This is a hypothetical question. If u had to make a choice between doing squats OR a version of an olympic lift, e.g. clean, high pull or snatch grip deadlift, what choice would you make? The goal is to improve sprinting speed.
Actually, one of the reasons I ask is becuase I don’t have time to go to gym anymore, but have a very heavy barbell set up at home wich can be used for Olympic lifts. I haven’t done oly lifts for years, I know how to do them though. Besides, I never had much transfer to sprinting speed from doing squats, over the last 4 years.
But here is something to ponder. Once you have your form down, and beyond the begineer stage with the oly lifts, they will not go up themselves.
You will need to squat/deadlift etc to strengthen the muscles used to make the olylifts go up in weight.
They are athletic movements in themselves and tend to reflect organism capacities, but they do develop certain desirable qualities.
So you get the case of which came first - the chicken or the egg?
Good point CoolColJ,
I’ve never either of them purely in isolation,
Surely a good periodisation approach adjusting variables could keep it from sticking?
cool true,one will help the other.doing the same exercises over and over will give a certain duration/period of stimulation but after a while you get shut-down mode where a plteau is reached.what do you do then…change the set-up of exercises and attack from a different area,next thing you know you are stronger at the last programme.the main thing is that goose has an olympic bar loaded with plates to works with.there are alot of olym exercises to choose from.
True x-man. I don’t have a squat rack at home. I’m a little concerned that if i only use oly lifts i might not develope as much thigh and gluteal strength as doing squats. Do deadlifts work the hip extensors as much as paralell squats? Would stiff leg or romanian deads pack as much meat on the hamstrings? Would hack lifts have a chance of packing as much strength in mid and upper quads? Is it a problem that even if they could, none of them work those groups as a cohesive unit as much as squats? Would general Oly lifts such as cleans and pulls that work the “unit” fantastically make up for that?
Sorry to ask so many questions. I would like to know what the forum thinks. An answer to any one or more of those questions would be appreciated.
Then that’s what I’ll do. I’m a bit concerned with the front squats though, becuase I’ve tried them before 3 or 4 times with a hell of discomfort. On front squats my wrists and shoulders gave out and my thighs didn’t hardly get any work at all. I think it comes down to my structure becuase my shoulder/traps are quite strong. It’s a shame becuase I know front squats could be such a great exercise. Maybe I’ll just have to substitute the front squats for hacklifts.
If you can do sufficient front squats and deadlifts with the weight you have, you will probably be alright. However, if the choice was back squats or oly lifts, I would choose back squats without a doubt.
The answer depends. If you are still doing your sprinting, then that will take care of explosive strength, power and rate of force development, so I would do squats to work the max strength part of the equation. On the other hand, if you are not sprinting, then I would do the olympic lifts as the best compromise between RFD, strength and power.
No23, if all I did was oly lifts especially power cleans or snatch, my quad and glute strength would decrease and I am sure my first 30m time would increase. Oly lifts may develop power in the short term but in myself atleast, they would not be enough to maintain strength which would eventually lead to gradually decreasing power. I also prefer to gain my power on the track, and my decreasing 30m times correlate well with my increasing squat anyway.
For what it’s worth, I agree with Richard Hand. Any oly lifter will tell you that squatting drives the lifts up. In my own experience when I’ve just oly lifted with minimal squating volume, my power clean/power snatch/jerks eventually decreased somewhat, which led to a worsening of my standing jumps, 30m times, multithrows,etc. Add the squats back in and everything goes back up. I think it has to do with base strength. Also I don’t think that oly lifting necessarily makes one explosive. A clean or snatch is still relatively slow compared to running or jumping.
There was a really interesting discussion on this on the old forum. One interesting point made was what do Olympic Lifters do to improve their base strength => Squat! This correlates to what spin65 & Rihard hand say above. OL greatest contribution thus seems to be in its abiity to excercise many muscle groups simultaneously.
I’d be very interested to hear Pioneer’s and David W’s choice. Squat or Clean?
One of the reasons that squatting causes Oly lifters to improve is because they practice the full versions of the snatch and clean & jerk, which require a recovery from a deep squat position. So, if a weightlifter’s weakness is his recovery from the deep position in the clean (this is mine), then an increase in squatting strength will obviously improve that lifter. That’s not to say that there’s no carry-over from the squat to the pull, though.
It depends on the limiting factor for a given athlete: Limit strength or RFD? Jon Edwards dropped squats because they no longer favourably crossed over to his jumping. The stronger an athlete is, the less improvements in strength translate into improvements in sprint/throw/jump performance.
Squats have greater eccentric and total time under tension and hence induce greater hypertrophy. Additionally they do not easily permit compensatory acceleration.
