 Which is better? Fast squats or slow squats? So this is a really good example of a question being posed to me that can't be answered. So I need a little bit more information before I can answer this question. What is the purpose of your squatting? If you are playing a sport, there is generally a time demand to your sport. So you need to think about the speed at which you develop your forces. Sport training is generally force-based and power-based. Power is a little bit more time component. I get rewarded more for doing things faster, but I also need the force to develop power. Likewise, I can get more force if I push the same weight at a higher acceleration. So that's just the general physics. You don't really need to understand it quite so much. The principle here is the nervous system. So let's come back to the nervous system. How am I producing forces? The brain, and maybe not even the brain, maybe just the central nervous system, maybe even just the peripheral nerves are encouraging the muscles to contract. They send contractions at higher rates and they send them quicker. We increase our rate of developing force and sometimes we even recruit more motor units, more of these neuron muscle bundle connections. And if I have more muscle being recruited, then I can produce more force. You can recruit all of those motor units, all of those muscle neuron bundles, at lower weights and at higher weights. But the trick is you have to have the intent, a maximal intent to move the bar as fast as you can. If I have a heavy weight, it's not going to move that fast. It's still going to be slow. I'm still going to grind through a rep. But I have to have the intent of moving it as quickly as I can. Likewise, I can take a lighter weight and I can move it pretty quickly and still just overload those neurons, turn all of those neurons on. Maybe it's so light that I need to jump with the bar. Maybe I got 95 pounds on my back and I just need to say, okay, we're going to do squat jumps right now. So let's go back. I'm rambling a little bit. So we need to know what the goal of the squat is. If the goal of the squat is hypertrophy, if you're just trying to look good, then generally slow speed stuff is fine and doing stuff at a really high velocity, high intent just keeps you making sure that you're pushing yourself, right? You take this kind of quantitative idea, did I push as hard as I possibly can, yes or no? And if I did, that means I'm pushing myself. And if I didn't, that means I'm saving something in the tank. I can get that development again with light weights and with heavy weights. Now, let's talk more about sports. So this is kind of where we started with. So if I have this time component to things, let's talk about powerlifting for sport training. So powerlifting in sport training can be very effective for some people and for a lot of people really, especially high schoolers who have never lifted weights. They've been out running, they've been out playing sports, climbing trees and stuff. They're a little bit more springy, but they've never had that load on their system. They've never had to deal with those heavy weights. And so heavy weight training gives them the tissue structure, stiffness and the neural capacity to be stronger on the field so they can cut. If you're a football player and you need to make a cut, they can stop their body really fast because they've developed the stiffness with their powerlifting type training. But if I do that, and that's all I do all the way through high school, all the way through college, it's not going to help me because I'm going to adapt to it. I need to take some sort of training and it needs to be fast. And some methods of powerlifting do consider that. They do say, hey, lift with maximal intent and don't always lift maximal weight. You need to be exposed to moving something faster. Likewise, other end of the spectrum, maybe you've got a basketball player who responds really well to quick based movements, maybe a little bit of load, not a lot. And they can always move it really fast. They look really athletic. And as soon as they get to this level that feels really hard, they get crushed because they just turn off. They would benefit from gradually easing themselves into higher weights, but maybe not training at 3s, 2s and 1s for their training. Maybe not traditional powerlifting training, but weight training, yes, proves effective. So the answer, fast squats, slow squats, the answer is that both of them are better. You just need to know when you're going to use them. Lift with maximal intent and they both prove to be useful. If I'm looking for hypertrophy, I need my muscles to fatigue. It's hard to do that with really light weights unless I do a lot of reps. So if I'm moving a light weight faster, it's not going to give me the hypertrophy stimulus that I'm looking for. It's not going to make my muscles grow as much. I need to move to a place where I'm so fatigued that I have to move the weight slower. Even if it's light, it still works. It just has to be that grinding through that last rep. So consider that when you're doing your squats. Make sure you're lifting with maximal intent as long as you feel fine.