Secret Training Tip #990 - Making a Hack Squat Machine in the Squat Rack...Your Ticket To Powerful Legs!

By Nick Nilsson

Combine the benefits of free weight barbell squats with the benefits of machine squats into one lower-body blasting exercise! All you need is a rack and a barbell and you'll be able to give your entire lower body a sound thrashing.

Hitting the legs HARD is one of my very favorite things to do in the gym. But even for me, there are days when the Barbell Squat is just not on the menu...I either don't feel like doing it that day or I've just done it recently.

That's where THIS exercise comes into play...the Rack Hack, as I like to call it. Basically, it combines the benefits of free squatting (moving your body through space, supporting the load on yourself, having freedom of movement) with the benefits of the hack squat machine (your body is more stabilized, it's easier to get set up and perform the exercise).

Usually, you'd think these benefits would be mutually exclusive...after all, how can you maintain freedom of movement where your body is actually more stabilized!

I'll show you...

First you're going to need a power rack and a barbell. Set one of the safety rails up high (about shoulder height) and one of the rails low (around midsection height). When you set a bar on it, it'll be tilted downward at a fairly steep angle.

Before you put any weight on the bar, test the height to make sure you can squat down and get your shoulder under it (because that's what you're going to be doing in the exercise!).

Once you've got the height set, load BOTH ends of the bar. You don't need as much on the higher end - that's more for anchoring the weight. Be careful when you load the bottom end as the plates will have a tendency to slide. Put a plate on then immediately put a collar on.

Now you have a choice...you can do the exercise with no padding or with a towel wrapped around the end of the bar (the standard barbell pad won't fit because it would go on the thick end of the bar). In the demo pics, I'm using a towel. If you're using lighter weight, it won't matter so much.

Squat down beside the bar and set your right shoulder under t...