to zigzag or not to zigzag

[Scott Stevenson]

Damn smith machines, I hate squatting on them...even though their in my rotation now lol.
The knees are feeling good this week now I'm cruising.
I'll return and maybe try some low bar squats as a trial and error thing. We have a pit shark belt squat in my gym, that thing is an incredible squat alternative

BG,

I looked back and found that we had an exchange in 2013 on intense muscle about your knee pain when / from squatting.

I guess the question is - if the smith machine allowed your legs to improve and you to position yourself so you don't have knee pain (which WILL eventually catch up to you), would you hate it so much?...

There are a lot of alternative to back squatting - it's really a great exercise for many folks but in another sense (and this both good and bad) kind of primitive (in a good and bad way), when we have so many other implements to target the legs.

If you were training to build your biceps and found that a preacher curl caused you to have tendonitis - and this happens for YEARS on end - would you just keep banging away at it or maybe try something else?... In other words, why are you so enamored with the BB back squat?... (That's mainly a rhetorical question... )

-S