As you may have already discovered, the squat (along with deadlifts) is at the top of the heap as one of the most effective overall exercises for stimulating muscle gain and fat loss. This is because exercises like squats and deadlifts use more muscle groups under a heavy load than any other weight bearing exercises. This stimulates the greatest hormonal response.

University research studies have proved including squats into your training program also increases your upper body development, even though upper body specific joint movements are not performed. Whether your goal is gaining muscle mass, losing body fat, building a strong and functional body, or improving athletic performance, the squat and deadlift and their variations are the ultimate exercises.

Squats can be done with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, or even just body weight. Squats should only be done with free weights--never with a machine. Machine limit the range of motion and movement and don't involve the numerous support muscles. 

The type of squat that people are most familiar with is the barbell squat where the bar rest on the upper back of the shoulders. Many professional strength coaches believe front squats, where the bar rests on the shoulders in front of the head, and overhead squats, where the bar is locked out in a snatch grip overhead throughout the squat, are more functional to athletic performance than back squats, and have a smaller risk of lower back injury.

A combination of all three will yield the best results for overall muscular development, body fat loss, and athletic performance. Front squats are moderately more difficult than back squats, while overhead squats are considerably more difficult than either back squats or front squats. I’ll cover overhead squats in a future article.

If you're only accustomed to performing back squats, it will take a few sessions to become comfortable with front squats, so start out light. After a couple sessions of practice, you'll find the groove and can start increasing the poundage.

To perform front squats:

The front squat recruits the abdominals to a much higher degree cmpared to back squats because of the more upright position. It's mostly a lower body exercise, but is great for incorporating core strength and stability into the squatting movement. It can also be difficult to learn how to properly rest the bar on your shoulders. There are two ways to rest the bar on the front of the shoulders.

1. Step under the bar and cross your forearms into an “X” position while resting the bar on the dimple that is created by the shoulder muscle near the bone, keeping your elbows high so that your arms are parallel to the ground. Hold the bar in place by pressing the thumb side of your fists against the bar for support.

2. Hold the bar by placing your palms face up and the bar resting on your fingers against your shoulders. For both methods, your elbows must stay up high to prevent the weight from falling. Your upper arms should stay parallel to the ground throughout the squat. Find out which bar support method is more comfortable for you.

Initiate the squat from your hips by sitting back and down, keeping the weight on your heels as opposed to the balls of your feet. Squat down to a position where your thighs are approximately parallel to the ground or lower, then press back up to the starting position. Keeping your weight toward your heels is the key factor in squatting to protect your knees from injury. It's a myth that deep squats hurt the knees. Done correctly, squats actually strengthen the knees.

Practice first with an un-weighted bar or a relatively light weight to learn the movement.  Most people are surprised how hard this exercise works your abs once you learn the correct form.

I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself.

Completely.

When I was young I had no sense of myself. All I was, was a product of all the fear and humiliation I suffered. Fear of my parents. The humiliation of teachers calling me "garbage can" and telling me I'd be mowing lawns for a living. And the very real terror of my fellow students. I was threatened and beaten up for the color of my skin and my size. I was skinny and clumsy, and when others would tease me I didn't run home crying, wondering why. I knew all too well. I was there to be antagonized. In sports I was laughed at. A spaz. I was pretty good at boxing but only because the rage that filled my every waking moment made me wild and unpredictable. I fought with some strange fury. The other boys thought I was crazy.

I hated myself all the time. As stupid at it seems now, I wanted to talk like them, dress like them, carry myself with the ease of knowing that I wasn't going to get pounded in the hallway between classes. Years passed and I learned to keep it all inside. I only talked to a few boys in my grade. Other losers. Some of them are to this day the greatest people I have ever known. Hang out with a guy who has had his head flushed down a toilet a few times, treat him with respect, and you'll find a faithful friend forever. But even with friends, school sucked. Teachers gave me hard time. I didn't think much of them either.

