Leg Question

[BillReilly]

I do squats and calf raises in my current routine. I have bad knees so squats are a bit of a challenge in that I cannot get all the way down like a catcher. I can only get as far as the sitting position on a squat. Maybe a tad further. The only reason I mention it is I can lift a lot more on the calf press than the squat. In fact, I've yet to max on the calf (I ran out of weights), but have hit my max on the squat.

Is this typical?

I don't have huge calves, but I've always been solid. I thought maybe it was just the cranky knees limiting my squat maybe.

[bigtallox]

I do squats and calf raises in my current routine. I have bad knees so squats are a bit of a challenge in that I cannot get all the way down like a catcher. I can only get as far as the sitting position on a squat. Maybe a tad further.

Parallel is good enough if that's as deep as you can go. If you can go deeper, great, but it's not a necessity. If you're having knee pain and it's because you can only go to parallel, then work on flexibility.

The only reason I mention it is I can lift a lot more on the calf press than the squat. In fact, I've yet to max on the calf (I ran out of weights), but have hit my max on the squat.

Is this typical?

What weights are you talking about? I can't comment on wether it's "typical" or not because one thing I've found training strongman with lots of different people is that nothing is typical when it comes to strength. Everybody has different strength and weaknesses. I can say though that I've known a couple people tear their calves basically doing a max calf raise, but in a strongman event like flipping heavy tires. If the tire stops going over and it's resting on your chest or something, a natural instinct is to do do a calf raise ( and also to curl it ), but the thing is calves ( and biceps ) are small weak muscles compared to legs, hips and posterior chain, the result is said small muscle goes SNAP! Be careful maxing out on calf raises ( but I'm not sure what kind of weight you're talking about, maybe it's not an issue ).

[BillReilly]

I get parallel on the squats and I have no pain. It is when I try to go beyond that, even without weight, I really feel it. I've started to do deep knee bends as a warm up and it is helping with the flexibility.

Thanks for the advise on the calves. I did not think about, but I'm glad I have not pushed too far. I don't even feel soreness in the calves, but that's not always a great indicator.