banco - Part of the problem is it take a long time to safely build up to decent poundages. It would probably take your average sized man 2-3 years to build up to a double bodyweight squat. Most people don't have the patience to not push too far too soon.
Lifters should be testing their strength in other ways, specifically vertical jumping. The 'amount' of weight is not that important unless your goal is to impress someone else. Certainly avoid plyos until you build up your strength, but don't worry about the raw poundages; go by feel. It feels good to do proper form even with just the bar.
I agree that the weight on the bar isn't the be all and end all and people can become overly concerned with it but it is a good measure of your progress. For every person who lifts too much weight with poor form there's another one who believes that a bodyweight squat is a heavy weight.
UrBloodOnMyFisT - After all these years people still argue about degrees of squats is silly, parellel,below parellel, both make your legs stronger and bigger, do whats comfortable to you
When I go below parellel, my knees hurt for weeks. When I stop at parellel, I don't experience any knee problems. I really don't care what overall tests may show, I know how my body reacts.
...training on an unstable surface (wobble board, Swiss ball, BOSU etc) may alter and slow down the muscle activation patterns, leaving you more vulnerable to injury and reduced performance (Stone et al. 2007).
What are muscle activation patterns? I assume he is just saying that your are more likely to get injured working out on an unstable surface and that you will not be able to lift as much. If so, it strikes me as strange that he advocates full squats as they use more muscles (and joints) and less weight but is this exactly what using something like a Swiss ball is supposed to do.
Rali, that happened to me too. You have to push your knees out further. Try that, and let me know if your knees still hurt. That was my problem, it was my knees were coming in, buckling. You have to keep them pushed out, otherwise you will stress your knees.
Agreed Nocturnal... I notice that most people who complain about soreness from squats let their knees start coming together as they press up. You are just begging for a ligament tear when this happens.
For back squats? Clean-front rack-push press-rear rack-squat or snatch-rear rack-squat are a couple ways
Another way that I tried, which was pretty cool and old school physical culture style, means you need some good locking collars. Load the bar, lock it good, hoist one end till bar is standing up. Position yourself to the side of the bar and start to lower the bar using yourself as the support, squat down with the bar until you can balance out the bar, start squatting.
As far as working out problems with my squats, I implement movement pattern warm up. Been liking the face-the-wall squat to check myself as well as warm up the squat and the deadlift. I also aim to go below parallel when doing air squats/bodyweight squats. I do feel slight benefit to quarter squats, but I don't do them all the time.
Another way that I tried, which was pretty cool and old school physical culture style, means you need some good locking collars. Load the bar, lock it good, hoist one end till bar is standing up. Position yourself to the side of the bar and start to lower the bar using yourself as the support, squat down with the bar until you can balance out the bar, start squatting.
Never went heavier than 100kg, didn't know if the collars could hold and I didn't want to find out the hard way. It looked cool on paper, it was interesting when done for real. I prefer to do the clean or snatch version better. I may have a hard time getting a squat PR, but I am sorta hooked on the whole "You're only as strong as the weakest link" crap.