Then came Mr. Pepperman, my advisor. He was a powerfully built Vietnam veteran, and he was scary. No one ever talked out of turn in his class.Once one kid did and Mr. P. lifted him off the ground and pinned him to the blackboard. Mr. P. could see that I was in bad shape, and one Friday in October he asked me if I had ever worked out with weights. I told him no. He told me that I was going to take some of the money that I had saved and buy a hundred-pound set of weights at Sears. As I left his office, I started to think of things I would say to him on Monday when he asked about the weights that I was not going to buy. Still, it made me feel special. My father never really got that close to caring. On Saturday I bought the weights, but I couldn't even drag them to my mom's car. An attendant laughed at me as he put them on a dolly.

Monday came and I was called into Mr. P.'s office after school. He said that he was going to show me how to work out. He was going to put me on a program and start hitting me in the solar plexus in the hallway when I wasn't looking. When I could take the punch we would know that we were getting somewhere. At no time was I to look at myself in the mirror or tell anyone at school what I was doing. In the gym he showed me ten basic exercises. I paid more attention than I ever did in any of my classes. I didn't want to blow it. I went home that night and started right in.

Weeks passed, and every once in a while Mr. P. would give me a shot and drop me in the hallway, sending my books flying. The other students didn't know what to think. More weeks passed, and I was steadily adding new weights to the bar. I could sense the power inside my body growing. I could feel it.

Right before Christmas break I was walking to class, and from out of nowhere Mr. Pepperman appeared and gave me a shot in the chest. I laughed and kept going. He said I could look at myself now. I got home and ran to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. I saw a body, not just the shell that housed my stomach and my heart. My biceps bulged. My chest had definition. I felt strong. It was the first time I can remember having a sense of myself. I had done something and no one could ever take it away. You couldn't say shit to me.

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn't teach you anything. That's the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.

It wasn't until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can't be as bad as that workout.

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn't ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you're not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn't have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone's shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. It is the difference between bouncers who get off strong-arming people and Mr.Pepperman.

Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.

Yukio Mishima said that he could not entertain the idea of romance if he was not strong. Romance is such a strong and overwhelming passion, a weakened body cannot sustain it for long. I have some of my most romantic thoughts when I am with the Iron. Once I was in love with a woman. I thought about her the most when the pain from a workout was racing through my body.

Everything in me wanted her. So much so that sex was only a fraction of my total desire. It was the single most intense love I have ever felt, but she lived far away and I didn't see her very often. Working out was a healthy way of dealing with the loneliness. To this day, when I work out I usually listen to ballads.

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons that the Iron has for me. Learning about what you're made of is always time well spent, and I have found no better teacher. The Iron had taught me how to live. Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes down these days, it's some kind of miracle if you're not insane. People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole.

I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron Mind.

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind.

The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it's impossible to turn back.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

Is Bigger Necessarily Stronger?

A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. The muscle getting bigger is the body's adaptation as a result fo of resistance exercise, as long as that resistance at a fairly high percentage of your maximal effort. You don't get big just walking around and while body weight exercises are great, gains from them seem to stall after a while.

This is not to say a bigger person will always be stronger than a smaller person, but when you get bigger, you will also have gotten stronger. No one adds muscle without adding weight to the bar or doing a lot more work. The body's response to stress on the muscular system (in the form of micro trauma) is hypertrophy (muscles getting bigger), This is the body responding so it can better tolerate anticipated future stress.

Is a Rep Just a Rep?

Now what's the difference between getting bigger and getting stronger without getting bigger?

There is some type of intensity (defined as a percentage of your 1 rep max (RM)) involved in both. You've probably heard 8-12 reps is the best range for hypertrophy, but 1-3 reps is best for strength. But why? Isn't the amount of weight you use is directly related to the potential for micro trauma? Why do you need to do more reps and why isn't a heavy weight better? The truth of the matter is that a heavy weight is better. The problem is you can't do a whole lot of work with a heavy weight (since the number of reps you can do are limited) and get a reasonable amount of micro trauma for hypertrophy. Heavy weight and low reps mainly stress the neural components more than the muscular.

