I do dumbbell squats. Love them. Lighter weight and good form is all you need for a crushing workout. Besides dead lift, I think squat form is the most important out of all workouts to prevent injury. I cringe watching some people dead lift. If I was a chiropractor, I would just hang out in that area of the gym and pass out business cards.
Depends on the pacing. Assuming you're in reasonable shape, if you were to do them at, say, a ~1-2-second up / ~1-2-second down speed, you'd find you can go on and on for over 500 reps without incident; it almost becomes like jogging after a while. Unweighted, of course. It's when you either do them at speed or, as I recently learned, at a very slow pace that they tend to leave a mark.
Just one other thing you might want to keep an eye on when doing squats if your knees are giving you trouble. And that's to make sure that your knees are pointed in exactly the same direction as your toes throughout the movement. It seems like an obvious thing, but we sometimes surprise ourselves by overlooking the obvious. Anyway, good luck and let us know how it goes.
Yeah, but look at those calves. And did you notice the woman behind him giving his lift a hard eye roll? Priceless.
Four women at the Crossfit Games lifted chinless' 1RM... after doing muscle ups, 1RM squats and 1RM mil-press. None of the women weighed over 150.
Hey Fred, I know you advocate the less is more thing, but what are your results like? Are you muscular and ripped?