When I started my quest for more quad development a couple of years ago, the first thing I did was expand my exercise selection. As primarily a low-bar squatter for many years, I felt like my quad development was way behind my actual squatting strength. As with many low-bar exclusive squatters I was all Ass and Adductors. Of course the quads are still massively involved even in a low bar squat, but the lions share of the work is being performed by the hips (hamstrings, glutes, and adductors).
So I started experimenting with more exercises to specifically target the quads. I kept low bars in the mix, but less frequently. And I began to perform the bulk of my barbell-based squatting high bar. With less tension on the hamstrings and adductors at the bottom of the movement the high bar squat allows you to squat deeper and take the quads through a much longer/fuller range of motion. More range of motion = more stimulus. And less contribution from the hams and adductors on the concentric means that more of the work is done via knee extension compared to a low bar squat. The reduced load, the intra-session pump, and the next day soreness would all indicate that the high bar squat is far more quad dominant than the low bar squat although some argue otherwise. Okay.
As I trained the high bar more and more, I also found that I preferred to PAUSE my high bar reps as opposed to rebounding out of the hole with them. The more I trained them, the more I paused them and the more comfortable I got with longer pauses in the hole. Now, when I high-bar squat – it’s always as a Paused High Bar Squat.
A few reasons why I like this, and you might too. If you don’t like pausing your high bar reps that is of course fine. Consider this food for thought:
#1: More Stimulus, With Less Load
This is what Dr. Mike Israetel would call the “Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio.” In other words, everything that has a potential growth producing stimulus also has a fatigue cost associated with it. You have to decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze for certain exercises. Very high loads generally have higher fatigue costs than lower loads – duh. For a hypertrophy based training program…..if you can get the same or better stimulus with LESS fatigue – then why wouldn’t you do so? Good strength programs or good hypertrophy programs achieve a certain level of balance to them. You have to consider how the fatigue costs of various exercises fit into the context of the greater program. You can only perform and recover from so much work in a given week and so you want to try and find mechanisms to achieve maximum stimulus and minimal fatigue at every session, when possible. Pausing my squats at the bottom forced me to take weight off the bar, while at the same time the stress on my quads was greater. Less axial loading, less systemic fatigue but more stimulus where I wanted it – in the quads and we have a winning combination.
So how do you know that one variation of a squat is more stimulative than another? I keep saying that the pauses were better…..but how do we know that? How do you measure that? In my opinion it’s simply a matter of common sense observation and intuition. How do you feel and WHAT do you feel when coming off, say a hard set of 10, with each variation??? With rebounded high bar squats I definitely have a pump in my quads. With paused high bar squats, my quads feel like they’re going to explode. So there is a difference. Now we can argue about whether or not a pump in the muscle is directly causative to growth – but I do believe that it is an INDICATOR of stimulus. The same could be said of soreness. Soreness resulting from eccentric muscle damage can certainly be viewed as an indicator of effective stimulation, in my opinion, and in this case the pause squats definitely win out.
#2: Stretch Under Load
This kinda ties in with my last statement from #1. Most of the muscle damage from a movement occurs in the eccentric phase of the lift which includes the loaded stretch at the end of a movement. On certain movements I believe you can super-charge this effect a bit by focusing a bit more on this stretch under load. The paused high bar squat being one of those movements that can benefit greatly from keeping the quads under tension longer. Bodybuilding coach Dante Trudel has written about this extensively and has a lot more to add to the conversation than I do. But after reading a lot of his material and experimenting with myself and others – I’m a believer, at least conceptually in the utility of focuing a bit more on “stretch under load” on a lot of our movements – not just the pause squats.
#3: Intentionally Limiting Hip Involvement
I have a build that pre-disposes me to do ALL of my squatting with a lot of hip activity. What we call ‘Hip Drive” in the Starting Strength model for the low-bar squat is the best way to ensure we are getting maximal use of our hips into a movement. This is what we want when the goal is to move the most load and/or to develop the posterior chain. But what if we DON”T want our hips coming into the movement too much??? Since we’re training for hypertrophy and not just strength – we want the load ON THE TARGET MUSCLE, not evenly distributed to lots of muscles. Having a short torso and long femurs makes it very easy to hip drive your way out of a low bar squat, high bar squat, and even a front squat to a degree. The rebound tends to exacerbate this phenomenon. Killing the rebound allows me to focus on driving STRAIGHT UP out of the hole, leading with my chest instead of my hips. This is the exact opposite cue we use for low-bar squatting where we teach lifters to lead with the hips. After many sets performed both ways, I’ve found that it’s simply easier to keep a more vertical torso and power up with more knee extension and less hip drive when I kill the rebound with the pause.
Happy Squatting.
