i agree with the premise of your post, but for most people for whom just getting a regular exercise routine in is a challenge/hard to stick to/all the time they're willing to commit, having to add in even more exercises, stretching, and mobility work just to do some other exercise correctly, that's a big ask. so aside from those looking for pure strength, the average person can get perfectly fine legs without squats while also avoiding having to put in extra work (or work through pain) just to do the exercise properly, at a high load, without pain.
Yall are both right. I think there is some merit to if you don’t generally want to invest doing the movement, how hard are you really going to work all of the alternate movements. I know how you train and then other train to support playing sports. So I get that but then the example of the guy talking to me about building legs and then every day it’s box jumps and isolation machine work. Ain’t going to get you there...........
Using a Smith machine to focus on strength and form solely (
)is exactly why so many people injure themselves (by practicing locking themselves into a fixed plane of motion and/or bar path that free weights don't have; or by neglecting their stabilizer muscles).
How many broads you see do any type of leg work? Now compare that to how many do pull-ups, dips, bench press, overhead press, barbell rows, etc.
Not sheriffserious.
Pressing/squatting on a Smith machine would actually make your form worse, not better, and will likely lead one to overestimate their actual strength level (alotta folks think a two plate bench on the Smith is equivalent to two plates on a barbell).
Most women have great (i.e. decent) legs because they tend to neglect upper body work more than their lower body work, and because they are naturally predisposed to having more muscle mass and fat storage in those areas, not because of superior exercise selection.
This is one of the reasons I can't really work with most people in the gym, male or female. People ask me all the time (or say yes if I ask them) to take them to the gym, then get bent out of shape when I ask them to squat, bench, or row (even starting with an empty bar or something).
They all wanna be a beast until it's time to do what beasts do.
Ronnie said it best: "Errybody wanna be a bodybuilder [or have their ideal body created] but don't nobody wanna lift this heavy ass weight [i.e. put in the work to get there, which natty may require heavy barbell lifts]."
Not saying some people don't have mobility issues or pain, etc., but most people are actually just lazy as shyt when it comes to working out and would rather do something easy (i.e. iso machine lifts) than something that is hard (the big 5 with proper form).
This whole post made very little sense, if any, especially in the context of anything we were previously discussing in this thread. We weren't debating the merits of BBs vs DBs, I was merely positing that using Smith machines neither helps reinforce good form nor does it make one actually stronger.
I don't know where you train but what I said about females neglecting UB work more than LB work is fairly common. Not saying they all do this, but as a rule their workouts have a skew towards LB just like a lot of guys neglect their legs and focus too much on UB work.
I wouldn't say the vast majority of folks male or female have great legs.
We'll just have to agree to disagree when it comes to fitness. It is clear to me that you have very little to contribute to the topic.
@ the amount of people who neglect their legs or just skip them all together
