My Quest For Big Legs
or
Why Low-bar Squats Will Give You A Big Butt...
Why High-bar Squats Are Better..
Why Dirty Bulking Will Only Make You Fat...
And why you should never follow blindly any fitness guru…
I don't know if you follow the latest rage about the low-bar squats but the topic is still hot. The main reason for that is one of the most popular strength training programs for beginners - Starting Strength By Mark Rippetoe. The meat of the program is the SQUAT. However I'm not talking about the popular high-bar or Olympic squat. I'm talking about the low-bar squat. The low-bar squat is used only by powerlifters in 99% of the cases. Why? Well, during a low-bar squat the bar rests lower on your back and you can bend over more without losing balance. This allows you to take the most out of your strong hip muscles and to lift more weight which is the goal of every powerlifter. However is this the best squat variation for your typical fitness enthusiast, beginner bodybuilder or Olympic weightlifter? In my opinion no. I will use me as an example.
Most of the people I know start training because they want huge upper body. The females might differ but all boys want huge guns, big chest and mighty back muscles. I can't say that I don't like those things. I do. However I started training because I wanted big legs. Yes, that's right. I didn't care so much about upper body. All I wanted were huge, scary looking quadriceps. Growing as kid I always had chicken legs and that's the reason I wanted those huge thighs. That's why I decided to start a strength program since usually all strength training regimes are built around the squat which is known as the greatest leg developer and overall strength builder known to man. It didn't take me so much time to find Starting Strength.
I've read tons of information on the Starting Strength forum and one day I finally decided to go to the gym and give it a try. I started following the program word by word. And since Starting Strength and it's similar variant StrongLifts are both build around the low-bar squat that's what I did. However a few months passed. I gained close to 17 kg of bodyweight. I was eating a lot more than before. Probably three times more. It was hell in the gym and it was hell in the kitchen. My back got a lot bigger BUT my legs, arms and chest remained almost the same except for my butt which exploded. Of course some of the ass-gains (haha) were caused by the higher body fat but I assure you that I gained some serious booty muscle. I was kind of disappointed because I took my squat from 40kg to 132.5 kg x 4 in six months and yet my legs were still almost the same - if not exactly the same. Somewhere at this point I also injured my hip pretty badly and lost around 20kg on the squat and the deadlift. I couldn't walk fast or run at all due to the injury. I blame the low-bar squat for all of this. Of course the injury was enhanced by the fact that I pushed myself to the limit during the end of the program but the mechanics of the low bar squat are the main reason why my hip had to undergo so much strain.
Let's take a look at the low-bar squat. Like I said it's a pretty bend over squat. Whenever you bend over your hip extensors (glutes, hamstrings and so on) take over. Also the low-bar squat requires you to sit-back and stretch the same muscles to extreme points provided that you squat below parallel. This is bad, bad, bad. Why? Well, squatting that way is a man made game. Look at a child. Every kid does essentially pretty upright high-bar squats. Those are the natural "squatting mechanisms" of the body. When you put the bar lower on your back it becomes very hard to go all the way down without extreme stretch of your hips or rounding of the lower back. Also the work of the quadriceps is diminished.
During my six-months journey with low-bar squats I didn't experience any soreness in the quads one single time. I swear. I got sore quads from deadlift but never from squats. However my ass was sore all the time. You can argue whether this is due to my personal body mechanics, limb lengths or so but in all cases this makes the low-bar squat extremely inefficient way to build heavy quads. I consider my body pretty average - I'm 183 cm with medium limb length. You can say that I'm relatively tall but my proportions are not extreme at all. I contacted Justin from 70sbig.com and asked him how he got his legs so big doing low-bar squats. And I was shocked by the answer - he said that he did high-bar squats for years before giving the low-bar a try. Somewhere at this point I decided to switch to high-bar and let the low-bar go to hell.
Looking back I did two crucial mistakes - I blindly followed Mark Rippetoe's advice and I didn't listen to my own body while also neglecting my goals. I don't know if you are familiar with the Starting Strength community but most of the guys out there are brainwashed and think of themselves as some sort of superior "trainees". They would rather do Rippetoe's laundry than admit the fact that the low-bar is a show-off squat and that by following the GOMAD "diet" and dirty bulking you just get fat. Look at the pictures of Zach Evetts in order to understand how you can gain 75 pounds of BW and still look like you don't lift. I honestly think that many people use the low-bar squat just to jump out of the page since doing the Olympic squat is too boring and does not allow you to explain fancy things such as "hip drive". Also Rippetoe seems to criticize the high-bar squat for its low posterior chain usage. This couldn't be further from the truth provided that you go as low as you can which is usually pretty low even for inflexible people like me.
Bill Starr, one of the most popular and successful strength coaches, believes that high-bar squats are far more athletic and superior:" High-bar, or Olympic, squats, are in my opinion, the best of the lot because they work the muscles of the hips, legs and back much more directly and therefore more completely than any other version.". Also here's what Tom Platz or the man with the greatest thigh development in bodybuilding has to say about the low-bar squat: "In powerlifting squatting the bar is real low on your back, and you use you butt and your lower back almost exclusively. Your legs are just a leverage piece of equipment basically (laughs). The stress isn t on your legs - well, it is to some degree., but you re using your butt and your lower back to push yourself up."
I don't want to tell anybody what to do. But I would like you to keep in mind that the majority of the famous fitness gurus out there should not be followed blindly or you will end up a big butted, brainwashed and skinny-fat like many people on the Starting Strength forum who "drink their milk" and gain over 50 pounds of bodyweight in 3 months and yet none of them look like they know where the local gym is. Don't listen to Rippetoe's bullshit on T-Nation about how 60% of the gains are muscle. That just ain't true. They are all brainwashed skinny-fat retards and this is a scam no different than the supplement game. Just look at the pictures of Zack Evetts, the famous Rippetoe trainee, and tell me what do you really think?
Before
After
Do you honestly think that this guy has gained over "30 pounds of muscle" after doing Starting Strength and drinking a gallon of milk every day? I honestly don't and the most obvious prove of that besides the fact that he got fatter all over the place, even his calves, are the missing traps. Yes, that's right he has no traps. When you gain over 30 pounds of muscle by doing compound heavy lifts such as deadlifts, squats, power cleans and overhead pressing the last thing that will be missing are the traps. The reason for that is that they respond to training extremely fast. Also he has no legs to show for after a long period of squatting. This confirms my experience that low-bar squats do not develop the quads that much. It's all in the hips.
Don't get caught into the GOMAD bullshit presented by Mehdi from StrongLifts and Rippetoe. It's not going to work unless you have been in prison for the last 10 years and weight 90 pounds. You will just get fat. They don't care about you. Their main goal is to promote their programs and to make money. Your lifts may go up but in the expense of what? I though we go to the gym to look and feel good.
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