Well, I Went And Done It, Gunny...

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Back squat - what most people consider a squat. Bar on the back of your shoulders and squat down.

Front squat - hold the bar like you are going to military/front press it and squat down.

The balance between the two is completely different. The back squat uses the entire legs and back. The front squat pretty much isolates the quads. Everybody likes back squats more because you can lift a lot more weight. Especially when most people who don't know what they're doing usually won't go past parallel to the floor if even that.

I'm beyond the ego thing. It took everything I had at the time to do 10 squats with no weight and holding onto the arms into a chair just to get out of the hospital. I could at one time half-squat 405 with the best of them. Which amounts to being able to hold up 405 and squat down about 3-4 inches which means it amounts to not much at all. I wouldn't even consider touching that much weight now

Aaaaah yes... makes a lot of sense... I never knew that about squats. I can see the difference big time.

I never lifted anything over 400 lbs in my life. I thought I was bad ass in the military when I finally benched 275. Good Lord have those days gone... maaaaan. Sucks getting old, but you can slow that process down with exercise.

Sounds like you had it pretty bad after that stroke, man. Damn bummer for sure. Hope you get it all back. I have some serious muscle atrophy in my right triceps. I have a thin little strip that still works. The VA told me after they did the discectomy on my cervical spine for crushed nerves that I'd get 95% of that back. Well... no... I didn't. I've put my TENS unit on the muscle thinking it would HAVE to make it jump even if my nerves won't but nope, nothing, but I'm going to see if I can't wake that fucker up. I'm going to start concentrating on working on just that. Imagine if you lay your right forearm across the top of your head, and then your triceps can't lift it off... well that's me. I hate it. I want a fucking miracle. I'm going to see if by some way in hell I can build what is left up to do more. My chest muscles actually take the place of the triceps doing bench presses, but bench presses actually are a chest exercise anyway but still...