Bill Been
Level 5 Valued Member
Took me a while to understand this. I believe you are suggesting to work on back (or front?) squat? The reason I chose to do zercher was because the gym I have access to does not have a squat rack.
Not even a set of stands?
Do you have any way to get to a better gym?
That's a real bummer if you really can't back squat due to lacking proper strength training equipment. If this situation is going to persist you're not going to be able to barbell press either, and if the gym is that poorly equipped, I imagine you're quickly going to be standing in front of an impressive rack of dumbbells, because I doubt they're properly equipped with kettlebells either. If that is all true, you need to learn how to do a barbell clean to get the weight up to your shoulders in a front rack position. From there, you can press or front squat. I would not recommend popping the bar over your head in order to do back squats, but I know many people have done that.
And your surmise regarding getting your back squat up was correct: since strength is a general adaptation, the movement that successfully creates the most strength by allowing one to train with the heaviest loads will have the greatest spillover into other movements. In this case the movement that fulfills this requirement is the back squat, particularly the "low bar" version thereof. The video is just a really strong guy doing his first Zercher squats working up to 405 more or less on a dare.