Strength
Box Squat
10 x 2 @ 55% 1RM.
Rest exactly :45 between sets. Go fast.
WOD
Complete 3 rounds for QUALITY:
Max reps strict pull-up
Max reps toes-to-bar
Max handstand hold against wall
Bennet swears that wearing a hood will increase your unbroken wall-ball reps!
Today the box squat comes back....hell yeah! It's been a little while since we've done these on dynamic effort days. Some of you may have never done them, so today will be a new experience for you. Why do we box squat? Dave Tate of EliteFTS wrote a great article on the virtues of the box squat. Here are some of the advantages he discusses in the article:
There are many advantages to box squatting:
1) Training on a box will allow you to sit back onto the box to a point where your shins are past perpendicular to the floor. This places all the stress on the squatting muscles (hips, glutes, lower back and hamstrings.) When you can increase the stress on these muscles and lower the stress on the quads, then you’ll be ready to see your squat poundages start moving.
2) Restoration is another major advantage of box squatting. You can train more often on a box when compared to free squatting. According to Louie Simmons, the original members of Westside Barbell in Culver City, California, used to perform box squats three times a week. Currently at Westside we train the box squat every Friday for our dynamic workout and occasionally on Monday’s maximal effort workouts. If you’re new to box squats, I suggest you do them once per week.
3) When performing box squats you never have to guess how low you’re squatting. It’ll always be the same. Think about it: when most people start adding weight to the bar, their squats get higher and higher. You see this all the time in any gym you go to. They look good with the light weights, then begin doing quarter squats when the weight gets heavy. With box squats, you’ll always go low enough.
4) The last reason to box squat is to reinforce good squat technique. Many times for the intermediate or beginning squatter, the hamstrings aren’t yet developed and “sitting back” into a squat is impossible without falling over backward. To teach these athletes how to free squat properly would take months. The squat wouldn’t look right until the hamstrings and glute strength increases. Why wait two or three months? Put them on the box and you’ll have them squatting properly within five minutes. Within one month the hamstrings will begin to kick in because of the added stress of sitting back on the box.
We like that last one - how many of you started off your first day at Evolve air squating onto a box? We use it quite a bit with new folks to help them develop their technique.
Today, as is true on all dynamic effort days, the load is not what's important. It's the speed that you move that load. So if the coach asks you to pull some weight off the bar so you can go faster, check the ego and go with it! It will make you stronger down the road!
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