Question: How deep do you think a person should go on squats? The stuff I read in magazines and bodybuilding forums gets confusing because some say to go all the way down until the hamstrings contact the calves while others say that about parallel is good enough if not better. Since you have some humungous quads, I’d like to know what you do.
Answer: Early on in my training I used to squat as low as possible but it bothered my knees. I eventually switched to a totally different style and the knee pain went away, I got an awesome pump, and my legs really started to grow. Here’s what I did:
I switched to a slightly wider stance, began squatting to the point where the top of my thighs was just parallel to the ground, and stopped just short of lockout. In other words, I used a sort of quick, piston-like action, always keeping tension on the thighs. One other thing: I used higher reps, usually 12 and up, and always tried to use the maximum weight. At one point I was using in the 600 pound range for my top set of reps.
