I'm a day late and a blog-inspiration short today, so I'm going to go ahead and suggest that everyone check out two pieces in Eric Cressey's blog: this one, which is about a cool technique of using 'speed reps' on your compound movements in addition to low-rep, high-weight sets to build strength and optimize fiber recruitment (I always start peppering my writing with phrases like "optimize fiber recruitment" after I read Cressey); and this one, which is about that old question: 

If Front Squats and Back Squats got the best coaches, trained hard, ate right, got their heads right, stayed out of the pool halls, laid off the booze and the loose women, and went head-to-head in a winner-take-all contest to determine which type of squats were the best, which would come out on top?

Spoiler:  it depends.  You might need to grab an anatomy textbook to follow a lot of Cressey's reasoning, but what I like about his take on it is that he doesn't make either exercise into a sacred cow.  Most coaches--and athletes--do.  I hear and read a lot of this: 

If you don't squat Volkswagens seven times a week, you're a total wuss!  What business do you have calling yourself a strength-training enthusiast, much less a real man, much less a vertebrate!  At best you're an annalid...

And on and on.  I don't know.  Frankly, when Squats are on the menu, it doesn't freak me out nearly as much as when I've got a healthy serving of heavy Bulgarian Split Squats to look forward to.  Squats--and deadlifts--are great exercises for people who can tolerate them.  For everyone else, they can be a quick and efficient path to injury. 

Yes, you can pile lots of weight onto the squat bar.  Yes, you can grunt and scream and feel like Quadzilla afterwards, but to what end?  Unless you're a powerlifter or a serious athlete who needs to squeeze every foot-pound of possible power out of the lower body, I just don't think one should reflexively throw tons of spinal loading onto the menu just because Joe Weider said so.  And I'm just not buying the "squats cause magical hormonal shifts to occur" argument, as if a few sets would turn you into the Incredible Hulk.

Personally, I cut the injury rate among my client pool significantly when I stopped insisting that everyone did them and started basing most lower-body exercises around single-leg work. 

The bench press has gradually fallen from grace as an exercise that Everyone Has To Do; perhaps it's time to do the same for the squat.  I'm not saying Never Squat--just to make use of that exercise, like any other, judiciously.