Made popular by Rickey Dale Crain, pause squats are one of the best
assistance exercises for the squat, especially building explosiveness out
of the hole in the squat.
Pause squats are done just like a normal powerlifting back squat, but
include a pause at the bottom. Squat down to parallel, and hold the
position for 3 full seconds. You may want to count "one one-thousand,
two one-thousand, three one-thousand" as you will tend to count quickly
with load of weight on your back. If you have a training parnter,
you may want to have them count for you, and tell you "up" so you can concentrate
on the lift itself.
You should use about 80-85% of the weight used in your working sets for squats. Do the same amount of reps used in your working sets for 2 sets after your regular squats. For instance, if you used 100 pounds for 3 sets of 5 in your regular squat working sets, you would use 80-85 pounds for 2 sets of 5, with a 3 second pause. Of course, you could do it differently with the reps/sets/weights, but sets at 80-85% is what is reccomended by Rickey Dale Crain.