Those of you who have been around for a while, know quite well that I advocate strongly for powerlifting as a way of building strength and power quickly, efficiently, and (relatively) safely. I have no patience for body-part split routines, or for multi-hour workouts, or for multiple workouts per day. I am busy, and I like to be efficient about things.

And I LOATHE cardio. I cannot stand going running for long periods, and I find doing cardio exercises in the gym to be mind-numbingly boring. So I try to avoid doing chronic cardio wherever I can, and prefer to focus on stretching and walking.

To me, a daily routine that mixes long walks for at least an hour, powerlifting and compound lifting exercises three to four days a week, and martial arts practice at least once a week, meets all of these requirements. It has kept me more or less healthy and quite strong, for my size, age, and genetics, for many years.

The problem with this routine, is that squats, in particular, are a highly technical and very challenging exercise. If you do them right, they build muscle like literally nothing else on Earth. But, if you mess them up, you can absolutely WRECK your body.

This is not mere personal experience. Listen to the words of the legendary bodybuilding and powerlifting trainer, the late, great, Arthur Jones, on the subject:

For those who do not know who Mr. Jones was, he was the mentor and inspiration for a whole host of legends of bodybuilding, from the Golden Era of the 1970s and 1980s, to the “mass monster” age of the 1990s and early 2000s. No less than Mike Mentzer, who should have won the Mr. Olympia title in 1980 – which was when Ahhhhhhhnuld won his seventh, and last, title – took his ideas about high-intensity exercise from him. And no less than Dorian Yates, four-time Mr. Olympia, who ushered in the “mass monster” era, took his inspiration from Mentzer.

This begs the question: why are squats so dangerous?

Because, if you place the stress of the squat on your lower back, or if you have weak foot placement, or if you have the wrong stance, you can absolutely destroy your lumbar spine, knees, and hips – joints that are fundamental to your mobility and health.

I do speak from experience here. Genetically, I am not well designed for squats. I am quite tall for someone of my race – I stand at 1.77m (5’10”, for those who insist on using that stupid imperial system), and I have very long femurs, that comprise well over 25% of my overall height.

This is important, because the length of your femur affects your overall squat technique to a VERY significant degree:

The thinking around how you should squat, has changed significantly, even in my lifetime. This is how Mark Rippetoe, for instance, says you should squat:

This, by contrast, is how the physiologist behind Squat University says you should do it:

Notice the fundamentally different approach used by the latter – core braced, vertebrae stacked as tightly together as possible, chest upright, head up.

The two approaches absolutely are not the same, and lead to fundamentally different emphases of load on your back and legs. And if you have long femurs along with a weak lower back, flat arches, and/or stiff ankles – I have all three, thanks to my past lifestyle, and genetic “gifts” from my grandfather – then the “Rip Squat” is eventually going to do very bad things to your lower back, because it places much of the weight and emphasis in the lift on those vertebrae.

This is as much a function of biomechanics as it is technique. So if you want to have real longevity when squatting, then you MUST gear up correctly to compensate for genetic flaws that you might have.

In my case, I spent the better part of 12 years squatting in Vibram Five Fingers. However, toward the beginning of this year, I kept getting injured – my back locked up several times with severe spasms, because every single disc in my lumbar spine is bulging outward, if not herniated, and that has been the case since before 2020. In addition, the misalignment in my spine, which causes a bit of a bulge on the right side of my belly, got worse, and resulted in what felt like an extremely painful abdominal hernia that took nearly a month to settle down.

All of this, along with some research, led me to believe that I really needed a different approach. I started by fixing my form, working on core strength, and changing my foot position. I then started using a large 5Kg plate to elevate my heels when squatting, to compensate for my long femurs, which allowed me to maintain a more upright position when squatting.

These changes helped substantially, and reduced a lot of the wear and strain on my lower back. But my feet were never fully stable in Five Fingers on a weight plate.

It was around late March when when I realised that Tom “The Quadfather” Platz was absolutely correct:

Simply put, I needed squat shoes.

