Originally Posted by Chop
I started out with the Smith Machine for safety reasons. After several weeks it aggrivated an old knee injury so I moved to the Hammer Strength Squat machine. You could only load 450 lbs of weights on it, and I quickly maxed it out. So I started doing free weight squats using only 135 lbs. At first I was doing the wimpy quarter or half squats that you see most people doing. I didn't have the confidence to go deeper. I added Sumo Dead Lifts to my routine and it really built up my core and stabilizer muscles that gave me the confidence to do deep squats. I lowered the weight the first week to 95 lbs to get my form right. It only took 4 or 5 weeks to get to 225 lbs.