How do I squat in this thing?

December 28, 2010 6:19 AM

How do you train safely in a squat rack that's not a power cage, but just a rack?

I was used to the power cage in my old gym. Now in my new gym they just have a thing that looks like this or this. It makes me nervous and I can't really figure out what direction I'm supposed to face or how exactly I'm supposed to bail out.

posted by creasy boy to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (14 answers total)

You face into the rack and either dip under it for back squats or walk into it for front squats (in the latter case, you may want to use a lower barbell height depending on posture). When I've had to bail in that type of rack I bail at the bottom and let the barbell roll back slightly to rest on the pins. You can probably get away with bailing from higher up in the squat if you really need to.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:27 AM on December 28, 2010

(and by "get away" I mean "make a loud noise and maybe have it skid on the pins away from you", not "narrowly avoid serious injury".)
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:28 AM on December 28, 2010

My gym has one like that. I don't really try to squat to failure but the times I have failed and seen other people fail it was failing to get back up from the bottom of the squat, so we pretty much failed downwards, onto the horizontal bars, rather than staggering forward or backward out of the rack. I use the rack facing towards the back/closed part since it feels easier to get the bar up in that direction.
posted by ghharr at 6:28 AM on December 28, 2010

Response by poster: Yeah obviously I would fail at the bottom. And I don't plan to fail, but one should have an exit plan. I guess what makes me nervous is that the pins are 3-4 inches below my full depth, not just one inch. So I'm worried that if I bail by collapsing downward, I might end up crunched like a pretzel and the bar still on top of me. So that's why I was hoping I could bail backwards, rather than just downwards -- but then, if I'm facing into the rack and bail backwards, the bar might miss the whole rack entirely and hit the floor.
posted by creasy boy at 6:47 AM on December 28, 2010

I've bailed out in one of those a bunch of times and yeah, the bar drops a couple inches and it makes a really embarrassing noise but you won't get squished. If you're front squatting, you'll naturally fall back a little when you drop the bar so that you land on your ass, but it's only six inches or so, and the bar will drop straight down.

Because you're taking the bar off the pins, you should be pretty much all the way into it when you squat (unless you take several steps backward once you pick up the bar.) You should have plenty of room to bail backwards unless you start staggering around first.
posted by restless_nomad at 6:58 AM on December 28, 2010

The safety pins look adjustable on both of those. In any case, it's not really any different from a power rack. You just lower it to the pins in the event of failure, like this. If the safety pins are so low that you can drop to rock bottom and still not hit them, which seems unlikely, you may have to lean forward a little at the bottom. Practice bailing out with 50% of your working weight beforehand.
posted by Anatoly Pisarenko at 7:13 AM on December 28, 2010

Don't worry about getting crunched, there's still plenty of space for your body to fit in if you fail.
posted by ghharr at 7:23 AM on December 28, 2010

Response by poster: They're adjustable, yeah, but the upper limit still seems low to me. Anyway I guess I'll just try bailing with an empty bar and see if they're high enough. But thanks for the answers, at least I know which way to face now.
posted by creasy boy at 7:25 AM on December 28, 2010

For safety, you always walk the bar backwards before the set and forwards afterwards, regardless of what equipment you're using. You don't want to be walking backwards at the end of a set when you're fatigued.
posted by Anatoly Pisarenko at 7:32 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

Came to say what Pisarenko said.

When you unrack you always step backwards.
When you rerack you step forward while still looking forward, wait to hear the bar hit the rack, quickly check that the bar is in the proper pins and then lower.

As far as squatting in that rack you still squat over the safety bars. There is no difference compared to the power rack other than the bars not being adjustable and a cage not being around you.

Practice bailing out while just holding the bar so you know what to do when you have 405lbs on your back.

I see no reason why the bar would miss the rack if you bail backwards. Just don't take more than 2 steps away from the pins to begin with, that's just wasting energy anyway.
Unless your bottom point is your ass touching the ground you should be able to continue to lower yourself until the bar is resting on the pins.
Keep taking deep breaths into your belly and then exhale. You'll magically go beyond whatever your old bottom point was (you can try this with a body squat too).
The other option is to lower yourself as much as possible with the legs and then slightly lean forward.
posted by zephyr_words at 9:04 AM on December 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

You'll be okay. If you are failing under a heavy load, there's really no place to go that makes any kind of sense except straight down. You should have a reasonable idea of where you will fail (i.e. not on your warm up sets), you're not going to be squatting twice what you can squat all of a sudden and then have a catastrophic failure. Plus, you'll already be all the way at the bottom of the squat, to the failure won't be a rapid drop that injures you.

But yes, you're always unracking the bar and stepping back, then walking the bar forward into the hooks after your set. Anything else is madness.

The uncertainty/nervousness can actually help you get your nervous system jacked up for the squat. Nothing like fear of bodily injury to give you that last little bit of oomph to get out of the hole.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 11:39 AM on December 28, 2010

If the upper one is too low for you, you're probably not squatting deep enough.

This is probably not what you wanted to hear, but if you squat properly it won't be too low.
posted by Anonymous at 12:23 PM on December 28, 2010

I have ended up crunched kind of like a pretzel when bailing out in one of those racks. But it didn't hurt and the safety bars took the (100kg) weight off my shoulders just fine. It was just a bit embarrassing. Basically I ended up sitting on the floor with my knees up to my chest, but at least the weight was off.
posted by lollusc at 5:49 PM on December 28, 2010

Honestly if you have a legitimate need to bail out of a heavy squat, the last thing you should be worried about is the fact that the bar might hit the ground instead of the pins. Pins > ground >>>>>> your spine.

Also, what schroedinger said is probably true. Go ass to grass or at least below parallel, please.
posted by telegraph at 7:42 PM on December 28, 2010