Mike:
You bring up valid points, but increased appetite probably has more to do with energy output and work than anything (I would say full ROM squats probably do more work). However, the body makes no distinction between the type or location of stress when related to endocrine response. You are right that stress doesn’t equal power or strength, but I wasn’t relating stress to power or strength only to mass upon the shoulders, where that stress is distributed depends completely on the joint moments. Yes, as you go deeper the gluteals come into play more and changes in joint moments point this out, but you cannot say a specific muscle is firing hotter with sEMG, only the area of location of the sEMG is hotter, but not the why. Several things affect the values obtained by an sEMG electrode, one is location, two is the muscles in the vicinity which can produce crosstalk and signal cancellation, and three is the length of the electrode synapse. The value of the information provided by an electrode is when a certain group of muscles is active, but information about joint moments after that activation is more important as it gives an idea of why the activation is occurring, either producing an acceleration or deceleration of the limb/body segment.
Your entire argument is based on glute-ham activation and mine is based length-tension relationship through a certain ROM. I would agree if you want glute-ham activation with squats you want fuller deeper squats, but I don’t want as much glute-ham activation. Certainly you cannot claim that a full squat with lighter loads of will produce a higher force output through the same segment of a 1/4 squat, which would be the last 1/4 of full squat.
How does force output or power equal stress? Load = stress.
My example of 400 down to 135 was based on jruffing’s example.
I haven’t had problems with overuse injuries nor did performance suffer with these routines. My athletes were fresher and able to produce higher quality performances even when working through meets. Maybe, I’m wrong and they would have produced better performances the other way.
Doesn’t glute-ham activation occur when deadlifting and wouldn’t it be of more benefit to glute-ham activation than the squat? The original question pertains to squatting and not deadlifting or an overall routine. Other people went off on the tangent of glute-ham activation and I went another direction.