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Box Squats

NightFallTech

NightFallTech

Member
Decided to give these a go (ultra light for most people here at about 55kg). Placed a low box (the lowest pylo box i could find in the middle of the rack, put the barbell on my back and sat down on the box and got up again... is this roughly correct?

I'm also somehow thinking that i wasn't quite deep enough, despite using like a 12" box! .. (damn big butt and thighs) ... maybe just on parallel.

I found i needed to use a wider stance so my legs comfortably cleared the box, is this right?

I tried sitting down and completely relaxing a few times on the box, but then migrated to just taking a bit of the weight off and then a brief touch of the box... what is correct here?

This felt like it worked my quads more than normal squats...

I do have relatively long femurs compared to my lower legs and torso. (i'm 185cm but from the waist up not much taller than my 165cm girlfriend)
 
It really depends what youre doing them for. What you described is not a "box squat" but it is fine as a general strengthening exercise
 
Zealots will tell you thay its not a box squat unless its at parallel, you sit way back so that your shins are vertical with a wide stance, knees way out and you pause on the box keeping full tension before exploding up

Which is near useless for increasing your raw squat and will alter your groove
 
0ni said:
Zealots will tell you thay its not a box squat unless its at parallel, you sit way back so that your shins are vertical with a wide stance, knees way out and you pause on the box keeping full tension before exploding up

Which is near useless for increasing your raw squat and will alter your groove
Click to expand...

Like
 
IMO paused squats teach you everything a box squat is meant to teach you, except you can't cheat by rocking, and you don't mess with your groove. Paused squats FTW.
 
Disagree. Box squats will help the raw squat and also the deadlift.


Stance does not have to be wide. Shins should be as close to vertical as possible.

The lifter sould stop breifly on the box and the low position should be at or just below legal depth, unless you want to to impress the youtubes with a 1000lb high foam box quarter knee bend with half a dozen fat blokes helping you out of the monolift.

There is no such thing as "groove" unless you are a goldfish who is incapable of remembering whether you are doing a box squat or regular squat. There is such a thing as having no quads, however, and I'll admit the box squat is limited in that area.

A lot of people end up with their knees going too far forward when they train in a regular squat. This is inefficient for powerlifting style squatting and not good for longevity. The box helps to teach a better body position with an emphasis on using the hips.
 
I'll try to keep my shins more vertical and see how i go, i might try an even lower box (lower than 1ft off the ground?)..
 
If you're trying to improve your squat, mimic the lift. Don't sit on the box, touch the box and explode up. Don't rock/sit back/relax on the box, or it defeats the purpose.
 
They have some place in RAW lifting but only if using wraps, but work well for training deadlift I find. I think where some people have said "you loose the groove" is some what right as a lot of people change the way they sit on a box compared to doing a complete squat. Rocking on the box seems to make it easier as you are using the momentuim of the weight to move upwards.
 
Lol training the movement pattern or groove is what gives the vast majority of strengh gains. Why is low bar squatting bar for olympic lifting? Because you will start catching he snatch leaning forwards. It fucks your groove

There is also no real reason to box squat as a raw lifter. It is completely different to a raw squat. As mentioned above paused squats are great and there are hundreds of other exercises to choose from that are different enough to not alter movement patterns
 
I agree with Oni.

If you want to train the hips (eg as deadlift supplemental exercise) you can heaps of other exercises that will do it even better than box squats. RDLs, hip thrusts, GHR, GMs, even lunges.

It's not that box squats are bad. They clearly work for many people. Its just that there are better bang-for-buck options.
 
You are adding another exercise to increase training volume. This is what it does. Why not just increase the volume of the exercise youre actually trying to increase? You dont have a magical deficiency that is fixed by some special exercise

If youre doing it for a change of pace then that is fine just dont delude yourself that they are best discovery since narcissus discovered himself
 
How about doing warm up sets using box squats and then working sets regular squats. Would that be beneficial?
 
Training the hip hinge so you sit further back down to parallel (or lower) and keeping the shins vertical?
 
As an olympic style squatter boxes are completely useless, I can't get into position on a box since it's knee forwards and hips straight down.

Yes my experience is pretty scant, and I don't even low-bar, but I don't see why as a raw lifter you wouldn't just do deep paused squats instead of box squats?

It seems to me you can get the same benefits of training explosiveness out of the bottom etc without messing with your groove, as 0ni said.

Also many vids I've seen of people doing box squats, including 'elite' lifters are often clearly above parallel, which makes me ask why? Presumably they do SOMETHING, or people wouldn't be doing them. But for fuck sake people, a half or quarter squat is not a fucking squat, doing it on a box makes you look even more ridiculous.

vonfram88 said:
There is no such thing as "groove" unless you are a goldfish who is incapable of remembering whether you are doing a box squat or regular squat.
Click to expand...

Plenty of novices struggle with doing two different squats effectively, in fact some elite lifters too. For example, Matt Krozzaleski has said he stopped doing box squats for this exact reason, as did Brandon Lily, if I recall correctly
 
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