Unless you are trying to increase your jump/explosiveness
True, in a way
It's not really my area, but I'm sure some people might say there is more benefit in doing the entire ROM lighter and faster and then doing plyometric work.
On a similar topic, I do know that you shouldn't really adapt an exercise to be sports specific, for example a rower doing partial squats with his feet together won't have much useful carry-over (at least that's what I've been told). Really I'm touching on an entirely different debate here; there is a guy I know who doesn't advocate doing any functional or unilateral work at all, but I don't agree with that.
But anyway, my point was really that unless you're doing them because a good coach or program has told *you* specifically to them, you probably shouldn't be doing them.
Agreed. Squats > leg press - but for overloading/superloading after a squat session or as a follow up the next day leg press is quite good if performed correctly, but as you said you do need 400+ kg at least to get some good activation certainly if you're a big squatter.
Absolutely, despite there being no place in my routine for them at the moment, leg press variations are great and would probably be on any legs day that I would do in the future.
I'd argue there is a case for it - for specific types of training. It's not something I'm bothered about doing, but it does have it's benefits.
For the sake of discussion, what types of training? I'd be interested to here you're take, having been in the game for a while. I'm not trying to claim absolute knowledge here so if you know of any reading material I'd be glad to have it
As I said above, I'm more talking about people doing them without any specific reason. I assume (and hope, in a way) that some guys I see doing partials think they are doing them for a reason, but chances are they aren't. I'm not ruling out there use completely, I just don't know of any situation where they would be legitimately useful.
RE: Partial squats. There's no harm in doing a few even just to gauge if the weight feels comfortable if you haven't lifted that heavy before.
This doesn't really make a lot of sense. Doing a partial with a heavy weight is exponentially easier than hitting parallel, so it even if it feels comfortable for a partial, you could still fail at the bottom of a parallel squat.
To get slightly more theoretical, lets compare it to the deadlift where partials are a very useful training tool (in the form of rack pulls).
In deadlift training (specifically for strength) you have your standard weight and rep progessions that work very well up to a point. You might then find that you have particular sticking points at different parts of the ROM. If this is at the bottom you might try deficit deads or powerclean. If your lockout is the problem then rack pulls will sort you out. Rack pulls are also useful as a form of training progression, where you might pull from successively lower blocks with verying weights. There is also value added from getting used to holding onto supramaximal loads because of the type of stimulus this puts on your back (e.g. the contractions to keep your shoulders as static as possible being reflexive).
Squats, on the other hand, do not tend to have a lockout sticking point. Even if your sticking point is somewhere else, there isn't really any point in partial ROMs targeting those areas as the top is so easy. Sticking points tend to be in the bottom half, which is only (that I know of) trained effectively by going to parallel. Box squats should also be to depth, but proper use of these is beyond my knowledge. Supramaximal training is the only real use here as far as I know, and it has far less carry-over because of the mechanics of the movement. There probably is a form of progressive squat depth training somewhere, but that is quite specifically for all out strength progression and I haven't heard of anyone doing it.
