Thread: Squat Question

I do not believe in squatting on a Smith machine, it's dangerous and it restricts the natural arc movement in a squat. Use a free weight barbell, much safer and much more effective!

Originally posted by Prince
I do not believe in squatting on a Smith machine, it's dangerous and it restricts the natural arc movement in a squat. Use a free weight barbell, much safer and much more effective!

Interesting...I would have thought the Smith machine would be safer since you are less likely to fall.

that's one of the common misconceptions of the Smith machine, don't get me wrong I like the Smith it has some great uses, but squats are not one of them.

As far as falling, I have been squatting for over 16 years, I have never fallen nor injured myself doing squats.

One thing that is important is that you build up the coordination of the movement before you start going heavy, this is the biggest mistake people make, they try and go heavy before they have conditioned theselves and learned the movement.

I plan to write an article on squats soon, I was hoping to do it for July, but I did not have time.

You squat like you are sitting down, how are you going to fall over? You will naturally take the weight and move up and down in the safest way, sitting down and standing up is such a natural movement I dont see it happening. If you use a squat rack with the bars setup properly, you have nothing to worry about.

The only thing I have liked the smith for is for incline pressing.

By placing your feet forward, you are taking pressure off the quads!

I agree with Prince smith machine is bad news for squats.

I also don't use it for benching either.

It moves along one plane forcing your joints to do the same.

The problem with a smith machine squat is not so much that you are taking pressure off the quads because you aren' really. The final 10-15% of the movement is still knee extension. The real problem is that you are not efficiently driving through your center of gravity.

When you are performing a real barbell squat you are squating down in such away that allows you to drive straight through your center of gravity. Think if there were a rod running straight from your spine to the ground, it would move in a diagonal fashion with your spine as you squat down. This makes the exercise more functional, increases your balance and strengthens your stabalizing muscles.

When you are performing a smith squat all of those things above go completely out the window. First you are pushing against a fixed bar, which will not improve your balance and coordination. Also, because it is a fixed bar you are doing nothing for your stabalizing musculature. And the biggest difference between barbell and smith sqauts is that in a smith squat you are displacing your center of gravity. You center of gravity is running straight down your spine when you are standing upright. Then when you lean back into the smith bar and keep your feet forward your center of gravity stays up in front of you as your spine and upper body move backwards to the bar. Now you are forced to drive through a false center of gravity which lies infront of your bodies core.

Now if you did smith squats only and never did a barbell squat how well do you think you could effeciently lift things using your bodies natural center of gravity, not only in the gym but in real life? See my point.....it is not functional at all. When do you ever pick things up by sitting back like you do during a smith squat?? Never...you would fall over, right? Also since you are not strengthening your core musculature with the smith squat you are more likely to injure yourself trying to pick something up.

My advice....lay off the smith machine. Grab a barbell and do real squats and your entire body will benefit.