Leg Training are Squats Necessary!?!?!

Are squats really necessary in leg training?   The answer is yes and no....  The squat is a fully body lift and extremely valuable for strength training but it is also very tricky to learn and needs to be done properly.
After training for about 15 years my body has gotten a little beat up.  When I was 23 years old I was squating 405 every week to parallel for 15 reps.   Lets just say my lower back didnt hold up over time and eventually I blew out my Sacroiliac joint and ended up in the hospital multiple times.  Yes multiple times because my stupid ass couldn't accept the fact that I was actually hurt and I went back to throwing heavy weight on the bar again. 

My main problem was a very common issue in squats known as the butt wink.  A combination of tight hip flexors and adductor muscles were causing my lower back to round ever so slightly at the bottom of the squat.  Eventually this caused a nice pop followed by excruciating muscle spasm and me getting stuck sitting on the toilet bowl unable to get up at 3 in the morning. If you look at the video above you will clearly see that his lower back is rounding at the bottom of the movement.  The vertebrae of our spine do not do well when this happens.  Intervertebral discs are designed to cushion the pressure of a vertical movement.  When that pressure moves into the horizontal plane the discs become very vulnerable for herniation.
So what can we do to fix this?  There are many ways, number one being stretching the proper muscles of the hips such as adductors, psoas, sartorius, rectus femoris and tfl.  There are many great stretches you can look up for these muscles.   What I have found to be very useful in eliminating injury is the box squat.

Dave Tate is one of the masters of power lifting and strength training and has really revolutionized the way people train heavy.  If it wasn't for Elite FTS and Westside Barbell I would probably still be breaking my back once or twice a year squatting.  I personally train a combination of power lifting and bodybuilding but these guys know what they are doing. I have found box squats allow me to control the weight and the depth that I go down while maintaining my form
So should we squat...YES but we need to do it safely.  I have also learned to use other machines to go extra heavy.  Despite my now near perfect form on squats I still worry about that one mishap where I blow my back out and cant move for weeks.
I have found a lot of success building leg muscle with hack squats and the leg press.  Yes I said leg press, I know all you hardcore lifters hate the leg press but it allows me to safely load up massive amounts of weight with out fear of blowing out my back.  I have also found that on the hack squat I can take the movement ass to ground without sacrificing my lower back posture.  I really like this because it allows me to focus on my quads a bit more then the squatting that focuses more on the posterior chain. Sometimes I get upset about not squatting really heavy, but I have learned some of my limitations as I age.
Squats are a great exercise but they are not the only way to work your legs.  I believe if you do things right you can build a great set of wheels without doing extremely heavy squats.