New Routine Thread

You squat for general strength, so aiming to go deep without collapsing t
o try to go to max depth would probably be the best bet. Parallel is a somewhat arbitrary measure for "full" squats, other than it being when the femur is roughly horizontal (ie when the hips are furthest from the knees), and you can get really really strong quads without going deep, but deeper squats will massively strengthen the adductors (think of the squatting motion as a slingshot, at deeper depths the adductors stretch under the weight of the torso, which ends up slung between them, and "launch" it back up when they fire, assisting the quadriceps). Hamstrings don't really engage much in a squat as they can't really move the load, but they help distribute forces as they cross for the hip and knee joints (there's a way to use them to go more upright at the sticking point, but I don't think it's worth worrying about just yet).

Also, deeper squats both involve less maximum weight than shallower squats (while still allowing massive loads to be used, mind you), and have soft tissue contact and compression at the bottom, which takes load off the joints throughout each rep. With shallower squats the load will be higher, and said higher load will affect your knees more, which may or may not hurt in the long run. On the other hand, shallower squats are often used to improve sprinting and jumping speeds, distances, etc, because they involve similar joint angles and don't incur the slowdown that passing through parallel tends to involve (remember always that strength is specific); just recently there was an article about this written by one of the industry's big names (contains bad language): linky.

Additionally, maximum possible depth and the technique that lets you reach it are intimately related to hip and ankle anatomy. Some people have hips that require them to squat with their knees in a certain direction (with accompanying hip position to prevent harmful torque at the knee joint), others in another, and that'll be independent of flexibility issues, which also need to be addressed, and how mobile your ankles are is inversely related to how much mobility you need further up, and directly to how upright you can squat (the reason why Olympic weightlifters wear shoes with elevated heels, although putting something firm on the floor to put your heels on works just as well for squats), but if your ankles are suuuuuper flexible and/or your femurs were to be suuuper short, you could squat with a vertical torso with your hips directly above your feet and reach full depth without ever having hit "parallel" (ie a horizontal femur)

Here are some strong squats for reference, with differing techniques and depths:






Max Lang Front Squats
Om Yun Chol (56kg, North Korea) 175kg x3 Front Squats 2015 World Weightlifting Championships

 

Really helpful Fish! Thank you! I'll give them a watch on a few hours. I'll also film the next time I'm squatting. Love you <3

 

Not sure if this will work but if you can view this video on face book do so, bench squat and deadlift coaching by the best coach in powerlifting history
Boris Sheiko Official

 

Listen to Boris. When Boris speaks, powerlifting listens.

Edit: direct link to the post with the vid in question.