That resulted in a long and frustrating search for something that might fit my needs. I have big, broad feet – with hammertoes, to boot – which straight-up rules out narrow squat shoes that pinch the toes. Unfortunately, that is what MOST squat shoes do – especially the cheaper ones that use lower-quality components for the toe box.

My search led me to TYR – especially when I saw a fellow gym-goer, who does serious squats with excellent technique, wearing a pair of white L-1 lifters into the gym. So I checked them out.

Unfortunately, I did so right when TYR were in the midst of clearing out their old L-1 lifters, and no longer had my size (11.5 US – like I said, big feet) in stock. So I had to wait a full two months to purchase the new L-2 lifters, which have an improved design.

It did not help that these things are damned expensive – somewhere around US$200 per pair.

But, eventually, in late May, I did finally secure a pair of L-2 lifters, in my size. I have been using them for several weeks now.

And I have to say, they are worth every single cent of that exceptionally high price.

You can get cheaper shoes from Nordic Lifting, which will probably be pretty decent. You can get shoes from Adidas, Reebok, or Nike, especially if you have smaller feet or normally-shaped toes or proper arches.

However, if you want a pair of squat shoes that will last for many years, and which give you absolute stability under the heaviest loads, then the TYR L-2 lifters are the only ones worth getting.

This thing is an expensive product, because it FEELS like something built to very high standards. The sole is rigid, solid, and completely stable. The straps allow you to tighten up the shoe to a point that feels comfortable for you, without allowing for any flexion of the toe box or mid-bridge of the arch under loads. The shoe comes with a roughly 2cm heel-to-toe drop, which is aggressive by the standards of most lifting shoes, but this is exactly what you need if you have long femurs (as I do).

Wearing these shoes has completely changed my squat technique, for both my front-squat warm-ups with kettlebells, and my heavy back-squats. These shoes allow you to sit straight down into the squat, rather than poking your butt out and leaning forward with your torso. The result is that the squat becomes quad-dominant, not back-dominant, because the “hinge” that is your lower spine and pelvis, remains more open, thus putting the stress of the weight on your quads.

With these shoes, you can keep your torso much more upright, which in turn allows you to keep your vertebrae stacked up better, and that in turn keeps your core tight and solid, locked into a real wall of muscle.

Simply put, these shoes force you to use good form, because they change your biomechanics, while keeping you stable on the way down, and even more importantly, on the way back up. There is ZERO bounce or cushion from the heel – you do all the work, the shoes simply give you the stability and the grounding to have the confidence that your feet will not move or roll under the weight.

The bottom line is, if you are serious about squatting and building muscle, then you need to get some serious squat shoes. You need shoes that maximise the contact between the sole of the foot and the floor, and which provide total stability across the entire foot, while supporting your ankles, and giving you the ability to keep your torso upright during the lowering phase of the squat.

And you probably cannot get a more serious set of squat shoes than the ones TYR makes.

If you want a pair – and are prepared to pony up the cash – then head over to their website and get them.

Now, this is the part where I have to admit that, sadly, I do not get affiliate commissions from these guys (though, given what I have written above, I probably should).

But, I’ll let you in on a secret – they won’t thank me for this:

If you add the shoes to your cart, and get all the way to JUST before the purchasing stage, where you add in your email address and billing address, but do not actually click to purchase…

… and then close the browser window, go away to make a cup of coffee, read a newspaper, play some video games, or whatever…

… then the site will email you a coupon for 15% off, to give you an incentive to complete the purchase.

And, given the TYR L-2 lifters START at a price of $119 during this long weekend, and normally cost somewhere closer to US$225 (no, I am not joking), those savings add up.

The good news is, despite the exorbitant cost, these shoes will last for YEARS. You can see and feel that in the quality of the materials, when you get your hands on a pair of these puppies. They look and feel like a truly high-quality product.

If you want to squat heavy, and you want to do so for years to come, then get yourself these shoes.

And on the subject of squatting – let me leave you with The Quadfather again, explaining how squats solve all of life’s problems: