High Bar Squats and Hypertrophy

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Recently my knees have not been a fan of squats. Even with sleeves on, it's unpredictable. Today I decided to try high bar squatting, and it felt so much better I almost couldn't believe it. To give some context, I did exclusively high bar squats for the first 5-6 months of training, until I got up to around 375x5. I only switched to low bar when I started Juggernaut. It hurts my shoulders, elbows, and knees, and I'm just not going to do it anymore. I don't see the point. I deadlift plenty, my posterior chain is not neglected. If I ever decide to enter a PL meet, I'll do low bar prep work. I'm pretty sure between high bar and deadlifting I won't lose much on that front.

On top of knees, I've had a lot of issues with tendinitis in the elbows and excessively aching shoulders some days, despite doing lots of stability work and maintaining at least a 2:1 pull:push ratio with upper body work. I attribute this to working almost exclusively in the low rep range with 3-5rm weights on some lifts, because I've noticed the more I work in the >6rm range, the better I feel afterward and the following day.

I've had it in my mind for a long time that it makes no sense to do nothing but "strength" work when there are so many benefits to hypertrophy, and some recent reading has only cemented this line of thought for me. I'm not sure what my next program will be but I'll be starting something Monday, so I have to decide between now and then - but whatever it is, it's going to include more high rep work, with strength work in the 6-8 rep range instead of the 3-5 rep range. I've no reason to assume I won't make strength gains in those rep ranges, especially since I made great progress on bench and deadlift working in the 8s and 10s wave of Juggernaut. 

 

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