Time and time again, the muscle building literature says that people with long femurs “make poor squatters.” This is no myth in that trainees with long femurs must have a pronounced forward lean to keep their balance as they approach parallel in the squat, let alone deeper. I’m a certified personal trainer.
“Long femurs” refers to a relative measurement, not an absolute length, in particular, femur to torso ratio. Thus, if a short person’s femurs are longer than their torso, they will have more difficulty squatting than will a very tall person whose femurs are a lot shorter than their torso.
Best exercises for trainees with long femurs (no particular order):
Box Squat. Make sure the height of the box allows your femurs to be at least parallel or a little deeper. Don’t abuse the presence of the box by resting on it at the bottom of the movement or losing the lower back arch. Don’t let feet leave the floor when you make contact with the box. Pretend the box isn’t there, even.
Many fitness professionals swear that this exercise really builds leg muscle, and even those who don’t have long femurs will do these to help build leg muscle.
Bulgarian Split Squat with Elevated Foot with dumbbells. Try to keep torso erect. The drawback is there’s a limit with how much weight you can hold in each hand. (A free barbell can also be used.)
Bulgarian Split Squat with Back Foot on Floor with dumbbells (a.k.a. stationary weighted lunge). Same as above.
Bulgarian Split Squat with Smith Machine. If you’ve reached a point where you need heavier dumbbells with split squats than your gym provides, try the Smith machine.
Weighted Walking Lunge. Keep torso erect. Whenever I see men doing this with huge dumbbells, they always have well-developed quads, though I also gather that some of that development is from other leg exercises, very possibly the back squat, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be doing weighted walking lunges with heavy dumbbells if it didn’t help build leg muscle.
Weighted Single-Leg Step Up. Do not confuse this with the aerobic version where the trainee is going up and down for many reps while holding dumbbells.
The dumbbells should be heavy enough to prevent more than 8-12 reps with good form. Keep torso erect and don’t rush. The higher the step, the more hamstring and glute activation, so use a higher step to really build leg muscle.
Dumbbell Squat. Hold dumbbells on either side and see if you can go parallel. Widen stance until you can and do this before a mirror. The caveat is the limitation on dumbbell weight.
Women with long femurs won’t be presented as much with this limitation, as it’s far less likely that a woman will get too strong to be challenged by holding a 100 pound dumbbell in each hand.
Thus, dumbbell exercises are even better for women with long femurs wanting to build muscle. This isn’t to say that a woman can never “outgrow” 100 pound dumbbells.
Sumo Squat. This is sensational at building leg muscle. A person’s femurs would have to be outrageously long for this exercise to be difficult to do. However, the wider the stance, the more hip and hamstring flexibility required. A great sumo stance is possible only with adequate hip/hamstring flexibility.
Want to build leg muscle and have long femurs? Then get going on achieving flexibility. (One way to do that is to just keep doing the sumo squat.)
Sumo Deadlift. This, too, will build leg muscle and has similar dynamics to and requirements of the sumo squat.
Sub-Sumo Squat. A wide stance but not a true sumo may be all it takes to allow one with long femurs to sink to parallel or even three-quarters without having a pronounced forward lean.
Front Squat. Many with long femurs swear by this for building leg muscle.
Machine Hack Squat. Give this a try. Many trainees find it uncomfortable and hard on the knees, however. A variation is to face the machine.
Leg Press. Get at least a 90 degree knee bend; preferably go deep.
If you have long femurs and want to build leg muscle, there’s no reason why you can’t achieve this. It’s a myth that the back squat is for every body.
How many times have you read about some guy blaming his squat problems (particularly reaching parallel) on being tall? Sometimes the “tall” is only six feet. I’m a certified personal trainer and I peruse the popular training forums.
Many of these guys, who blame being tall for their problems squatting parallel, aren’t all that tall; their avatar lists their height. Others are, indeed tall, coming in at 6-2 or 6-3, some posters pointing out that they are 6-5.
Some posters will also say things like, “Being tall has nothing to do with a sucky squat because my training partner is 6-8 and he has no problems going parallel.
There is a lot of truth to this, in that being tall, in and of itself, is not a reason for difficulty squatting. The issue isn’t body height.
It’s relative length of body segments! Time and time again, I have read a post that goes something like this: “Yeah, I can see why a tall person would have difficulty squatting, getting those long legs under him.”
With “normal” proportions, however, those long legs will be under a proportionately long torso! The proportionately long torso will balance things out. If you stand a 6-8 man next to a 5-8 man, who will have the longer legs?
Now, who will have the longer torso as well? On average, the very tall man will have a much longer torso than the short person. Now we should all know that people do come in different proportions (anthropometrics), and that these proportions influence the efficacy of a particular weight lifting movement.
Ever see a champion in the deadlift with T-rex arms? Or a champion in the bench press with gorilla arms? So what about the parallel squat? A tall person can easily sink to parallel with an “upright” form as long as his femurs are shorter than his torso. Look around at your gym at the tall guys (and gals). Never mind their absolute height when you picture them squatting; instead look at their femurs and torso.
If the distance from hip to knee is shorter than the distance from clavicle to waist, they’ll have no problem squatting, assuming that they don’t have abnormally stiff hips and ankles or arthritis in their knees. This ratio has nothing to do with how tall a person is.
This is why it’s wrong to assume that being short is an advantage in squatting. It absolutely is not if the trainee’s femurs are longer than his torso! Remember, while a tall person has long legs in the absolute sense, you must look at these legs within the context of the rest of their body.
I’ve seen 6-4 men with gorilla builds (long arms, long torso, short legs, short femurs) and short people who were “all legs” and had the torsos of someone half a foot shorter. Being very tall, in and of itself, is not a good excuse for having trouble squatting.
Related Content:
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· Why it’s SO wrong to tell people, “If you can get on and off a toilet, you can parallel squat.”
· Are long femurs really a good excuse for crummy back squat?
· Great way to tell if femur length interferes with back squat
· Why wide stance makes parallel squats easier
· Why elevated heels make squatting easier
