You know those "desert island" questions?  If you could take only three (movies/CD's/books/friends/movie stars) to a desert island, what/who would they be? 

Trainers love these sorts of questions, and one of their favorites is "Which three exercises would you take with you to a desert island?  Endless, heated discussions ensue.  Lifelong friendships are severed over whether you choose the ab wheel rollout or the stability ball version, and if you find someone who chooses your same top three, well, wedding bells have chimed over much less. 

Of course, it's such an absurd question, because while it's at least theoretically possible that you might be sent to a desert island with limited belongings, to my knowledge, few if any desert islands outlaw the performance of more than one muscle and performance-enhancing exercise per inhabitant.  

Still, it's a fun party game if your friends are fitness geeks, and the most common answer, as you'll see from this recent post collecting 20-plus trainers' angle on the matter, is--SQUATS.

Yup, squats.

Now I'm pretty okay with that.  I like squatting.  I am, and always have been, a free-weight guy; I like the fact that you can use big weight on the squat, and I imagine I'll be squatting in some form or another--body weight, single leg, partial, barbell, overhead--for as long as I'm alive and kicking.

But is it the best exercise?  Is it one of MY desert-island lifts?  

I'm not sure.

Part of the reason is that it's hard to get a weighted squat just right, especially if you're on the taller side.  I still squat heavy, but it's not uncommon for me to pay for it a bit with some sharp back pains, in the days afterward regardless of how much warm up and foam rolling I do.  I was doing front squats the other day--not even very heavy ones--and I still feel like I've been hit by a truck, and not in a good way (yes, to my freakish way of thinking, there is a 'good way' to feel like you've been hit by a truck).

Let's face it:  squats are easy to screw up.  The most common mistake is allowing the torso to lean too far forwards as we're ascending--just to eke out that last rep or two--transforming the exercise from a knee-and-hip-extension move to a back-extension move rather like a Good Morning.  And doing Good Mornings with your max squatting weight is a just plain dumb idea.  Ask your lumbar spine, particularly L4 and L5. 

Gray Cook has an interesting article, available here, which champions the value of the  deadlift over the squat:

Squatting allows you to reduce your center of mass and get your body into a lot of neat positions, and you can lift from a squatting pattern, but it is not your most efficient or powerful lift. The hip hinge [Cook's term for the deadlift] is the most powerful lift you have. It evokes core stability, hip mobility, glute development, postural maintenance and overall attention to body alignment. I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't dead lift with almost every population interested in elevating their fitness level.

One key reference point for fitness trainers and physical therapists is "How do children move?"  Most young kids have great posture, terrific mobility, and a wonderful suppleness of movement.  They haven't yet sat at a desk for fifteen years; they haven't worn high heels; they haven't been told their shoulders are ugly and decided to walk in a way that hides them.  Turns out, according to Cook, that children are natural deadlifters:

...as a demonstration of mobility, children squat naturally. But, when they have to deal with a weight that challenges their center of mass and base of support, they will actually dead lift. This is why I refer to it as a primitive pattern. It happens almost automatically when you wish to move weight.

I'd have to say from observing my daughter that I find that to be true:  she deadlifts heavy things (bending primarily at the waist); she doesn't squat them (bending primarily at the knee). 

I also remember working for a stone mason named Steve Butterworth one summer when I was in high school.  He'd done that work all his life, working with stones that weighed up to a thousand pounds.  The guy was deadlifting all day long, every day.  Never once did I see him squat down, spine vertical, grab a stone and move it.  He moved from his hip joints, and that man could move some serious stone.  Bad back?  Forget it:  the man was as hale and hearty as New England itself.

Of all the lifting patterns that will evoke greater strength gains in a short amount of time, I feel this one is key....Even if you are trying to help someone lose weight, getting them into some form of lifting will actually stoke their metabolism, increase their base of metabolic rate and far exceed those simple gains you are supposed to get through cardiovascular or light weight training alone. And, if you have to do one heavy lift, I can't think of a better one that addresses the whole body than the dead lift.

Pretty strong words.  Cook goes on to argue that a training program should 'maintain the squat'--hold onto it as a viable, comfortable movement pattern, but 'train the deadlift,' and even argues that the ratio of deadlifts to squats in a good program should be about 4:1.  

Cook isn't just talking about the standard, Olympic-bar version, however:  his favorite appears to be the single-leg, single-arm version, which he describes in detail in the article.  I had squats on my workout menu yesterday at the gym, but because the squat-induced aches and pains from a few days before were still raging, I scrapped them in favor of ten sets of four one-arm, one-leg deadlifts.  Needless to say, I'm very sore today, but this time in all the right places. 

I don't know if I'm ready to squat as infrequently as Cook suggests, but I do know that it's the one exercise that's caused me significant pain and suffering over the years (along with some good gains in strength and size, admittedly), and I'm at a point when I'm just about willing to rethink my devotion to heavy, hardcore once-or-twice-weekly workouts based around squat variations.

Others with similar/dissimilar experiences?