Originally posted by: TecHNooB
You can still get a great leg workout without squats. Leg press, lunges, and calf raises are fine substitutes!
You can certainly make individual muscles in your legs stronger with other exercises, but the squat's value is not in just strengthening the legs. The squat works a HUGE percentage of the muscles in your body (something like 70%), it works them all together in one smooth, compound motion and it allows you to use a large amount of weight. For one thing, other leg exercises do not involve the hips, glutes, abs and posterior chain nearly as much as the squat. But even more importantly, the combination of heavy weight and the involvement of so many muscles causes the body to produce a large hormonal reaction to the squat, and consequently lots of muscle growth all over your body. In that respect, there really are no substitutes for the squat.
If you don't have a squat rack, you have several options:
1. Convince your dad that the squat is actually extremely beneficial for the knee and that, in general, weight lifting as a sport produces VERY few injuries (compared to say, soccer). This is covered in detail in
Starting Strength and many articles online, such as
this one.
2. Save up some money and buy one. There are fairly cheap
power racks and
squat stands available online and at department stores. Or, search on craigslist and you might be able to score a used one for around $100. It's one of the most important and versatile pieces of equipment for weightlifting and well worth the money.
3. Build your own squat rack. You can google around for tutorials and find many examples on the crossfit message boards, but here are a few that I found quickly:
DIY 1,
DIY 2,
DIY 3,
DIY 4.
4. Go to a gym or your high school weight room and use the equipment there.
5. If you really can't find a way to squat, learn to do the
Clean. It's an exercise where the weight starts on the ground (so you don't need a squat rack) and ends up on your shoulders. In fact, the clean is the most efficient way known to get a barbell from the ground onto your shoulders, so any time you need to get the weight up there (for OH press, for example), use it. The clean includes a front squat, which is just as good of an exercise as the back squat. You can either do multiple cleans, or just clean the weight once onto your shoulders and do a bunch of front squats. It's a fantastic exercise that builds an enormous amount of quickness and power. The only downsides are that it's difficult lift to learn and that you'll clean far less than you can squat, so you really won't be able to squat heavy. Still, it would better than nothing, and you can compensate somewhat by doing more heavy deadlifts.
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