So as a lifter who wants to get bigger and stronger, you need to find the happy medium between the amount of weight you use and the number of reps you do. As an example, what if you use a weight you can do 25 reps with? Any weight that allows you to do 25 reps would be so low that the you wouldn't be getting much micro trauma from each rep and it's the repair of this micro trauma that drives muscle growth. At too light a weight and too many reps, you aren't getting any micro trauma at all and the exercise becomes one pure endurance.

The answer to this is to do the weight in sets so we can intensity (amount of weight) high and still do a given number of reps. So 5 sets of 5 would give the same 25 reps, but with a weight that causes micro trauma and thus drives an increase in size. Micro trauma is also why static holds or short range partials with very heavy weight tend to not work over time. You need to move the weight through the full range of motion and leverage to get the most micro trauma.

But All I Care About is Getting Bigger

You have to keep in mind that the neural components has nothing to do with getting bigger other than in its influence in how much weight you can do. Hypertrophy comes from induced micro trauma through increased workload by doing more weight or more work over an extended period. Enhanced neural capability leverages your ability to do this and the resulting hypertrophy gains. Better neural = better potential hypertrophy because better neural allows more weight. You see this with "newbie gains" where the main driver is rapidly developing neural adaptation and that drives weight on the bar which drives progressive loading which drives hypertrophy. So newbies very quickly enhance their neural capability, which means more weight more quickly, which means more micro trauma which means more growth.

So what this means is that some neural focus is quite helpful and should part of any mid to long-term plan.

How does this Add Mass?

The body is a system and adapts best as a system. This is why compound exercise like squats, dead lifts, rows, cleans, presses, and snatches are very effective. When doing these exercises, you are using a large portion of your body's musculature to move a heavy weight through a fundamental range of motion. This full body lifting stresses a large portion of the body's musculature all at once, so adding weight to these exercises should net hypertrophy over the entire body. The body grows best as a system and as such should be trained as a system.

What's the Most Efficient Way to Plan to Get Bigger Over Time?

So what's the deal with the 5x5 stuff (advanced 5x5, intermediate 5x5)? These routines focus on the most effective lifts--the ones with the highest potential for hypertrophy. These routines are for pure muscle, not for shaping and refining (like an advanced body builder might want to do). Nothing is worked in isolation. So what's with doing the big lifts that often and not splitting it up day by day? Two things:

1) How do you train for any sport or motion? You do it a lot, as much as possible, until it's second nature. This is how the nervous system and your body adapts and becomes more efficient. If that's the case, then why not do it every day then? If you did, the micro trauma would be too high and overwhelm your body's systems. This is why power lifters don't just do max squats, dead lifts, and benches every workout - it's the most direct way to train but it can't be done for long. And in the weight room, just like in life, it is very hard to get very good at a lot of things all at once or when changing those things all the time. You need to focus on a few things at a time to really get good at them.

2) Recovery is usually fairly fast. Once your body gets used to training, your muscles repair themselves within 2-3 days. You don't need to be 100% recovered to train again. Tolerable periodic exposure is how the body adapts. So more frequency is desirable... up to a point. You get more benefit from a tolerable amount more frequently than from all out effort done infrequently. Think of how the body tans--you can tan in three 30 minute sessions without burning, but a single 90 minute session might toast you. Micro trauma works the same way, hence working the muscles three times a week instead of only once.

What about Food and All the Different Programs?

So that's how strength and hypertrophy are related. That's also why the 5x5 or any similar setup is structured for progression and designed to work. But if you're going for size, all the micro trauma in the world won't help if you are eating. You need extra calories to get bigger. If you aren't gaining weight, you aren't eating enough. All any training program can do is get you better (the neural component) at the big lifts. The rest is diet. Size gains can be irregular over the short-term, but over the mid to long term, as long as you are eating appropriately, you will find that your size gains stay in line with your strength gains.

It Doesn't Sound very Complicated

It's not. In spite of why you usually see people doing in the gym, split workouts with many different exercises done 1x per week and lot of isolation work is not the best choice from an efficiency standpoint for getting big. Training the whole body or a big portion of the body each session will let you get enough frequency and let you really focus on the lifts that can pile on the mass.