#184: Do You Need to Squat, Deadlift, and Bench Press to Get Strong?

I want to start by saying that these are not bad exercises.

They are ones that I have done myself.

Back when I was in college playing division one lacrosse, we had a strength coach and these were among the exercises that we were given to strengthen our bodies.

But today, I am a different body that I'm living in.

I'm 55 years old.

I have arthritis in my knee.

I have a hip that doesn't always cooperate.

And I'm aware of things like... injuring myself hurting myself staying safe and i want to feel really confident when i'm lifting heavy plus when i think about programming for my customers who are women who haven't strength trained before and they're getting started i want to choose exercises where they can be successful learn how to do it easily and with good form so i want to take these one by one why i don't train them now and i don't use them in my programming so let's start with i think for me the most obvious one which is the barbell back squat So first of all, it is a fairly complicated movement pattern to learn.

I've watched countless people be coached by in-person PTs week after week, taking a really long time to learn how to do it properly, okay? So that's the first thing.

It is hard to do.

Second thing is when you have the weight on your shoulders, okay? on your back, you are compressing your spine.

So that's not a great thing either, that as you get stronger and that weight gets heavier, you're compressing your spine more and more.

Third thing is safety.

You need to know how to get that bar off your back if you get stuck at the One day we'll go down to the bottom and it'll be like, nope, not standing back up.

Then I got to be able to throw that bar off my back safely.

Of course, you can use the safeties, but I'll tell you so many people I see doing squats without safeties.

And I just have to look away because I don't want to see the injuries.

Okay.

So those are kind of three big reasons why I don't think that the barbell back squat is a great exercise for me and for my clients and that's why I don't program it.

So what can you do instead? Well, the barbell back squat is a squat pattern exercise.

In other words, your knees and your hips are both moving.

Both those joints are kind of collapsing and then straightening as you do the exercise.

So there are plenty of other exercises you can do that have that kind of movement pattern.

There are your split squat options.

So the basic split squat where both of your feet are on the ground, or a Bulgarian split squat.