I generally go to parallel for the heavy squats - no need to go further.

However, on lighter weights, I'll go as low as I can possibly can. Not only does it strengthen the parts of the chain that don't get worked on the upper half of the movement, but a few seconds' pause at the bottom makes for one heck of a good stretch.

For me, my squat weight was increasing faster than my deadlifts. I was sucking at deadlifts, then I read something from Rippetoe about large disparaging weight difference between squats and deadlifts. He had 5 possible reasons for this.

1. You don't squat low enough
2. You don't squat low enough
3. You don't squat low enough
4. You don't squat low enough
5. You don't squat low enough

Gotta love Rippetoe :laugh:

Needless to say, I backed my squat weight down by as much as 20%, started trying to go deep...not ATG, but still...worked back up in weight, and wouldn't you know it, I pulled my 1x5 set of deadlifts that I had been struggling hard with relatively easily for all 5 reps.

I've been having depth issues as well with my heavy sets. I aim for at least parallel on my heaviest weight, for sure break parallel on the lower weights. My dynamic effort sets I always do deep squats on, A2G.

I've switched to a wider stance which has helped some. Unfortunately, wider stance is no good for most olympic movements so I have to switch things up for oly work. I will say that no longer squatting with a rack has made me a little scared almost to get really deep when I get heavy. I have lost a little trust in my bail out technique so I think once I get that confidence back, my depth will get better. I've decided to back off to what my weights were two cycles ago in an attempt to build some better muscle memory for proper depth as well as an ego boost on my squats.

i squat a bit below, i dont want there being any question of depth.