Several people have reached out wondering about this so I am sorry I did not catch the wording, this is the benefit of preprints, will be revised.
1. The people who are really strong on squats being superior for glute growth do so without considering other muscles involved and limiting the bottom of a squat. If someone tells you trained or untrained with CONFIDENCE that squats over time will produce more growth based simply on speculation(because it has to be speculation) they are likely in a ?camp? and making leaps they shouldn?t.
2. If the question was really length in isolation (it is not) the bottom of the squat is still more challenging in a more lengthened position.
3. Going as low as you can in a squat does not ensure more length from the glute as the pelvis tilts(in non-obvious and sometimes obvious visual ways). Displacement in space does not = length change. Also important to mention that ass to grass in beginners gets more complicated as generally their quads are a limiter, so their hips shoot back a bit anyway making the movement more hip dominant. Are the glutes working hard when their butt is shooting back? no, but they are afterward.
4. Making claims about the time course of muscle damage from length in this context is speculative in so many ways? given the other muscles involved at the bottom of the squat and the fact that tons of other studies that specifically look at the length question in isolation in untrained individuals have found more growth. We also chose lower volumes, 3 sets and one session for the first week. Then 4 sets 2x week for the second week. This is a very moderate ramp up. The rest of the study was 10 to 12 sets per week. Hardly the higher end of volume.
5. Yes, untrained participants were used. There are limitations to this however when comparing 2 specific exercises there are significant upsides to this as well. Most importantly it would also be very hard to recruit trained participants who did both lifts without a crazy long rolling admission. Nobody is hiding they were untrained and that the squat is a harder task to learn. To what extent this matters is an open question, but it is a limitation.
6. Bret actually pushed for squatting ATG(we agreed to set femur parallel as the minimum we would aim for with trying to get them as deep as we could because we knew that particularly in untrained it would be really hard to get everyone to adequate ATG depth? this by the way is even true for most ?trained? populations although to a lesser extent. The fact that they varied in form IS a limitation if trying to isolate a specific question but in the real world, squats look different so in a sense it also adds ecological validity.
7. Again, if our goal was to isolate the length question we would not have chosen the squat. Kubo at al. does not add confidence here because a knee angle of 90 could be well above parallel. Also I?m being extremely transparent about what my participants did, can this be said for ANY other paper.
8. I didn?t receive a dime for conducting the study and didn?t actually care which exercise produced more growth, beyond wanting to know. The FUNNIEST thing about this is, that I kind of secretly wanted squats to ?win,? I was even saying this within the lab. If they did in fact grow more that would mean that despite the limitations of synergist involvement/how much the glute itself is being taxed etc., the stretch may matter SO MUCH, that it supersedes these limitations. Would have been a cool finding, no? It would also mean I could very comfortably skip thrusts and not worry in clients who don?t mind thigh growth(although other options that are more isolated are available and I hope they get tested).
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