penny dropped and I figured, yeah, belt squats - probably the best I'm gonna do.

The things are a real production to do. You need a loading pin for the plates, a good belt (don't even think of using a standard dip belt), and a couple of wooden boxes (or something) to stand on. Then, in my case I have to shove the boxes up against the side of the power rack (so they don't slide) then set the pin at a height were I can hold onto it, squat down, hook up and lift.

Initially I was worried how my knees would stand up but they seem fine so far. I was also curious as to how much weight I could do - I just started and got up to 180 pretty quick (doing a 3X5 on them) so I guess that the trap bar deads weren't totally useless.

The lift itself feels pretty good actually. Seems to work most of the muscles you'd expect through a pretty good range of motion. A bit tough on the hips initially, but you get used to it and having a good belt helps a lot - like I say, don't even think of trying this with a regular dip belt.

So they're definitely not a replacement for the squat (nothing is), but if you can't do squats for some reason they seem to come about as close as you can get. If you did them without holding onto something it'd definitely take some practice to get your balance down right but I expect that that'd come pretty quick. Also like a squat you need to make sure you get to parallel, but we all know that.